Track on Accessible Devices and Technologies (ADT ‘26)

Thessaloniki, Greece, March 23 - 27, 2026

Part of the 41^st ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC ‘26)

https://www.sigapp.org/sac/sac2026/

Theme and Scope

Modern devices and technologies can represent a digital barrier for users with disabilities, but they can be exploited to become enabling tools for them. Accessibility of devices and technologies is a critical topic to allow inclusion of all users, especially due to the European laws that impose accessibility for new products and the definition of an updated version of WCAG (Web Accessibility Guidelines). This track invites scientists, engineers, and decision-makers from government, industry, and academia to present technical papers on their research and development results in areas of accessibility.

This track can interest many researchers since it would give the chance to face a wide range of topics, i.e., web or mobile technologies, with different points of view, taking into account specific technological constraints and digital barriers. It is well-known that the so-called “curb cut effect” can be applied to any technological and digital context (in terms of devices, content, and services): technologies that were originally meant to benefit people with disabilities can help any other users. Moreover, the history and the evolution of several technologies have been influenced and/or motivated by the special needs of people with disabilities.

This track will invite scientists, engineers, and decision-makers from government, industry, and academia to present technical papers on their research and development results in areas of accessibility, including but not limited to the following topics:

Accessible devices/assistive technologies: assistive technologies refer to all the assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for people with disabilities that enable users to perform tasks they were formerly unable to accomplish. On the one hand, the widespread diffusion of new devices and technologies stimulates researchers to find and apply new solutions to make them accessible to anyone. On the other hand, experiences in accessibility-related fields have been exploited and have provided benefits to users equipped with non-conventional devices when they emerged in the market.
Accessible solutions for e-learning, e-commerce, e-banking, etc: e-services and content often require specific technologies, being bounded by specific constraints when accessed by people with disabilities equipped with assistive technologies. Specific interaction modalities may affect interactive service access, while richness and quantity of content may affect the users’ ability to process information.
Accessible content: e-books, accessible TV, accessible broadcasting, etc.
Accessibility of games.
AI for Accessibility: AI can be exploited both for personalization (i.e., integrating AI-based personalization to support specific and special needs) and “enabler” (i.e., exploiting LLM to support the creation of accessible applications).

Submission Guidelines

We would like to invite authors to submit papers on research on the Accessibility area, with particular emphasis on assessing the current state of the art and identifying future directions. Original papers addressing any of the listed topics of interest (or related topics) will be considered. Each submitted paper will be fully refereed and undergo a double-blind review process by at least three referees. Accepted papers will be included in the ACM SAC 2026 proceedings and published in the ACM digital library, being indexed by Thomson ISI Web of Knowledge and Scopus. Submissions fall into the following categories:

Original and unpublished research work;
Reports of innovative computing applications in the arts, sciences, engineering, and business area;
Reports of successful technology transfer to new problem domains;
Reports of industrial experience and demos of new innovative systems.

The track accepts full papers (max 8 pages), posters (max 2 pages), and SRC abstracts (max 2 pages). Submissions should be properly anonymized to facilitate blind reviewing. Papers that will recevie high reviews (that is acceptable by reviewer standard) but will not be accepted due to space limitations can be invited for poster session. Authors of accepted papers must be prepared to sign a copyright statement and must pay the registration fee and guarantee that their paper will be presented at the conference. No-show of scheduled papers will result in excluding the papers from the ACM Digital Library.

See the track website https://unipd.link/ADT-2026 for more details.

Important Dates

September 26, 2025 (EST): Submission of regular papers and SRC research abstracts
October 31, 2025: Notification of papers, posters, and SRC research abstracts
December 5, 2025: Camera-ready copies of accepted papers/SRC
December 12, 2025: Authors registration due

Organization

Ombretta Gaggi, University of Padua
Silvia Mirri, University of Bologna
Mike Paciello, AudioEye, WebABLE
Catia Prandi, University of Bologna

Submission Portal

Please submit your contribution through our online submission portal available at https://easychair.org/account2/signin?l=8679424414231038462 (regular papers) and https://easychair.org/account2/signin?l=1380962008236610457 (SRC abstracts).

Contact us

For any inquires regarding the call for papers, please contact gaggi@math.unipd.it.

We look forward to your contributions and to seeing you at the ACM SAC 2026 Conference!