Workshops Proposals

We invite you to submit a proposal for workshops at ASSETS 2025. Workshops will bring together attendees with shared interests to meet in the context of a focused and interactive discussion. ASSETS workshops should include topics relevant to the ASSETS community, including design, systems, tools, scientific understanding, methodology, or social issues relevant to and including people with disabilities or older adults. Workshops may also focus on enabling technologies, technology use by people with disabilities, disability justice, legal and policy issues, or accessibility in computing education. Each workshop should generate ideas that will suggest promising directions for future work for the ASSETS community. If you are working in an emerging area of accessibility, please consider organizing a workshop.

Important Dates

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

  • Wednesday, June 11, 2025 – Submission deadline
  • Wednesday, July 9, 2025 – Notification of acceptance
  • Wednesday, July 9-Friday, August 8, 2025 – Workshop organizers may solicit and review attendee applications
  • Wednesday, July 16, 2025 – Workshop websites online with a call for participation
  • Wednesday, July 16, 2025 – Camera-ready deadline. Following the camera-ready deadline, workshop organizers will receive instructions for completing their eRights forms, validating and submitting their final workshop proposal to TAPS, and submitting their final accessible PDF.
  • Friday, August 15, 2025–Acceptances to workshop attendees sent out
  • Monday, October 20-Sunday, October 26, 2025–the window of time when virtual workshops may be scheduled
  • Sunday, October 26, 2025: In-person workshops

Workshop Format

ASSETS 2025 workshops will be hosted either online or on-site at the conference hotel in Denver, Colorado. We have a limited number of half-day slots for on-site workshops, and the available rooms have limited capacity. Workshop submissions should specify whether the organizers strongly prefer to host the workshop on-site, and justify how the on-site component would uniquely benefit the workshop. The site of accepted workshops (either on-site or virtual) will be decided at the discretion of the Workshop Chairs; workshop organizers will be notified whether their workshop will be hosted on-site or virtually in their workshop acceptance notification. Because of space limitations, each workshop submission specifying a preference to be held on-site needs to be adaptable to a virtual format, in case there is no space to host it on-site.

For on-site workshops, each room can accommodate approximately 40 people. While we expect on-site workshop attendees to participate in person, organizers may choose to accept online attendees (i.e., host a hybrid event). Please keep in mind, however, that this will require additional logistical work, and organizers will need to handle the setup and management of hybrid components. If workshop organizers already know that a majority of attendees will be participating remotely, or if the topic of the workshop is better suited to an online format (e.g., a large number of participants, or the need to accommodate time zones significantly different from the ASSETS in-person conference time zone), we encourage organizers to opt for the online format.

For both online and on-site events, the level of accessibility support the conference can provide would be one interpreter team and one captioner per event (though this number may be adjusted).

Please see the Suggestions sections for more details on how you might plan your workshop.

Preparing and Submitting Your Workshop Proposal

ASSETS uses the ACM Publication System (TAPS) process to generate final multi-format representations of accepted papers. The correct template for submission is: a single-column Word Submission Template and single-column LaTeX (using “manuscript” style available in the template). You may also choose to use Overleaf. Writing Guidelines are available to help authors choose appropriate language for writing about technology and people with disabilities. The workshop submission must be submitted via the PCS Submission System as a single PDF file. The proposal must be no more than 6,000 words (excluding references) and have the following structure:

  • Background: Provide a strong rationale for the workshop, describe the issues to be addressed, and state concrete goals for the workshop.
  • Workshop Plans: Explain the workshop structure, including activities, timing, resources, and any follow-up activities or tangible outcomes. Please include your preference to host the workshop either on-site or virtually, and if on-site, include a justification for how the on-site context will uniquely benefit your workshop. For in-person workshops, please specify whether hybrid attendance will be available. Virtual workshops should plan for half-day (approximately 4 hours). On-site workshops will be half-day. Please include the approximate number of attendees; this should include the organizing team plus the number of attendees you anticipate inviting.
  • Diversity and inclusion considerations: Please elaborate on how you plan to promote diversity and how you would create an inclusive environment at the workshop.
  • Organizers: Present the organizers’ backgrounds, including the primary contact person.
  • Website: Provide details of the planned website, including the URL. (This may be TBD until after acceptance).
  • Pre-Workshop Plans: Please provide plans for how participants will be made aware of the workshop and how you will encourage community-building (e.g., through a website or other communication with participants).
  • Attendee Selection: Please share how you will select attendees to invite to the workshop (e.g., require a position paper submission, registration of interest, etc.).
  • Call for Participation: Provide a 250-word Call for Participation that will be posted on the conference site to recruit participants for your workshop. This should appear at the end of your workshop proposal and should include the following:
    • The goals of the workshop
    • The participant selection criteria; this may be more brief than the above explanation
    • Requirements for position papers (e.g., topics to address, page length, format) or workshop artifact
    • Where these position papers or workshop artifacts should be submitted
    • The requirement that at least one author of each accepted position paper or workshop artifact must attend the workshop and that all participants must register for the workshop
    • A link to the workshop website. (This may be TBD until after acceptance)
  • References: References are not included within the word limit.

