Disability and Accessibility at ACM CHI 2026
The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2026) was held in Barcelona, Spain, in April, 2026. CHI is the leading international conference on Human-Computer Interaction. There were more than 5,000 attendees and 1,705 papers with an acceptance rate of about 25%. Even though I was unable to attend the conference, I follow the contributions about disability and accessibility. There were nine sessions related to disability or accessibility, including 8 papers sessions (and a total of 55 papers) on these topics:
“Power, Values, and Politics of Accessibility”
“Accessibility in Everyday Life”
“Reading and Writing Accessibility”
“Practical and Adaptive Accessibility”
“Navigating Biases in Accessibility and Aging”
“Sound, Music, and Dance Accessibility”
“Designing for Sensory Access”
“Memory and Interaction.”
There were two workshops with the titles:
“Crip HCI: Cyborg Perspectives on Disability Justice”
“Speech AI for All: The What, How, and Who of Measurement”
There were three meet-ups with the titles:
“Disability, Differences, and Diversity: Revisiting Inclusive Design and Access”
“Neurodiversity Meet-Up @ CHI: Building a Neuro-Affirming Community in HCI”
“Sign-Up on Deaf Technologies: Reframing Access, Interaction, and Design”
There were approximately 323 papers, posters, and workshops that mentioned accessibility in their abstracts.
Partner representative Jeff Bigham was an author on a CHI 2026 Best Paper titled: “iTagPDF: Towards Finally Automating PDF Accessibility.” There were 62 Best Papers. Honorable mention papers, of which there were 213, included those authored by partner representatives Shiri Azenkot, Abraham Glasser, Foad Hamidi, Raja Kushalnagar, Kathryn Ringland, Rua Williams, and Jacob Wobbrock.
Now that I have explored the disability- and accessibility-related papers from CHI 2026, I picked a few to recommend. I will start with the Best Paper mentioned above. I have been frustrated about how hard it is to make a PDF accessible. Hopefully, this Best Paper will open a window to making it easier. I will then look for papers that relate to Gen AI, which has great promise to move the needle on accessibility. There are dangers in Gen AI that are real, but there is also promise for this powerful technology to improve access solutions.
Want another take on CHI? Check out Amy Ko's Bits and Behavior post "CHI 2026 trip report: ay ay AI."