Updates

Feel the Beat October 28, 2025

We have slots available, especially for the first 2 classes. As a reminder, the classes are:

• Class 1: 7 to 7.30 PM — session geared towards wheelchair users and individuals who prefer seated dance.
• Class 2: 7.45 to 8.15 PM — session geared for blind or low vision individuals that is verbally descriptive.
• Class 3: 8.30 to 9 PM — session with standing instruction that can be attended for anyone who does not need verbal or seated modifications.

To sign up, please fill out this form.

Social Event October 27, 2025

The event will be held at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, which is located at 2001 Colorado Blvd, Denver.

Accessible Bus Times

There will be accessible buses running from the front of the Curtis Hotel to the Museum every thirty minutes: 6:00 PM, 6:30 PM, and 7:00 PM.

The same buses will return from the Museum to the Curtis Hotel at 8:15 PM, 8:45 PM, and 9:15 PM.

Non-Accessible Bus Times

There will be non-accessible buses running from the front of the Curtis Hotel to the Museum every thirty minutes: 6:15 PM, 6:45 PM, and 7:15 PM.

The same buses will return from the Museum to the Curtis Hotel at 8:30 PM, 9:00 PM, and 9:30 PM.

Venue Logistics October 22, 2025

Getting to the venue

Free shuttle buses run approximately every 10 minutes from Denver Union Station. The stop is located just outside the station, straight out from the end of the train tracks. Take the shuttle and get off at Curtis Street. From there, the venue is two blocks to your right and should take around 15 minutes in total to reach.

If you prefer to walk, follow 16th Street until you reach 16th and Curtis. From there, continue two blocks down Curtis Street to your right. The Curtis Hotel will be ahead. Walking takes about 20 minutes.

You can also take a rideshare or taxi directly to The Curtis Hotel.

Please note that not all traffic lights in the area have audible signals.

At the venue

The event will take place on the 2nd and 3rd floors of The Curtis Hotel.

Elevators are available directly from the main entrance. Those nearest the lobby have a single “up” button, while the elevators further inside have two buttons. All elevator buttons include Braille labels. There are pillars close to some of the elevators on the conference floors so be careful when stepping out.

On the conference floors, directional signs will be available to help you find your sessions. As the area is somewhat spread out, please don’t hesitate to ask a Student Volunteer for assistance if needed. Be aware that the lobby, elevators, and event spaces are somewhat narrow.

If you’re staying at The Curtis Hotel, captioning devices are available at the front desk for your check-in.

Varsha and Willie
Local Chairs

Hybrid Presentation Instructions October 22, 2025

(A copy of this information is also available at this link.)

This year ASSETS will be fully hybrid. There are two key components to this year's set up: a Zoom livestream for synchronous interaction during the technical program and the ASSETS 2025 Discord server for asynchronous interaction.

All podium presentations (e.g., paper talks, keynote, business meeting) will be livestreamed on Zoom. The recordings will be posted after the session on Discord. For posters and demos, online interaction will be asynchronous. Posters will be uploaded as accessible PDFs, alongside a text-based version, onto Discord as a thread under the poster channel. Attendees and authors are encouraged to interact with online attendees within these threads.

Links to the posters and papers will be in Discord channels according to their session (e.g., more information about a poster being presented on Monday can be found in ⁠monday-posters, the video for a paper being presented in Session 1B is linked in the channel ⁠1b-movement). We will also have channels on Discord that keep track of which sessions are happening live in Denver as well as places for online attendees to ask questions and connect.

We have guidelines for both in-person and remote participants to ensure a smooth and accessible hybrid experience.

