Response to Megan’s letter — our path forward together!
On June 30, Megan Hofmann wrote an open letter to the SIGCHI Executive Committee (EC), sharing her vision for an accessible SIGCHI. The EC came together with AccessSIGCHI to produce a joint response in support of Megan’s vision. We share this response with our community below.
Dear Megan,
Thank you for your impactful service to the SIGCHI community! We are grateful for the time and energy you have given to making SIGCHI conferences more accessible, and inspiring and supporting many others in doing the same. Thank you!
Your letter brings up several points that are relevant for both the SIGCHI EC and AccessSIGCHI, and we’d like to start by reinforcing that we are all, as a team, committed to promoting accessibility across the SIG and its conferences. We’re definitely in this together, building towards “a future in which people with a diverse range of disabilities can participate in all aspects of the SIGCHI community — as SIGCHI leaders, volunteers, and members.” (This is the vision for an accessible SIGCHI shared by Stacy Branham and Soraia Prietch, previous SIGCHI Adjunct Chairs for Accessibility). We are aligned with you on your goals, some of which we — the EC and AccessSIGCHI — have actively been working towards. It would be great to jointly discuss how to take each of your ideas further.
For now, we jointly address your points here:
First, regarding publication accessibility, both the EC and AccessSIGCHI agree with your suggestion for conferences to appoint someone in this role for each conference, given the proximity to conference publication processes this might require. It appears that, given that the publication process is handled by the conferences themselves, organizers of each conference would be best positioned to enable this, with SIGCHI Publications Committee and SIGCHI Accessibility Committee members providing centralized support, where relevant, to ensure consistency.
Second, regarding standard accessibility features and policies, the EC has been working to offer accessibility guidelines to SIGCHI conferences and implemented these for Development Fund-supported events. Again, we agree with this suggestion and appreciate your input and experience. These guidelines will cover, among other things: early recruitment of Accessibility Chair(s) in the planning process; including necessary information about accessibility before the submission deadline to provide transparency and accountability; a dedicated accessibility budget; automatic captioning for all events and other support (e.g., CART, sign language interpreter) provided upon request (with deadline indicated in the call); selection of an accessible conference venue, virtual platform, and print/presentation media; quiet areas; no-flash policy; diverse food options; reserved seating; and accessibility accommodations for conference organizers/PC members with disabilities. As a next step to improving and enforcing these guidelines, the EC is preparing an accessibility-focused session at the end of October 2023 with the Council of Steering Committee Chairs (CSCC) of SIGCHI conferences. SIGCHI VP for Accessibility, Dhruv “DJ” Jain, is leading this, and we invite you to attend, and if you like, to co-lead this with DJ. In addition, the EC and AccessSIGCHI will continue to work together to provide training for accessibility chairs so that they can feel more informed, empowered, and supported in volunteering for these roles.
Third, regarding the boundaries of conference accommodation and accessibility grants, we agree that this is important and SIGCHI already has structures that do this (e.g., the SIGCHI Development Fund and the Gary Marsden Travel Awards). We can discuss how these currently serve the purpose you mentioned, might be improved upon, or if something else entirely might work better.
Fourth, about pathways through the EC: yes, absolutely. The EC has assigned accessibility liaisons from our committee in the past and could do this for all conferences to support planning, exchanging necessary documents, and check-ins. The EC already extends its funding to support conference accessibility beyond the conference’s budget and is reviewing how we can ensure adequate support for all conferences. The EC is also supporting our conferences towards becoming self-sustaining in handling accessibility requests, including promoting a dedicated fund for accessibility in their budgets.
And finally, to your point on anticipating and adjusting. We appreciate that even when a conference has proactively addressed accessibility, we can further support these efforts, as a community and individually, by recognizing when adjustments are needed, and working together to make those adjustments. This approach aligns with our shared goals of fostering the SIGCHI community’s continued learning about accessibility and the disabled experience, while also creating avenues for dynamically responding to unexpected accessibility needs and failures. A How-To guide and communication channel, for disabled conference attendees and allies, are examples of strategies that can help with this.
To discuss the points you raise and to offer a chance for our community members to engage and discuss, we jointly plan to organize an open session with SIGCHI community members in the near future. We have a rapidly growing SIGCHI community and they would benefit from orientation around accessibility offerings and opportunities from SIGCHI.
To conclude, we recognize that we have ethical and moral obligations to provide reasonable accommodation: this issue is pressing and impacting disabled scholars’ ability to be included, to make career progress, as well as to stay employed. Thus, we move forward together, even if imperfectly, constantly working to strengthen SIGCHI and increase inclusion.
We thank you again for your leadership, look forward to discussing, and to working together on the above!
Warm regards,
SIGCHI EC and AccessSIGCHI