This proposal is the only document from the workshop that will be included in the ASSETS Extended Abstracts proceedings. Any position paper or other material submitted by workshop participants is not included but may be distributed through avenues like the workshop website. The workshop organizers may also consider submitting an actionable summary or ‘lessons learned’-style report after the workshop to the SIGACCESS newsletter.

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 information on how to accomplish this.

Workshop proposals are expected to be made accessible both at the time of review and for the final submission. Submissions that are not accessible could be desk rejected. If you have questions about making your workshop proposal accessible, please contact the Workshop Chairs, Kotaro Hara and Annuska Zolyomi, at workshops-assets25@acm.org.

Suggestions for planning your inclusive workshop

On-site workshops may be scheduled for a half day and they must occur on Sunday, October 26, 2025.

The schedule for virtual workshops is more flexible and should be hosted between Monday, October 20 and Sunday, October 26, 2025 to allow for accessibility support. To help reduce videoconferencing exhaustion and to broaden participation for online events, we encourage organizers to think creatively and inclusively on how to make their workshops interactive. Workshop organizers may consider supporting offline activities ahead of/during the workshop (such as sending design kits to participants). Organizers may also want to consider tasks and activity design where attendees might be co-located (e.g., a workshop that connects multiple research groups) and could physically work together prior to joining the online workshop event.

We expect to have participants from all around the world. As such, if you are planning an online workshop, it is vital that you plan your workshop to accommodate participants joining from a number of timezones. Consider more asynchronous breakout activities that participants can do on their own, complemented with shorter synchronous interactions where participants get together and discuss.

Workshop Selection Process

The ASSETS Workshop track will follow a peer review process. During the period between submissions and notifications, researchers and practitioners in the areas of accessibility, disability, and computing will be invited to review and discuss workshop proposal submissions on PCS.

After the discussion period, the final selection will be curated by the workshop chairs based on the following assessment criteria:

  • Does the workshop foster community-building and look to broaden diversity in the ASSETS community?
  • Alignment of the workshop topic with the interests of the ASSETS community.
  • The workshops’ potential to generate discussion on new directions of future work by the ASSETS community.
  • Level of engagement and proposed interactivity in the workshop. For workshop proposals of comparable quality, preference will be given to workshops containing discussion, interactive sessions, and a diverse organization team.

Based on the reviews and the discussion, the workshop chairs will make final decisions.

Responsibility of Workshop Organizers: Upon Acceptance of Workshop Proposals and Before the Workshop Day

Workshop organizers upon receiving notification of acceptance, must prepare to fulfill the following responsibilities prior to the workshop day:

  • Set up a website: Organizers of an accepted workshop must set up and maintain a website with information about their workshop (deadlines, CfP, program, templates, accepted papers/participants, organizers, etc.). We will include the link to the workshop’s page on the official ASSETS workshop site.
  • Advertise your workshop: Share your call for participants within your professional network. Accepted workshops will also be listed on the ASSETS’25 web page.
  • Collect position papers or workshop artifacts: From potential participants (depending on how the organizers run the workshop). A position paper can be a 2-4 pages document. An artifact can be a video or images of physical objects that outlines the submitter’s view on the workshop theme and the reasons for the submitter’s interest in the topic.
  • Set up a review process: Select participants accordingly. We expect workshops to target a minimum number of 10 participants.
  • Plan for pre-workshop activities: If applicable, share and distribute any pre-workshop materials (e.g., design kits) to participants in advance of the workshop.
  • Distribute: Share accepted position papers or workshop artifacts. This will help participants to familiarize themselves with workshop content and encourage more in-depth discussions.
  • Ensure the workshop organizers and participants are aware of the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

Registration for Workshops

Workshop Organizers: All organizers who plan to attend the workshop must register for the workshop by the ASSETS 2025 early registration deadline.

Workshop Attendees: Must register for the workshop they are attending by th ASSETS 2025 early registration deadline.

Registration fee: Workshop registration fes will be found on the registration page – attendees do not need to register for the conference to attend the workshops.

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. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

The ACM Publications Board has recently updated the ACM Authorship Policy in several ways:

  • Addressing the use of generative AI systems in the publications process
  • Clarifying criteria for authorship and the responsibilities of authors
  • Defining prohibited behavior, such as gift, ghost, or purchased authorship
  • Providing a linked FAQ explaining the rationale for the policy and providing additional details

Please read the updated policy at https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/new-acm-policy-on-authorship and ensure your submission adheres to it.

Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted workshop. ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors. We are committed to improving author discoverability, ensuring proper attribution and contributing to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.

For further information or any questions regarding workshop submissions, please contact the Workshop Chairs, Kotaro Hara and Annuska Zolyomi, at workshops-assets25@acm.org.