In-Person Participants

Asking Questions

• To ask a question, if you are able, please line up at the designated Q&A spot
  • There will be accessible seating near the Q&A spot if that's useful, and we have the ability to bring the camera and microphone to you if needed

When Addressing the Room

• State your name and affiliation any time you address the room
• Please make sure you are on camera so that your video goes through Zoom
  • There will be a camera at the podium and one at the designated Q&A spot
• If you are speaking, please speak into a microphone so that your voice goes through Zoom

Zoom and Discord

• If you join Zoom from the room, please make sure your device makes no noise and do not unmute your microphones
• Make sure to participate on Discord, too, to engage with remote participants

Remote Participants

Asking Questions

• To ask a question remotely, participants can raise their hand on Zoom to indicate they want to ask a question
• For text-based questions, please post those to the relevant Discord channel

When Addressing the Room

• If voicing a question on Zoom, please state your name and affiliation at the start
• To address the room through text, please use Discord in the corresponding channel
  • Only use the Zoom chat if needed for time-sensitive requests, such as the audio/video feed dropping.

Zoom and Discord

• On Zoom, please keep your camera and microphone off unless you are actively communicating
• If anything in the connection breaks, please reach out to the channel #hybrid-support (under the General section) on Discord

ASSETS 2025 Evening Activities October 10, 2025

We’re happy to announce the social activities that we will offer in the evenings at ASSETS 2025. Our committee has worked hard to provide a number of diverse activities to enhance the ASSETS 2025 experience.

On Monday evening, we’ll host a conference reception at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. This reception will have appetizers and drinks available and include access to some of the museum’s exhibits. Buses will transport attendees from The Curtis Hotel to the museum on Monday evening after the last session; details will follow closer to the event.

On Tuesday evening, following the ACM SIGACCESS Business Meeting, Google will host the conference reception at The Curtis Hotel. This reception will also have appetizers and drinks.

Also on Tuesday evening, we are excited to welcome Feel the Beat, a Colorado-based dance studio dedicated to accessible dance and music education. They will offer three classes for ASSETS attendees at The Curtis Hotel. Space is limited and will be available first come, first served. Sign up information will be shared during the conference.

Registration at Capacity September 25, 2025

We’re overwhelmed by the response to ASSETS 2025 and are happy to report that we’ve reached our registration goals and beyond; this will be the largest ASSETS yet! We must limit new in-person registrations. We are working on ways to create more space. However, if spots open up due to cancellations, we are happy to take new registrations. Virtual registrations are still open. Please see our responses to individual questions below:

• How was the registration cap determined? We are limited by the square footage and seating restrictions of the ballrooms we’re using at The Curtis and by the physical spaces in and around the conference area in the hotel.
• Registered, but no longer planning to attend in person? If your plans have changed and you are not traveling to Denver, please contact the Registration Chair as soon as possible to let us know your change in plans. While we are now past the cancellation deadline and cannot process refunds, we can convert your registration type to Virtual, which will enable us to open a slot for in-person registrations and ensure you have access to our online content.
• Do you still need to register? Virtual registration is still available! For in-person registrations, given the limited space and possibility for cancellations, we will open slots if and when they become available. This process will allow us to accept registrations on a first come, first served, waitlist basis. Sign up for the wait list here and we will reach out to you when a seat opens. Registrations will be accepted in order entries are received.

Program Now Available August 25, 2025

We are pleased to announce that the ASSETS 2025 program is now available on the ASSETS website! This year will include the largest technical program in ASSETS history, comprising 83 technical papers, 82 posters and demos, 8 experience reports, 7 TACCESS journal presentations, 5 workshops, and 5 student research competition (SRC) presentations. The content in this year’s program is an impressive representation of cutting-edge research in areas such as generative AI, augmented and virtual reality, communication and collaboration, and fairness, accountability, transparency and ethics. Due to the size of this year’s program, we had to make some scheduling decisions that will result in an ASSETS program that differs from prior years.

ASSETS 2025 will be fully dual track, except for the opening and closing plenaries, the keynote, and the SRC session. We intentionally did not schedule another session during the SRC presentations to give attendees the opportunity to support, encourage, and provide feedback to the presenters. We understand that a dual track ASSETS will not allow attendees to experience the full technical program, which has been possible in years past. But our community is growing rapidly, and to maintain sessions that will allow for meaningful presentation lengths and opportunities for audience engagement, we believe a dual track program is the best choice. This year will be an opportunity for all of us to reflect on how we want to engage and participate at ASSETS conferences moving forward.

