Special Track on Advancing Inclusive and Accessible Technologies

in conjunction with ACM 6th International Conference on Information Technology for Social Good (ACM GoodIT 2026), 2-4 September 2026, Pisa, Italy

Link GoodIT 2026: https://goodit2026.di.unipi.it/

Link Special Track: https://sites.google.com/view/advancing-inclusive-tech/home

Theme and Scope

Modern devices and technologies can represent a digital barrier for users with disabilities, but they can be exploited to become enabling tools for them. Accessibility of devices and technologies is a critical topic to allow inclusion of all users, especially due to the European laws that impose accessibility for new products and the definition of an updated version of WCAG (Web Accessibility Guidelines). This track will invite scientists, engineers, and decision-makers from government, industry, and academia to present technical papers on their research and development results in areas of accessibility, including but not limited to the following topics:

• Accessible devices/assistive technologies: assistive technologies refer to all the assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for people with disabilities that enable users to perform tasks they were formerly unable to accomplish. On the one hand, the widespread diffusion of new devices and technologies stimulates researchers to find and apply new solutions to make them accessible to anyone. On the other hand, experiences in accessibility-related fields have been exploited and have provided benefits to users equipped with non-conventional devices when they emerged in the market.

• Accessible solutions for e-learning, e-commerce, e-banking, etc.: e-services and content often require specific technologies, being bound by specific constraints when accessed by people with disabilities equipped with assistive technologies. Specific interaction modalities may affect interactive service access, while richness and quantity of content may affect the users’ ability to process information.

• Accessible content: e-books, accessible TV, accessible broadcasting, etc.

• Accessibility of games: digital games often pose complex accessibility challenges due to multimodal interaction, real-time dynamics, and immersive environments; research in this area includes adaptive gameplay mechanics, multimodal feedback (e.g., haptic, audio, and visual enhancements), AI-driven difficulty and interface personalization, accessible VR/AR gaming experiences, and inclusive game design frameworks that support players with sensory, motor, cognitive, and neurodivergent conditions while preserving engagement and playability.

• AI for Accessibility: AI can be exploited both for personalization (i.e., integrating AI-based personalization to support specific and special needs) and “enabler” (i.e., exploiting LLM to support the creation of accessible applications).

This track can interest many researchers since it would give the chance to face a wide range of topics, i.e., web or mobile technologies, with different points of view, taking into account specific technological constraints and digital barriers. It is well-known that the so-called “curb cut effect” can be applied to any technological and digital context (in terms of devices, content, and services): technologies that were originally meant to benefit people with disabilities can help any other users. Moreover, the history and the evolution of several technologies have been influenced and/or motivated by the special needs of people with disabilities.

Submission Guidelines

We would like to invite authors to submit papers on research in the Accessibility area, with particular emphasis on assessing the current state of the art and identifying future directions. Original papers addressing any of the listed topics of interest (or related topics) will be considered. 

The papers should follow the new ACM format (https://authors.acm.org/proceedings/production-information/taps-production-workflow). Submissions must be no more than 9 pages (ACM double column format). The indicated paper length includes references, tables, and figures. Documents with a length disproportionate to their contribution will be rejected. Each submitted paper will undergo a rigorous single-blind review process involving three evaluations each. Accepted papers will be included in the ACM GoodIT 2026 proceedings and published in the ACM digital library.

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 ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. 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 improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalisation; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.

Important Update on ACM’s new Open Access Publishing Model

Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, will be 100% Open Access. Authors will have two primary options for publishing Open Access articles with ACM: the ACM Open institutional model or by paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With over 1,800 institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences (currently, around 70–75%).

Authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open will need to pay an APC to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a financial or discretionary waiver. To find out whether an APC applies to your article, please refer to https://libraries.acm.org/acmopen/open-participants.

Understanding that this change could present financial challenges, ACM has approved a temporary subsidy for 2026 to ease the transition and allow more time for institutions to join ACM Open. The subsidy will offer:

• $250 APC for ACM/SIG members

• $350 APC for non-members

This represents a 65% discount funded directly by ACM. Authors are encouraged to advocate for their institutions to join ACM Open during this transition period.

Important Dates

• Full Paper Submission: 17 May 2026

• Notification: 7 June 2026

• Camera-Ready: 21 June 2026

• Conference: 2-4 September 2026

Organization

• Ombretta Gaggi, University of Padua

• Silvia Mirri, University of Bologna

• Michael Paciello, AudioEye

• Catia Prandi, University of Bologna

• Chiara Ceccarini, University of Bologna

• Mirko Franco, University of Padua

Submission Portal

Please submit your contribution through our online portal available at https://goodit2026.hotcrp.com/. 

