DEADLINE EXTENSION FOR PAPER SUBMISSIONS: 13 MAY 2011
----------------------------------------------------------------------

SLPAT 2011 -- Speech and Language Processing for Assistive Technology
Workshop at ACL-EMNLP, 30 July 2011, Edinburgh, Scotland
http://slpat2011.computing.dundee.ac.uk/

CALL FOR PAPERS
----------------------------------------------------------------------

OVERVIEW:

The 2nd Workshop on Speech and Language Processing for Assistive Technology
will be held in conjunction with the 2011 ACL Conference on Empirical Methods
in Natural Language Processing (SIGDAT - EMNLP) which will take place on
30 July 2011 in Edinburgh, Scotland.

This 1-day workshop will bring together researchers from all areas of speech
and language technology with a common interest in making everyday life more
accessible for people with physical, cognitive, sensory, emotional or
developmental disabilities. This workshop will build on the first such
workshop (co-located with NAACL HLT 2010); it will provide an opportunity
for individuals from both research communities, and the individuals with
whom they are working, to assist to share research findings, and to discuss
present and future challenges and the potential for collaboration and
progress.


SCOPE AND TOPICS:

While AAC is a particularly apt application area for speech and NLP
technologies, we are purposefully making the scope of the workshop broad
enough to include accessibility and assistive technologies as a whole.
Topics that are appropriate for the workshop yet fall outside of the scope
of AAC would include things such as spoken language or dialogue interfaces
to assistive devices, or other related topics in Human Computer Interaction.
While we will encourage work that validates the methods with human
experimental trials, we will also consider work on basic-level innovations,
inspired by AT/AAC related problems.

We welcome papers on theories, models, techniques and evaluation studies
from all areas of speech and language technology, tailored to accessibility,
AAC and AT; including, but not limited to, the following:

- Speech and NLP applied to typing interface applications
- Brain-computer interfaces for language processing applications
- Automated processing of sign language
- Speech synthesis and speech recognition for physical or cognitive impairments
- Speech transformation for improved intelligibility
- Translation systems; to and from speech, text, symbols and sign language
- Novel modeling and machine learning approaches for AAC applications
- Text processing for improved comprehension, e.g., sentence simplification
or text-to-speech
- Silent speech: speech technology based on sensors without audio
- Symbol languages, sign languages, nonverbal communication
- Dialogue systems and natural language generation for assistive technologies
- Discourse and dialogue modelling for AAC
- Multimodal user interfaces and dialogue systems adapted to assistive
technologies
- NLP for cognitive assistance applications
- Speech, natural language and multimodal interfaces to assistive technologies
- Assessment of speech and language processing within the context of
assistive technology
- Web accessibility; text simplification, summarization, and adapted presentation
modes such as speech, signs or symbols
- Linguistic resources; corpora and annotation schemes
- Evaluation of systems and components, including methodology
- Deployment of speech and NLP tools in the clinic or in the field
- Speech and NLP applied to typing interface applications

PROGRAM COMMITTEE:

- Melanie Fried-Oken (Oregon Health & Science University)
- Peter Ljunglöf (University of Gothenburg)
- Kathleen F. McCoy (University of Delaware)
- Annalu Waller (University of Dundee)

- Jan Alexandersson, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence
- Norman Alm, University of Dundee
- John Arnott, University of Dundee
- Melanie Baljko, York University, Canada
- Jan Bedrosian, Western Michigan University
- Rolf Black, University of Dundee
- Torbjørg Breivik, the Language Council of Norway
- Tim Bunnell, University of Delaware
- Rob Clark, University of Edinburgh
- Ann Copestake, University of Cambridge
- Stuart Cunningham, University of Sheffield
- Rickard Domeij, Stockholm, University
- Alistair D.N. Edwards, University of York
- Michael Elhadad, Ben-Gurion University
- Björn Granström, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
- Phil Green, Sheffield University
- Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, University of Illinois
- Per-Olof Hedvall, Lund University
- Graeme Hirst, University of Toronto
- Linda Hoag, Kansas State University
- Harry Howard, Tulane University
- Matt Huenerfauth, CUNY
- Sofie Johansson Kokkinakis, University of Gothenburg
- Simon Judge, Barnsley NHS & Sheffield University
- Simon King, University of Edinburgh
- Greg Lesher, Dynavox Technologies, Inc.
- Jeremy Linskell, Electronic Assistive Technology Service, Tayside NHS
- Mats Lundälv, DART
- Ornella Mich, Foundazione Bruno Kessler
- Yael Netzer, Ben-Gurion University
- Alan Newell, University of Dundee
- Torbjørn Nordgård, Lingit A/S, Norway
- Helen Petrie, University of York
- Karen Petrie, University of Dundee
- Ehud Reiter, University of Aberdeen
- Bitte Rydeman, Lund University
- Howard Shane, Children's Hospital Boston
- Fraser Shein, Bloorview Kids Rehab, Canada
- Richard Sproat, Oregan Health and Science University
- Kumiko Tanaka-Ishii, University of Tokyo
- Nava Tintarev, University of Aberdeen
- Tonio Wandmacher, Commissariat á l'énergie atomique, France
- Jan-Oliver Wuelfing, Fraunhofer Centre Birlinghoven, Germany

IMPORTANT DATES:

Paper submission deadline (extended): 13 May 2011
Demo proposal submission deadline: 23 May 2011
Notification of demo acceptance: 1 June 2011
Notification to authors: 17 June 2011
Camera-ready paper version submission deadline: 1 July 2011
Workshop: 30 July 2011

SUBMISSION:

Papers should be submitted by 13 May 2011 in PDF format via the START system.

Submissions should follow the two-column format of ACL 2011 proceedings.
Each paper may consist of up to nine (9) pages of content, and any number
of additional pages with references only. Submissions should describe original,
unpublished work. Please use the official ACL 2011 style files.

Submissions that do not conform to the length requirements will be rejected
without review. This includes papers that do not conform to style parameters
such as letter and font size restrictions. We reserve the right to reject
submissions that do not conform to these styles, including letter size and
font size restrictions. As reviewing will be blind, the paper should not
include the authors' names and affiliations. Furthermore, self-references
that reveal the author's identity, e.g., “We previously showed
(Smith, 1991) ...“, should be avoided. Instead, use citations such as “Smith
previously showed (Smith, 1991) ...“. Papers that do not conform to these
requirements will be rejected without review. Separate identification
information is required, and will be part of the web submission process.

Submission/reviewing will be electronic, managed by the START system. The
only accepted format for submitted papers is Adobe PDF. Submissions must
be uploaded onto the system by the submission deadlines. Please note that
submissions after this date cannot be processed as Start will not allow
submissions to be uploaded after the submission deadline.

Submissions presented at the SLPAT workshop should mainly contain new material
that has not been presented at any other meeting with publicly available
proceedings. Papers that have been or will be submitted to other meetings or
publications must disclose this information at submission time. Please list
all other meetings where the paper has been submitted at the end of the
abstract field on the submission site.

WORKSHOP WEBSITE: http://slpat2011.computing.dundee.ac.uk/



The University of Dundee is a Scottish Registered Charity, No. SC015096.