We would like to thank the authors for their amazing contributions, and all the reviewers, student volunteers, and program and organizing committee members for their time, energy, effort, and commitment to the ASSETS community.

Cindy and Martez
ASSETS 2025 Technical Program Chairs

Announcing our Keynote Speaker August 15, 2025

We are thrilled to announce ASSETS 2025’s keynote speaker will be Microsoft’s Chief Accessibility Officer, Jenny Lay-Flurrie! As one of the most prominent and influential figures in the tech industry, Lay-Flurrie’s efforts at Microsoft have been groundbreaking and impactful. Her role and expertise are pivotal for this moment: examining the role of AI in accessibility tech, and how tech -- perhaps now more than ever -- can influence and shape human capacity, and what might be the role for accessibility and tech expertise.

More information about Lay-Flurrie can be found on the Keynote page.

We look forward to hosting Jenny Lay-Flurrie and welcome her to the ASSETS community!

Registration Is Open! July 24, 2025

We’re excited to share that registration is now open! 83 technical papers will be showcased at this year’s conference. Congratulations to all the authors on their paper acceptances! In addition, for the first time ever, ASSETS will offer an in-person workshop, as well as continue the virtual workshop tradition with four virtual workshops.

Our community continues to grow and push the boundaries of an engaging accessible hybrid conference experience. ASSETS 2024 set the bar for a great online experience for remote and in-person attendees. It is our goal to meet these expectations to the best of our ability for ASSETS 2025. However, meeting this goal requires more technical, audio/visual, and accessibility infrastructure than required in past years. For instance, each session incorporates a contracted AV set up with multiple cameras to capture the presenter, ASL interpreter, captions, and attendees’ video for Q&A. The set up also includes streaming content presented and captions, and requires human labor (both AV contractors, Hybrid Chairs, and student volunteers) to ensure smooth transitions throughout and between sessions. All these costs doubled when we added a dual track. Past conferences absorbed this cost through fees as low as 15% of the in-person rates, with minimal support or limited streaming.

While conference expenses have grown and essentially doubled for a dual track program, fees have not kept up. Going into ASSETS 2025, we adjusted our budgetary expenses to match our experiential expectations (hybrid streaming and multiple tracks), but that means raising both in-person and virtual registration rates in order to be able to support the extra infrastructure and effort. Our past registration rates can not sustain conference activities at the quality and scale we have moved to. As always, we have prioritized keeping the conference affordable to all attendees, and especially to students and ACM members, who continue to have access to reduced rates.

We understand financial and economic circumstances may make it challenging to travel and attend the conference. By making these changes, we aim to create a more sustainable funding model for ASSETS so that we can maintain the same levels of quality and accessibility.

Remote Participation at the Doctoral Consortium May 22, 2025

A quick update from the Doctoral Consortium organisers! We have been contacted by a number of people regarding the DC, and our intention of offering a hybrid event, given the current challenges with travel, as well as the intention to support remote participation of the conference at large.

We very much appreciate the contact we have received and indeed, we have been discussing this amongst ourselves and the wider ASSETS organising committee. Without being able to detail specifics, it is our current intention to offer remote participation in the DC. We are as yet unsure of the exact nature of the remote offering, and are currently working through it.

We encourage all eligible PhD candidates to consider applying for the ASSETS DC, regardless of current capacity to travel to the conference. We will provide more information about the exact nature of the remote offering as those details get worked out.

Thanks for your patience,
Maitraye and Matt
ASSETS 2025 Doctoral Consortium Chairs

Indicating Presentation Modality in PCS April 10, 2025

Precision Conference is now open, and we are excited to receive your work! You may notice an additional question in the submission form about presentation modality, and wanted to share our thought processes here and how it will impact the conference.

tl;dr: Planning ASSETS 2025 has required us to make many decisions based on estimates of attendance. Since current events impact travel, we are asking for more information this year to give us a more accurate estimate of attendance, but are doing so in a way that will not impact the review process.

