Hindawi Publishing Corporation

International Journal of Digital Multimedia Broadcasting

Accessibility of Broadcast Multimedia

Call for Papers

The United Nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities came into force in 2008. The Convention stresses that persons with disabilities should be able to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life. This requires, amongst other things, that States Parties should take appropriate measures to ensure that persons with disabilities have access to information and communications technology. The European Union ratified the convention on 23 December 2010. It is thus timely to gather the current state of the art of work on the accessibility of digital multimedia broadcasting in a special issue of the International Journal of Digital Multimedia Broadcasting. Accessible broadcast multimedia can be provided in part through provision of access services that literally help their users access the content of the media. Important examples of broadcast access services are subtitles and deaf signing provided with television. Access services for social inclusion are not restricted to services for those with physical impairments and include, for example, subtitles for immigrant groups. Other essential elements of accessibility include awareness of the availability of access services and the usability of the access services. Usability includes issues such as navigation using remote controls or other interface devices but also critically user group feedback on the services and how they could be improved. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

The use of television to combat eExculsion
User feedback on accessibility services
Initiatives for raising awareness of access services
Accessible TV remote controls and accessible navigation in general
Smart accessibility, for example, interfaces that self-adapt to user needs
Delivery platforms for access services
Hardware agnostic access services
Business models for access services
Development tools and guidelines for access services
Standardization issues and initiatives related to accessibility
National directives and enforcement of the provision of accessibility and their effectiveness
Technical and user forums for promoting accessibility and their impact
Application of web accessibility guidelines to digital broadcast media
Application of web content accessibility guidelines to digital broadcast media
Initiatives aimed at building accessibility into HTML5
Roadmaps for the realization of accessibility
Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijdmb/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable:

Manuscript Due November 1, 2011
First Round of Reviews February 1, 2012
Publication Date May 1, 2012

Lead Guest Editor
Thomas John Owens, School of Engineering and Design, Brunel University, London, UK
Guest Editors
Pilar Orero, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain
Peter Olaf Looms,Looms Consulting, 2950 Vedbæk, Denmark
Takebumi Itagaki, School of Engineering and Design, Brunel University, London, UK