The ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is the premier international conference of human-computer interaction (HCI). The conference was founded in 1982 and has grown to be a major ACM conference, attracting roughly 4,000 people to this year’s conference.
This year’s conference was held in Yokohama, Japan from April 26 to May 1. There were 5,014 research submissions with 331 (6.6%) in the accessibility category. Out of the 1,249 accepted submissions, 100 of the original 331 in the accessibility category were accepted. Here is a summary of the accessibility and disability sessions:
- Research Paper Sessions
- “Living with Dementia or Visual Impairments” (5 papers)
- “Neurological Considerations” (7 papers)
- “Design for Different User Needs” (7 papers)
- “XR for Different User Needs” (6 papers)
- “Vision Accessibility” (7 papers)
- “Designs for Aging and Disability” (6 papers)
- “Designs for Blind and Low Vision People" (6 papers)
- Late-Breaking Research Sessions
- “User Experience and Accessibility” (6+ papers)
- “Haptics and Sensory” (3+ papers)
- “Accessibility and Inclusion” (20+ papers)
- Case Studies
- “Accessibility” (5 papers)
- Panels
- “Barriers to Implementation of Accessibility Research in Industry Practice – and Vice Versa”
- Special Interest Groups
- “Designing for Neurodiversity in Academia: Addressing Challenges and Opportunities in Human-Computer Interaction”
Late-breaking research papers are not counted in the submission/acceptance data. There are also quite a few accessibility/disability papers that are in sessions that are not identified with that topic. Among the 50 Best Papers in the conference, I was able to identify 5 on accessibility/disability topics. It is encouraging to me to see so much interest in accessibility at the CHI conference.
I recall attending an early CHI conference in 1987 when there were only three accessibility papers out of 46 total accepted papers. Of course, 3/46 = 6.5% in 1987 is only slightly smaller than 100/1249 = 8% in 2025, 38 years later. You might be wondering what the three papers were about. They were all about accessing computers, one for blind people, one for deaf-blind people, and one for people with limited mobility.
Proceedings of ACM CHI are available freely in the ACM Digital Library.