SIGACCESS Newsletter

André Rodrigues, Editor-in-Chief, University of Lisbon, afrodrigues@fc.ul.pt

Inside this Issue

Welcome to the June 2020 issue of the ACM SIGACCESS newsletter. In this issue first article, SIGACCESS calls upon its research community for proposals to combat racism and ableism within computer science. The second article highlights the largest ASSETS yet, marking the 25th anniversary since the first conference in 1994, the 2019 edition in Pittsburgh. The third article provides an overview of the discussions that took place at the 2019 CSCW workshop on Addressing the Accessibility of Social Media. The last article by Rhonda et al. discusses how Computational Ethnography could enhance AI Fairness, the work was presented in the 2019 ASSETS workshop on AI Fairness.

SIGACCESS is Called to Action

Black Lives Matter. The SIGACCESS Executive Committee stands in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and rejects racism, both personal and institutional, while acknowledging that we have much to learn and unlearn. In this article SIGACCESS calls on the community for proposals how to best tackle racism and ableism in accessibility research. What do you think are the priority actions that will broaden participation in SIGACCESS and create a supportive, welcoming, safe and inclusive community? What initiatives could you contribute to?

ASSETS 2019 Overview

Conference logo showing a bridge, its reflection, and text that reads: ASSETS 2019, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, October 28th to 30th, 2019.

The first article, written by Jeffrey P. Bigham (General Chair), Shiri Azenkot (Program Chair) and Shaun Kane (Program Chair) provides an overview of the ASSETS'19 conference.

Addressing the Accessibility of Social Media - Workshop at CSCW 2019

Over 25 people pose for the camera in the hallway of the conference venue. These are workshop atttendees, panelists, and organizers. Two service dogs sit at the front of the photo.

The article written by the workshop organizers, highlights the outcomes of the workshop in four future research directions for accessible social media.

Using Computational Ethnography to Enhance the Curation of Real-world Data (RWD) for Chronic Pain and Invisible Disability Use Cases

In this article, Rhonda J. Moore et al. discusses the broad trends in AI that are trying to predict risk for pain and highlight how it can have unintended consequences for people living with chronic pain and invisible disability. The article explores how computational ethnography can be used to potentially expand the boundaries of AI fairness.

About the Newsletter

SIGACCESS is a special interest group of ACM on Accessible Computing. The SIGACCESS Newsletter is a regular online publication of SIGACCESS that includes content of interest to the community. To join SIGACCESS, please visit our website www.sigaccess.org

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SIGACCESS Officers

Shari Trewin, Chair. Shari is a researcher in the Accessibility Leadership team at IBM Research, an ACM Distinguished Scientist, and Chair of ACM's Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing (SIGACCESS). Her research interests lie in accessibility, usability, and artificial intelligence technologies. Recently she has been working on AI Fairness for People with Disabilities, automation of accessibility test and repair, better prioritization of accessibility isses found by tools, enhancing automated captions, and an accessibility ontology for industry.

Matt Huenerfauth, Vice-Chair. Matt is a professor in the Golisano College of Computer and Information Sciences at the The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), where he is a member of the faculty of the Department of Information Sciences and Technologies and the Ph.D. program in Computer and Information Sciences. Huenerfauth and his students conduct research on computer accessibility for people who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing, assistive technology for people with disabilities, human computer interaction, and computational linguistics.

Jinjuan Heidi Feng, Secretary Treasurer. Heidi is a professor in the Computer and Information Sciences Department and the director of the School of Emerging Technologies at Towson University. She received a Ph.D. in Information Sciences from UMBC in 2005. She conducts research in the area of Human-Computer Interaction, universal accessibility, Health-informatics, and usable and accessible Security. She works closely with national and local communities to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities through information technology.

André Rodrigues, Newsletter Editor. André Rodrigues is currently a Post-Doc researcher at the Universidade de Lisboa. His PhD research was focused on smartphone accessibility working closely with visually impaired people. He is currently interested in exploring how tecnhology can and is leveregered in accessibility, health and gaming, and how the three intersect.

Sushant Kafle, Information Director. Sushant is a Ph.D. student in Computing and Information Science at the Golisano College of Computing and Information Science, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) under the advisement of Prof. Matt Huenerfauth. His research aims to inform the evaluation and the design of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology for use in captioning for people who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH).