Access InContext: Futuring Accessible Prototyping Tools and Methods
We are delighted to be hosting a workshop at international conference of Human-Computer Interaction (CHI 2025), in Yokohama, Japan in April 2025.
The popularity of accessibility research has grown recently, improving digital inclusion for people with disabilities. However, researchers, including those who have disabilities, have attempted to include people with disabilities in all aspects of design, and they have identified a myriad of practical accessibility barriers posed by tools and methods leveraged by human computer interaction (HCI) researchers during prototyping. To build a more inclusive technological landscape, we must question the effectiveness of existing prototyping tools and methods, repurpose/retrofit existing resources, and build new tools and methods to support the participation of both researchers and people with disabilities within the prototyping design process of novel technologies. This full-day workshop at CHI 2025 will provide a platform for HCI researchers, designers, and practitioners to discuss barriers and opportunities for creating accessible prototyping and promote hands-on ideation and fabrication exercises aimed at futuring accessible prototyping.
Call for Participation
There has been a consistent push within HCI and Design spaces for more accessible prototyping, designs, design methods, and tools. However, practitioners struggle to find tools and methods that support these practices. Furthermore, the lack of accessible tools and methods excludes people with disabilities from fully participating in design processes, perpetuating ableism and limiting innovation.
This full-day hybrid workshop aims to explore the accessibility of prototyping tools and methods as a call to action for more inclusive practices. We strive to collaboratively investigate barriers and opportunities within current tools and jointly speculate toward a more accessible future.
We invite participation from researchers, designers, and practitioners across the CHI community who want to make HCI a more inclusive space. Interested parties should submit a short (1-2 page ACM camera-ready template) position paper or pictorial exploring the theme of Accessibility of Prototyping Tools and Methods: Current Realities and Future Perspectives. Submissions should be accessible PDFs. Please contact the organisers in advance if you require assistance generating an accessible PDF. Submissions should not be anonymous.
Position papers and pictorials will be juried based on appropriateness to the call. Accepted submissions will be made available on the workshop website and in arXiv proceedings. Participants may opt out of publishing their manuscripts.
At least one author of each accepted submission must attend the workshop. All workshop registrants are additionally required to register for at least one day of the CHI’25 conference.
Please email your submission to Patricia Piedade at: patricia.piedade@tecnico.ulisboa.pt prior to the 13th February with the following subject line:
‘Access InContext: CHI 2025’
Organisers
Patricia Piedade is a PhD student affiliated with the Interactive Technologies Institute and INESC-ID, at the University of Lisbon. Her research interests lie in accessibility and participatory methodologies, especially in the intersection of the two. Patricia’s current work focuses on how to make public spaces enjoyable for neurodivergent individuals who, like herself, experience feelings of sensory overload and distress within such spaces. Patricia holds a BSc and MSc in Computer Science and Engineering both from the University of Lisbon.
Peter Hayton is a visually impaired PhD student at OpenLab, Newcastle University UK. He has a strong interest in accessibility, with his research focusing on the accessibility of autonomous vehicles for visually impaired people and the accessibility of human-centred design methodologies for visually impaired researchers, such as himself. Peter has a BSc in Computer Science and has worked on digital accessibility, within the UK charity sector at a national level, before returning to academia to pursue his PhD.
Cynthia Bennett is a senior research scientist at Google. Her research concerns the intersection of power, disability, design, and accessibility. She positions the lived experiences and creativity of people with disabilities as starting points for developing accessible and justice-oriented applications of AI and sociotechnical systems. She is also a disabled scholar.
Anna R L Carter is a Research Fellow at Northumbria University. She has extensive experience in designing technologies for local council regeneration programs, her work focuses on creating accessible digital experiences in a variety of contexts using human-centred methods and participatory design. She works on building Digital Civics research capacities of early career researchers as part of the EU funded DCitizens Programme and on digital civics, outdoor spaces and sense of place as part of the EPSRC funded Centre for Digital Citizens.
Clara Crivellaro is a Reader in Digital social justice at the School of Computing’s Open Lab, with expertise in Human-Computer Interaction, Digital Civics, Human-Centred Design, Participatory Design, and co-creation. Her research explores how the careful design of new and emergent technologies and socio-technical processes can help support democratic practices and advance equity and social justice in digital societies. She is also interested in the design of novel tools and processes to support Responsible Research and Innovation in Computing and civic-driven research commissioning processes.
Alan J. Dix is a Professorial Fellow at Cardiff Metropolitan University. He was elected to the ACM SIGCHI Academy in 2013 and is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. Alan has worked in human–computer interaction research since the mid 1980s and is the author of one of the major international textbooks on HCI, as well as several other books including TouchIT published by OUP, which focuses on physicality and digital design, and a new volume on AI for HCI being published in 2025. While a Luddite at heart (against technology that dehumanises), he has the hope that tools, including AI, may help designers when dealing with those with different physical and cognitive skills to themselves.
Jess McGowan is a PhD student in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews. Their current research is focused on the potential of tabletop role playing games for better user experience design, with interests including CS education, and accessibility. Jess has a BSc in Software Development from Robert Gordon University and an MSc in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Aberdeen.
Katta Spiel is an Assistant Professor of Critical Access in Embodied Computing at the HCI Group of TU Wien, where they work on the intersection of Computer Science, Design and Cultural Studies. They research marginalised perspectives on technologies to inform interaction design and engineering in critical ways, so they may account for the diverse realities they operate in and in collaboration with neurodivergent and/or nonbinary peers. They are part of the Crip Collective and the EU funded ACCESSTECH project.
Miriam Sturdee is a lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the University of St Andrews working on intersections of art, design, and computer science. She is a practising artist and designer and has an MFA in visual communication. Her publications explore areas of futuring, sketching and drawing, alternative research outputs, and psychology. She is particularly interested in how visual methods and outputs can be made more accessible through the application of multimodal and creative approaches.
Garreth W. Tigwell is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the Rochester Institute of Technology. His research primarily focuses on making digital content, services, and systems more accessible to disabled people by understanding and addressing challenges faced by novice and expert digital creators (e.g. mobile app and website designers). Recently, he has been exploring the role of culture in accessible design, as well as adaptable design to improve accessibility and usability for a variety of user needs and contexts of use.
Hugo Nicolau is an Associate Professor at the University of Lisbon and researcher at the Interactive Technologies Institute / LARSyS. His research interests include HCI and Accessibility, focusing on the design, build, and study of computing technologies that enable positive social change. His research methods extend mostly from the discipline of HCI and are informed by perspectives in Design Justice, Psychology, Sociology, and Disability Studies. Hugo is broadly interested in research that tackles ambitious interdisciplinary problems in areas such as education, health, and social inclusion.