Diversity & Accessibility

Preparing your PDF submission

The PDF format can have major accessibility problems, especially for screen reader users. In order to support those among us who need accessible PDFs, HRI is working to improve the accessibility of our PDF proceedings and review process. We are asking all authors to make an effort to make their submissions more accessible at every point in the submission process.

If you are submitting a paper on accessibility or assistive technology, please refer to the SIGACCESS guidelines on writing about disability.

As you prepare your document, please follow these steps from the SIGCHI Guide to an Accessible Submission, then refer to the guide for information on how to prepare the final accessible PDF:

• Mark up content such as headings and lists using the correct Word template style or LaTeX markup.
• In figures, legends, and the text that refers to the figures, use different shapes and patterns to provide a means other than color to visually distinguish elements.
• Provide a text description for all figures (see the SIGACCESS Guide to Describing Figures).
• Create every table as a real table, not an image, and indicate which cells are headers.
• Create every equation as a marked-up equation, not an image.
• Set the metadata of your document.

If you are a LaTeX user, please be aware that you may run into challenges with generating an accessible PDF; we ask that you do your best but understand that it may not be possible to generate a fully accessible PDF from LaTeX. You can do a rudimentary check of your PDF’s accessibility using Adobe Reader’s Read Out Loud tool and Apple’s built-in reading tool, but be aware that these are not full-featured screen readers and will not check all key accessibility features.