AccessComputing’s Impact on the 2025 ASSETS Conference

By Richard E. Ladner, AccessComputing Founder

The 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2025) was held in Denver, Colorado from October 26 – 29, 2025. AccessComputing was a Gold Sponsor of the conference. There were 314 attendees (265 in person and 49 online) and 97 papers in two parallel tracts. Among these were seven experience reports and seven previously published Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS) papers. The remaining papers were research papers in accessible computing. There were also 82 posters and demos exhibited in three sessions between the paper sessions. 

The conference was opened with a plenary keynote by Jenny Lay-Flurrie, vice president and chief accessibility officer at Microsoft. Her talk was visionary, speaking to the current and future impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on accessibility. She also talked about the collaboration that Microsoft has with accessibility related organizations and companies. In particular, she discussed a new partnership between Microsoft and Be My Eyes, a smartphone app that can be used to connect blind or low vision users who want assistance from human or AI assistants. 

AccessComputing partner representatives, who are also accessibility researchers, were authors or co-authors on 28 papers and 12 posters or demos at the conference. The best paper award went to a paper co-authored by Megan Hofmann who represents Northeastern University as an AccessComputing partner. It is a fascinating paper titled “‘As Someone Who is Disabled, I am so thankful for Sex Work’: Alternative Approaches to Access Among Disabled Sex-Workers.” Based on interviews with 12 disabled sex workers (escorting, webcamming, lap dancing, etc.), the authors of the paper develop a framework, systems of access, to analyze how disabled sex workers develop access strategies that include safety and other factors. 

ASSETS 2025’s organizing committee also had many AccessComputing partner representatives. The General Chairs were Kristen Shinohara, partner who represents Rochester Institute of Technology and Shaun Kane, former partner who represented the University of Colorado at Boulder and is now at Google. One of the Treasurer/Registration Chairs was Elaine Short, Co-PI of AccessComputing. One the Posters and Demos Chairs was Catherine Baker representing Creighton University. One of the Doctoral Consortium Chairs was Maitraye Das who represents Northeastern University. The Mentoring Chair was Yasmine Elglaly who represents Western Washington University. One of the Experience Report Chairs was Amy Hurst who represents New York University. At least 18 members of the Program Committee are AccessComputing partners. All this leadership by AccessComputing partners demonstrates the common cause of the ASSETS community and AccessComputing to make computing more accessible.