the survey, 623 CHI 2014 attendees answered the question about accessibility, with only 12 indicating their expressed needs were not met and the rest that their needs were met. Only one of those 12 responses actually indicated a specific disability-related need that was requested but not met. The other responses indicated an accommodation that should have been requested but was not (“I had an accessibility-related special need but did not request an accommodation”); most of the comments related to the cost of the conference or labeling of food ingredients. Although these topics relate to the inclusiveness of the conference, none specifically related to perceptual, motor, or cognitive disabilities. In addition, one change has been made though not based on the feedback from surveys; several related conferences (such as ASSETS and ubiComp) allow telepresence robots (such as Beam from Suitable Technologies, Inc. of Palo Alto, CA) to allow for participation of individuals with disabilities who are unable to travel. The CHI 2016 conference committee accepted applications from members who wanted to participate in the conference via a Beam robot due to “mobility impairments, chronic health issues, or temporary travel limitations.” The experiment with robots at CHI 2016 was deemed a success, with a total of 35 individuals participating via 10 telepresence robots.

Digital accessibility. For the CHI 2014 digital accessibility chair, three topical areas were suggested by the conference chairs for improvement: conference website, conference mobile apps, and papers-publication process.

Among them, the most challenging was the papers review process. There is one clear international technical standard for webpages—the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.0—that has been adopted by many national governments, educational organizations, and corporations. 14 The guidelines were used in May 2013 in two preliminary evaluations of accessibility—one by a SIGCHI Executive Committee member and one by the AccessComputing Project at the University of Washington—and changes were made to the website (minor tagging of images) to improve accessibility. This was a good starting point but not optimal because there should be more evaluations involving people with disabilities. A similar process was used for the CHI 2015 and the CHI 2016 conferences, and it is hoped the SIGCHI Accessibility Community can be involved in the future to perform user-based accessibility evaluations.

The technical program chair and
digital accessibility chair for CHI 2014
learned that the papers-publishing
company SIGCHI works with, Sheri-
dan, offers the option of evaluating
accepted-paper .pdf files for accessibil-
ity and notifying authors of violations.
However, this option was not possible
stages, requiring portable ramps to be
added; and

Distance. The vast size of the convention center meant considerable distance between events, affecting attendees with mobility limitations.

Based on the data collected, SIGCHI leadership concluded that two categories of data or communication were missing between organizers and attendees for the organization’s conferences:

Attendees. Attendees, especially presenters, need a mechanism for letting conference planners know in advance if they require any type of special accommodations; and

Conferences. Conferences need to let potential attendees know in advance which meeting locations and hotel accommodations are accessible and which are not and provide specific directions (and, where appropriate, signage) to guide attendees along accessible routes between hotels and convention centers.

To address the first, a box was added to the subsequent conference registration form for CHI 2014, as well as for 2015 and 2016. The online forms invite authors of accepted papers/notes to indicate if the presenters of the papers/ notes will need any type of disability-related accommodation and, if so, what type; for example, SIGCHI indicated it would fund as many sign-language interpreters as needed, but they must be requested in advance. To address information flow, a webpage was set up for the CHI 2014 conference website by the conference management team, the chairs, and the SIGCHI executive VP dedicated to physical accessibility, including detailed information regarding transportation and convention center and hotel contacts. The same information was provided for the CHI 2015 and CHI 2016 conferences. In addition, the committee in charge of venue selection began (as discussed in the sidebar’s timeline) to assess site accessibility so a basic level of access can be ensured (such as wheelchairs and scooters being able to get to every part of the conference).

In 2014, SIGCHI leadership contin-
ued to ask about accessibility in the post-
conference survey; while such survey
data is not public, summaries of the data
are included in reports from the SIG-
CHI Accessibility Community. 11 From CHI16 telepresence robots at recharging station. P H O
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