Technical Papers

Call for Technical Papers

The ASSETS conference is the premier forum for presenting research on the design, evaluation, use, and education related to computing for people with disabilities and older adults. We invite high-quality original submissions on topics relevant to computing and accessibility.

Submissions should present significant contributions to design, systems, tools, scientific understanding, methodology, or social issues. Relevant topics include (but are not limited to) new enabling technologies, studies of how technologies are used by people with disabilities, explorations of barriers to access, and evaluations of accessibility education methods. We recommend that papers with a technical contribution be validated through research activities with representative users when possible. However, we acknowledge that many accessibility-focused projects may begin with deep formative work with representative users, or may be based on prior research with representative users, and as such key contributions of a single paper may be primarily technical.

Important Dates

All deadlines are 11:59 P.M. Anywhere on Earth (UTC -12:00).

  • Wednesday, April 16, 2025 – submission deadline
  • Wednesday, May 28, 2025– initial reviews sent to authors, rebuttal phase opens
  • Wednesday, June 4, 2025 – rebuttal phase closes
  • Wednesday, June 18, 2025 – acceptance decisions sent to authors
  • Wednesday, July 16, 2025 - camera-ready deadline
  • Wednesday, July 23, 2025 - video presentation

Submission Guidelines

Paper Format and Length

The length of most accepted technical papers will be 7,500 to 10,000 words (4,000 to 5,000 for short technical papers); note that references do not count towards these word counts. A good rule of thumb is that the length of your paper should be commensurate with its contribution.

Accessible Submissions

Your PDF submission must be accessible. It may take several hours to make your PDF file accessible (adding alt tags, etc.), so be sure to leave time before the submission deadline to do so. Please refer to the instructions on creating an accessible ACM conference paper on how to accomplish this.

It is expected that papers will be made accessible both at the time of review and for the final submission. Paper submissions that are not accessible will be desk rejected. If you have questions about making your paper accessible, please contact the Accessibility Chairs at access-assets25@acm.org.

Optional Accessible Video Figures as Supplementary Material

You may include an optional video figure to accompany your paper submission as supplementary material, which may be up to five minutes long. There is a separate upload field on the PrecisionConference submission website. Video figures are strongly encouraged for papers that introduce a novel system or interaction technique. Video figures are not the same as video presentations of accepted papers shown during the conference.

Video figures should be in .mp4 format and should be less than 50 MB. Like papers, video figures must be accessible. For videos to be accessible, include both audio narration (so that the contents of the video can be understood by someone who is blind or low vision) as well as text captions (so that the video can be understood by someone who is deaf or hard of hearing). Text captions can be burned directly into the video as subtitles (preferred), or closed-captioning metadata files (*.srt, *.ttml, *.vtt) can be uploaded as additional supplementary material. Please refer to the guidance on accessible video figures.

Anonymous Submissions

ASSETS will utilize a fully anonymous review process for Technical Papers. Authors must anonymize their paper submissions, all supplemental materials, and video figures. All author names, affiliations, and contact information should be removed. You should not anonymize references to your prior work (these are needed as part of the review process). Instead, you should refer to all prior work in the third person. While it may not be possible to remove all clues to who the authors are, we expect authors to do their best. Authors with difficulty applying this anonymization policy to their research are encouraged to contact the technical program chairs for additional guidance.

Supplemental video figures should be anonymized for review (i.e., do not include author or institution names in videos).

Although submissions are anonymous, please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper.

Review Process

Submissions that do not meet formatting or accessibility guidelines, are not properly anonymized, are out of the topical scope of the conference, or are otherwise deemed non-competitive by the program chairs may be rejected without review. Otherwise, submissions will be peer-reviewed by an international panel.

Authors with sufficiently high review scores will have an opportunity to submit a “Rebuttal” after receiving the reviews, prior to the final acceptance decisions. The window of time for this rebuttal period is about a week, so authors should plan accordingly. Read the important dates section above.

Accepted papers will be presented at the ASSETS 2025 conference. More details about the presentation will be released closer to the conference.

Submissions MUST contain substantial original, unpublished material. Please refer to the ACM policy on plagiarism. Writing Guidelines are available to help authors choose appropriate language for writing about technology and people with disabilities.

Short vs. Long Papers

Short papers are meant to capture more focused, concise research contributions compared to full papers. Short papers, like full papers, are rigorously peer-reviewed, archival publications. Short papers are not works-in-progress, incomplete work, etc. (Works-in-progress should be submitted to the Posters and Demos track).

Short paper submissions use the same template as full-length technical papers but should be limited to 4,000 to 5,000 words, not including references. Accepted short papers will appear in the main conference proceedings, and will be orally presented at the conference. Short papers must adhere to the same anonymity and accessibility standards as full papers, and may also include accompanying video figures (read previous section on Optional Accessible Video Figures as Supplementary Material), particularly if they introduce a novel system or interaction technique.

How to submit

The submission deadline is Wednesday, April 16, 2025, 11:59 P.M. Anywhere on Earth (UTC -12:00). Please submit via the ASSETS 2025 technical papers submission site.

Author PCS Account Details

ACM continues to update the publication process. Currently, paper metadata will be pulled directly from your personal PCS account. This means that it is crucial for you and all of your co-authors to update the contact information so that names, affiliations, AND primary email addresses are stylized exactly in the way that you all would want to see them in the ACM digital library and on your paper. For example, if you use a personal email address (xyz123@hotmail.com) as your primary contact email in PCS then this email will appear on your paper. Please check your author information and make the necessary changes.

Publishing with ACM Digital Library

The official publication date is when the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of your conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work. (For those rare conferences whose proceedings are published in the ACM Digital Library after the conference is over, the official publication date remains the first day of the conference.)

Further Information

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM's new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by the ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

For further information or any questions regarding technical paper submissions, please contact the Technical Program Chairs, Cynthia Bennett and Martez Mott, at tpc-assets25@acm.org.