The Cost of Conference Organizing

Organizing any major event is an exercise in future problem solving. Plans for ASSETS 2025 began in early 2024, including decisions about where and when the conference would be held. Suffice it to say that this planning includes making decisions that directly affect the conference budget, such as where the conference will be located and the expected in-person and hybrid attendance. To coordinate the in-person aspects of the conference requires reserving a space (usually a hotel conference center), which entails making commitments to how many rooms the hotel will hold for attendees and how much money will be spent at the hotel on food. Specifically, to secure the space for this conference we committed to the hotel that a minimum number of hotel rooms would be booked by attendees, and that we will purchase at least a certain amount of food.

Accessibility support is a mainstay of our conference, and we have also set aside budgeting for ASL interpreters, CART, and consideration for complementary registration for personal assistants as needed. These items are non-negotiable as far as our expenses are concerned but are sizeable, and adds additional costs that are not necessarily incurred by other conferences of our size (even if we think they should be).

Further, in recent years there have been increasing requests for maintaining and expanding the hybrid experience for ASSETS. In this category we are truly standing on the shoulders of giants, in that the ASSETS 2024 committee did an amazing job of creating a compelling hybrid experience. We have committed to meeting this level of hybrid experience, which itself adds some costs in terms of additional AV setup. This is compounded by the shift to having two parallel tracks for the technical program, which means we need to organize and pay for AV infrastructure twice over.

When brainstorming what we wanted this conference to be, we committed to an accessible physical space and an integrated and accessible hybrid space. Thus, decisions were made in 2024 in line with these expectations.

We note that while these are our core expenses, the conference also incurs other costs, including but not limited to: the fee for Precision Conference (PCS) for paper submissions and reviewing, the cost for Cvent -- the system used to register attendees, and the cost for publishing the proceedings with ACM (i.e. using APTARA to prepare the proceedings).

The Challenges of Traveling in 2025

We understand the realities of the present moment means that some attendees will need to reconsider their travel plans. In 2024, ASSETS attendees participated from 24 countries, and nearly 20% of participants attended online. Past conference virtual fees could be as low as 15% the in-person cost, which required that in-person fees subsidized the cost for hybrid support. Using that cost structure, the conference requires a minimum of in-person attendees to be able to support virtual attendance. While we have worked to restructure our budget to avoid this dependency as much as possible, in-person registration remains closely tied to our ability to support key conference activities. During the past few weeks, we have heard from many of you in the ASSETS community about how the current environment may impact travel plans to attend ASSETS this year. But the plural of anecdote is not data, so we are hoping to gather more information as part of the paper submission process, so that we can make better educated decisions on costs and planning moving forward.

What Has Changed

When submitting your paper in PCS, you will see the following question:

Indicate intent to attend ASSETS in-person or virtually

ASSETS 2025 is offering a hybrid program, and is aiming to plan ahead to better serve attendees. Indicate your answer to the following question using the given scale: At this time, if this paper is accepted, which of the following most closely represents this paper’s authors’ plans to present the paper: Note: The answer to this question will not be shared with paper reviewers and will only be viewable by the technical program chairs and the general chairs. Your answer is nonbinding; we understand that plans change. This question is being asked for planning purposes only.

• At least 1 presenting author plans to attend ASSETS in person.
• At least 1 presenting author plans to attend ASSETS in person, but they may not be able to.
• It is highly likely that none of the authors will attend ASSETS in person.
• None of the authors plan to attend ASSETS in person.

Why This Change

As noted above, our estimates assume a minimum number of in-person attendees to meet expenses for the cost of the hotel, food, and accessibility infrastructure (at the very least). If attendance is lower than expected, that can negatively impact the conference experience and result in overspending our limited budget. On the positive side, the sooner that we can identify potential changes in expected attendance, the more flexibility we have to make adjustments.

We have already made some adjustments to the conference experience using the information that we have, such as adjusting the hybrid registration rates to cover more of our expenses—more on that in a later blog post. But, as mentioned above, depending on in-person attendance numbers, these fees may not offset potential gaps in the budget.

