ICCHP Keynote and Panel Sessions
ICCHP will feature keynotes related to but also going beyond AT, Accessibility and Inclusion - "Brainfood for R&D and application in our domain." (Information will be updated.)
Opening Session and Opening Keynote:
Wednesday, July 10, 9am - 10.30am
- Welcome Message: Stefan Koch, Rector Johannes Kepler University Linz
- Opening Words: Makoto Kobayashi, Tsukuba University of Technology, General Chair ICCHP 2024
- Opening Words: Pedro Encarnação, President AAATE, Universidade Católica Portuguesa
- Opening Words: Thomas Gegenhuber, Member of the Municipality Council of Linz, in representation of Klaus Luger, Mayor of the City of Linz
- Opening Words (video): Federal Minister Johannes Rauch, Federal Minister of Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection
- Opening keynote: I. Placencia-Porrero: European Work on Accessibility
- ICCHP Roland Wagner Award Ceremony: Dominique Archambault, Université Paris 8, Ronald Bieber, Austrian Computer Society
- Young Researcher Consortium Ceremony: Deborah Fels, Toronto Metropolitan University, Martin Morandell, Smart In Life, Health University of Applied Sciences Tirol
W3C Digital Accessibility Keynote and Panel Discussion
Thursday, July 11, 10.15am - 12pm
- Keynote: Kevin White, W3C/WAI: The Success Story of Digital Accessibility (tbc)
- Panel Discussion (invited)
- Klaus Hoeckner, Access Austria/HGBS (moderator)
- S. Abou-Zahra, Amazon
- P. Kumar, Deque Systems
- N. Milliken, ATOS
- C. Patnoe, Google
Springer Keynote on AI for Accessibility and AT; Closing Session
Friday, July 12, 11.30am-12.30pm
- Keynote: DI Dr. Johannes Kofler: The Deep Learning Revolution
- Presenation of ICCHP 2026
Opening Keynote
Keynote Speaker: I. Placencia-Porrero
Inmaculada Placencia Porrero is a Senior Expert in Disability and Inclusion at Directorate-General Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion at the European Commission. Her unit is responsible for the coordination of European policies for persons with disabilities. She works on European disability policies including the European Disability Strategy 2010-2020, and the EU implementation of the UNCRPD. Inmaculada holds a degree in Physics and Computer Science and worked in research and development before joining The European Commission in 1991. She has worked on research programmes addressing accessibility as well as assistive technologies and was Deputy Head of Unit for various disability-related units in the Commission. Her work in the "e-Inclusion" unit of the Directorate-General for Information Society and Media addressed accessibility policy. While at the Directorate-General for Justice she contributed to disability-related antidiscrimination legislation. She was responsible for the Task Force for the preparation of the European Accessibility Act and remains responsible since its adoption in 2015. Currently, under the Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs, and Inclusion, she is also leading the team working on the Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2021-2030. Recently, Ima got elected to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Titel: European Work on Accessibility
Outline: The presentation will start framing the EU work on accessibility in the context of the Un Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, introducing key concepts related to accessibility used in the EU legislative framework. It will provide a short overview of EU legislation on accessibility focusing on the European Accessibility Act (Directive 2019/882). A description of the main articles of the act, the related standardisation work and key support measures for its implementation will be provided. Finally some reflections on the development of accessibility policy and legislation will be shared.
Presentation Slides:
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Digital Accessibility Keynote and Panel Discussion
Organised in cooperation with the AccessibleEU Center
Keynote Speaker: Kevin White
Kevin is the Accessibility Technical Lead for the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). In this role Kevin supports WAI to deliver internationally recognized standards that support accessibility. He manages W3C accessibility operations, including projects, such as WAI-CooP, co-funded by the European Commission. Kevin has been involved with W3C WAI since 2016 in different capacities. He contributes to resources that support understanding and implementing web accessibility. Kevin was the lead editor of Planning and Managing for Web Accessibility, Tips for Getting Started with Web Accessibility, and Developing Organizational Policies on Web Accessibility.
Kevin was the Head of Digital Accessibility and User Research in the Scottish Government. He also worked as a digital design consultant supporting a wide range of public and private sector organizations to implement high quality, accessible and usable products and services. Kevin holds degrees in Psychology and in Mathematics and Computer Science.
Title: The Success Story of Digital Accessibility (tbc)
Outline: "Accessibility has failed: Try Generative UI = Individualized UX” has been the deflating summary on accessibility by Jacob Nielsen. But the accessibility community disagrees. The keynote and the following panel discussion will outline achievements, progress, challenges and opportunities of digital accessibility.
Much has been achieved to support more accessible digital products in terms of guidelines, standards, legislation, techniques and tools. All major browsers support assistive technologies. It is an indispensable aspect for reaching all customers and clients and to leave nobody behind. A broad and growing set of assistive technologies (AT) exist to support people with disabilities. Many AT functionalities have entered mainstream use creating accessible user experiences and supporting usability for many beyond disabled and older people.
- Examples of technical accessibility progress and challenges
- How to continue to improve accessible user experiences
- The potential offered by AI and the risk of overpromising
- Demands for academia, R&D and other all other stakeholder groups aiming at digital accessibility to facilitate a more open, democratic and inclusive society
Keynote Panel (invited):
- Klaus Hoeckner, Access Austria/HGBS (moderator)
- S. Abou-Zahra, Amazon
- S. Herrlinger, Apple (tbc)
- P. Kumar, Deque Systems
- N. Milliken, ATOS (tbc)
- H. Minto, Microsoft (tbc)
- C. Patnoe, Google
Springer Keynote on AI for Accessibility and AT and Closing Session
Keynote Speaker: DI Dr. Johannes Kofler, Institute for Integrated Circuits, Quantum Information and Computation Group, Johannes Kepler University Linz
Johannes Kofler received his PhD in 2008 in theoretical quantum physics from the University of Vienna (sub auspiciis praesidentis). He spent postdocs with Anton Zeilinger (University of Vienna) and Ignacio Cirac (Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, Garching/Munich), where he worked on the foundations of quantum mechanics as well as quantum information science. From 2018 to 2023 he has been a researcher in the group of Sepp Hochreiter at the Institute for Machine Learning at JKU Linz, where he applied Deep Learning methods to problems in quantum physics and astronomy. Since 2023, he is a Senior Lecturer in “Quantum Information & Learning” at the Institute for Integrated Circuits at JKU Linz.
Title: The Deep Learning Revolution
Outline: In the last decade, deep learning has established itself as one of the most successful fields of artificial intelligence – with overwhelming success in industrial speech, text, and image processing at information technology giants such as Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon. It pervades commercial applications in an unprecedented manner and changes our everyday lives. Deep learning is based on new techniques for artificial neural networks as well as the availability of very fast computers and massive data sets. This talk will attempt to provide an overview of the main concepts, architectures, and applications of deep learning.
Closing Session: ICCHP 2026
Chair: Petr Penaz, Teiresias Center, Masaryk University Brno, Czech Republic