SIGCHI as Case Study

SIGCHI has been addressing accessibility across the areas identified for improvement through a number of experimental initiatives. For example, an accessibility chair was first appointed at SIGCHI’s flagship conference CHI as early as 1996 with some success, but the position did not continue consistently in subsequent conferences. A broader effort was needed, so, in 2011, the SIGCHI Executive Committee began a program to raise awareness and rationalize processes around inclusiveness; see the sidebar “SIGCHI Accessibility Timeline.”

Education of leadership. The SIGCHI Executive Committee established a program of information gathering, reaching out to key professional groups and members of the SIGCHI community with disabilities, collaborating explicitly with two groups:

ACM SIGACCESS. ACM SIGACCESS is in many ways a role model, with accessible conferences and publications and a large percentage of community members with disabilities. SIGACCESS has documentation and processes for how to make conferences and digital resources accessible for all who want to participate. A core challenge in applying SIGACCESS approaches to the SIGCHI context is the difference in the attendee population. SIGCHI members are not all as aware or committed to accessibility as SIGACCESS members, whose expertise and interest center on accessibility. SIGACCESS also has a long-standing tradition of inclusion, so people with disabilities know their needs will be met at a SIGACCESS conference. SIGCHI needs to build this awareness among its membership, devise inclusive practices, and build a reputation for accessibility. To create awareness, enthusiasm, and engagement within a less-invested membership requires a different set of strategies.

AccessComputing. Staff of the Access-
Computing project at the University of
Washington have been key to SIGCHI’s
progress in accessibility. AccessCom-
puting is a National Science Founda-
tion-funded Broadening Participation
Alliance that focuses on increasing
access to the field of computer science
for people with disabilities. 1 At the
August 2013 SIGCHI Executive Com-
tered by people with disabilities. In
collaboration with other SIGs (such
as SIGACCESS, http://www.sigaccess.
org/), our work has included indirect
activities (such as educating conference
leadership about disabilities and advo-
cating for inclusion of people with dis-
abilities on committees). We have also
improved accessibility at conferences
and to digital resources and provided
professional-development activities.

We began by recognizing that career development, in all areas of computing, is greatly enhanced through several activities: attendance at conferences on a regular basis; production and consumption of digital resources, from blogs to multimedia content to articles in the ACM Digital Library; and involvement in sponsored mentorship programs. We identified three disability-related concerns that had to be addressed: organization and involvement of stakeholders; considerations regarding physical accessibility; and considerations regarding digital accessibility. Here, we address each in turn. Moreover, we have three corresponding goals in telling the SIGCHI story: underscore the importance of stakeholder engagement; offer broad suggestions for how large SIGs can improve inclusiveness of physical events and digital content; and underscore that addressing physical and digital accessibility is an ongoing process that takes time, with involvement by many stakeholders. The main message is that inclusiveness starts with the creation of an environment of continuous improvement in inclusiveness.

Before discussing them, however, we acknowledge that accessibility is a continuum and SIGCHI (or any other SIG) will not become a highly accessible and inclusive organization overnight.

Organization of stakeholders. It is important for the SIGCHI community to have an ongoing process for and platform through which people with disabilities can participate actively.

SIGCHI thus created an advocacy
group—the SIGCHI Accessibility Com-
munity—to work from within SIGCHI
to develop best practices for ensuring
improved accessibility. It has worked
over the past several years on disability-
related issues and produced a report11
documenting accessibility concerns
within the SIGCHI community. Jenni-
fer Mankoff, one of the authors of this
article, is chair of the SIGCHI Accessi-
bility Community. The other authors
are members of the community who
have held leadership positions in the
SIGCHI Executive Committee or in the
conferences, in particular CHI 2014,
where many of the practical initiatives
were launched and trialed.

Physical accessibility. Many people with disabilities report that program committee meetings and conference facilities are often not accessible to people with motor impairments (such as those in wheelchairs). Moreover, elevators are sometimes not available, and few presentation stages have ramps. Processes should thus be planned in advance for requesting disability-related accommodations (such as sign-language interpretation for presentations and easy booking of accessible hotel rooms), and on-site accommodations need to be made available and communicated effectively in promotional materials or websites, as well as at event venues.

Digital accessibility. Many computing professionals use the resources available on the central ACM website (such as job banks, blogs, videos, and articles in the ACM Digital Library) that serve as the foundation for information sharing and knowledge growth. Within ACM, each SIG has its own website, with targeted digital resources for the needs of SIG members. Too often, however, the sites and information hosted are not in an accessible format, creating a discriminatory barrier. One approach has been to provide an “ information on request” option for people unable to access certain content. But this is not an adequate solution; when digital resources are made accessible only upon request, the amount of material available to someone with a disability is limited and a time delay is introduced. This puts the person with a disability at a disadvantage compared to those without disabilities. Both the delay in time and the limitation in the amount of content available (due to “upon request” accommodations) can be considered forms of discrimination. 9 An informal analysis we conducted at SIGCHI revealed many conference websites, paper-submission processes, and conference-registration processes are not accessible.