Therefore, to help us estimate future attendance and the associated costs-and in order to try our best to ensure the conference is financially viable-we are gathering as much data as possible when we can. To that end, we’ve asked for some information from submitters about their plans to attend the conference, whether in-person or virtually. Gathering this information will help us to make decisions on how much on-site AV infrastructure is needed, how many tracks (and therefore, how many rooms and ASL interpreters and CART providers) are needed, and how much food to order, etc. Ultimately, it helps us to prepare as much as we can to ensure a successful conference experience no matter how you attend.

Confidentiality and Anonymity

We understand that some may hesitate to share their attendance plans. Only the Technical Program Chairs (TPCs) and General Chairs (GCs) will have access to your responses, and we will only examine them in the aggregate. Our main goal is to try to anticipate how many people may attend in person, and how many may attend virtually. Reviewers will not have access to this information. TPCs and GCs will not have access to individual conflicted papers.

As always, we appreciate all of the members of our community and hope you will participate in ASSETS this year in whatever capacity you are able to. Good luck with your submissions!

Chairs Update March 2025

Hello ASSETS community! This blog from your general chairs, Kristen and Shaun, to provide insight into how the planning process is going and to provide more transparency into how ASSETS functions.

Maintaining our Values of Diversity and Community

It’s an unusual year for a variety of reasons, and we understand there are a lot of questions and a lot of uncertainty. We hope to maintain a dialog with the ASSETS community to communicate the issues that are top of mind for us and the Organizing Committee, and to be transparent about decisions we make regarding the conference in this wild year.

First, it’s worth acknowledging the challenging times we find ourselves in and we understand the future is unknown and very scary for many. We also acknowledge and affirm our values, which we shared with you when we announced ASSETS 2025 at the closing of last year’s conference: we value diversity and innovation, toward building a strong community of researchers who share a passion and drive for accessibility research that changes the world. Our mission in leading ASSETS 2025 is to strengthen community through a welcoming and thought-provoking conference that encourages discussion on challenging topics and inspires groundbreaking research. Simply and in no uncertain terms, we value diversity and community, and we strive to create a welcoming conference.

Adapting to Change

With these changes in mind, we share some of the decisions and discussions we’re having around building an inclusive conference and supporting our community. On the conference planning side, uncertainty that affects conference attendees also affects our projections for attendance and costs.

Clarifying the ASSETS ‘25 Hybrid Experience

For many reasons, we know that in-person travel to Denver, CO for ASSETS 2025 may be affected by current events. Understanding that we do not know how this will impact conference attendance come October, we must remind ourselves of that the main goal of the conference to share research and engage with one another. We also know that the conference policies that we set affect decisions that you may be making around submitting to the conference and attending the conference.

Items that factor into our thinking include the cost for in-person spaces, for audio/visual infrastructure for online participation, and for accessibility support - a non-negotiable mainstay of our conference. Many of these factors depend on your participation and attendance (registration) to support, therefore, it is difficult for us to determine many specifics until we know how many will attend and how they will participate. As an example, our contract with the conference hotel obligates us to a minimum food and beverage budget. If so few people attend in person then we risk not meeting that minimum, and we are obligated to fulfill the balance. These considerations could affect how we coordinate the in-person experiences and set presentation expectations for the conference.

With that in mind, we are making decisions about the conference as early as we can, while accounting for the uncertainty of the current moment. Specifically relating to hybrid, it will be our policy that all accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings, regardless of presentation and attendance modality. Keeping in mind that conference costs are high and expected to increase, at least one author for each published paper will be expected to register at the in-person / presenter rate. We intend to release more details on registration rates soon. We are keeping some options open about when and how virtual presentations will happen, but we do not want you to worry about papers getting pulled due to travel limitations.

We will also be adding some questions as part of the submission process in PCS, for authors to communicate whether they are likely or unlikely to present in person. These are not binding questions, and will not be made available to reviewers, but are intended to improve our estimates of in-person and hybrid attendance only.