Guidelines for Authors of Accepted Papers

The Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility chairs would like to share the following guidelines for talks, papers, posters, and publications.

Guidelines for Talks

We advise all talk presenters to

1. Refer to the following guides for making accessible talks: W3C Guide, the ACM guide, and the RECSYS guide.

2. Create slides with minimal text, use large fonts, use bold for emphasis, and avoid special text effects (e.g., shadows).

3. Choose high contrast colors; dark text on a cream background works best.

4. Avoid flashing text or graphics.

5. Choose color palettes that provide better color accessibility for color-blind viewers (see Usabilla for details) and do not rely on color to convey a message.

6. Use examples that are understandable to a diverse, multicultural audience.

7. Examples or imagery that are of a sexual, racial, or otherwise offensive nature are not permitted.  See the code of conduct.

8. When speaking, do not assume that all audience members can see the slides: cover everything important in what you say, even if it's already on the slide.

Guidelines for Papers and Posters

We advise all authors to

1. Create figures that are high contrast, with color palettes that are accessible (again, see Usabilla for details), and that do not rely on color to convey a message.

2. Ensure that fonts are sufficiently large, especially in figures. The font size in figures should be no smaller than the font size of the caption of the figure.

3. Choose inclusive pronouns like they / them over he / him / she / her.

4. Ensure that the PDF of your paper is accessible per the SIG ACCESS guide. This means in particular:

   • Check that all fonts are embedded on the PDF.

   • Set the title and language for the PDF.

   • Add tags to the PDF.

   • Add alternative text for figures.

   • Set the tab order for the PDF.

   • Mark table headers in the PDF