Contact Us

For any inquiries regarding the call for papers, please contact gaggi@math.unipd.it. 

We look forward to your contributions and to seeing you at the ACM GoodIT 2026 Conference!

Workshop website: https://mintworkshop.github.io/2026/

The Workshop will be co-located with EMNLP 2026 in Budapest, Hungary, October 24–29, 2026 (exact date within this period to be decided).

We welcome work on topics including:

• computational models that integrate verbal and non-verbal cues such as speech, text, gesture, facial expression, gaze, and body pose;

• cognitive and linguistic insights about face-to-face communication that can inform AI systems;

• multimodal datasets with synchronized speech, video, and motion data;

• evaluation methods for multimodal interaction;

• applications and tools for embodied conversational agents, social robots, annotation, and behavioural analysis.

Papers should be prepared using the official ACL formatting guidelines and ACL style files.

MINT welcomes both archival and non-archival papers:

• Archival papers: Submissions must be anonymous and report original, unpublished research to appear in the workshop proceedings. 

• Non-archival papers: Submissions reporting previously published work, preliminary research, or demos to be presented at the workshop and not published in the MINT proceedings.

Papers may be submitted as long papers (up to 8 pages plus references) or short papers (up to 4 pages plus references).

Non-archival submissions do not need to be anonymous.

We allow cross-submissions to other venues. However, to be included in the proceedings, authors of accepted papers must withdraw them from any other venue where they remain under consideration.

MINT will accept submissions through two channels:

1. Direct submission: The dedicated OpenReview portal for this is available at https://openreview.net/group?id=EMNLP/2026/Workshop/MINT. Archival papers submitted through this channel will be reviewed by the MINT programme committee. 

2. ACL Rolling Review (ARR): Authors may submit through ARR and commit their paper together with the ARR reviews to MINT later at https://openreview.net/group?id=EMNLP/2026/Workshop/MINT_ARR_Commitment

Important dates (11:59 pm AOE)

• ARR paper submission deadline: May 25, 2026

• Direct paper submission deadline: July 8, 2026

• Pre-reviewed ARR commitment deadline: August 24, 2026

• Notification of acceptance: August 31, 2026

• Camera-ready paper due: September 14, 2026

Accepted contributions will be required to be presented at the MINT workshop as posters or talks. 

The MINT workshop is sponsored by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics: https://www.mpi.nl/

For questions, please contact: mint.organizers@gmail.com.

On behalf of the workshop organisers:

• Raquel Fernández (University of Amsterdam) 

• Diego Frassinelli (LMU Munich)

• Esam Ghaleb (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics)

• Bulat Khaertdinov (Maastricht University)

• Asli Ozyurek (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics / Radboud University)

• Ece Takmaz  (Utrecht University) 

• Zerrin Yumak (Utrecht University)

🎓 ACDL 2026, A Residential Course: From AI Agents to Agentic AI, 📆 June 8-12, Tuscany   ⏰ Early Registration: by 23 April

📚 ACDL 2026  is a full-immersion 5-day course in Riva del Sole Resort & SPA – Tuscany on cutting-edge advances in AI, Deep Learning, LLMs, Data Sc., Generative AI, AI Agents & Agentic AI  with lectures delivered by world-renowned experts. a

📍Riva del Sole Resort & SPA – Tuscany, June 8-12, 2026
🔗 https://acdl2026.icas.events
📧 acdl@icas.cc

⏰ EARLY REGISTRATION: by April 23 (AoE) ⏳
➡️ Register here: https://acdl2026.icas.events/registration/

📝 LECTURERS:
Each Lecturer will hold up to four lectures on one or more research topics.
🔗 https://acdl2026.icas.events/lecturers/

It follows the (partial) list of the confirmed 👩‍🏫 ACDL 2026 Lecturers:

* Lucas Beyer, Meta, Zürich, Switzerland
3 Lectures on “Transformers & Vision Transformers”

* Sven Giesselbach, T Systems International & Fraunhofer Institute – IAIS, Germany
3 Lectures on “Agentic AI”

* Anirudh Goyal, Google DeepMind & Mila, Université de Montréal, Canada
3 Lectures on  “Metacognition as a Control Plane for Reasoning”

* Arthur Gretton, UCL & Google DeepMind, UK
2 Lectures on “Causal Effect Estimation with Context and Confounders”

* Mario Guarracino, University of Cassino and Souther Lazio, Italy
Lectures TBA

* Katja Hofmann, Microsoft, UK
3 Lectures on “World Models”

* Arnulf Jentzen, University of Münster, Germany
Lecture 1/3 “Mathematical Introduction to Stochastic Gradient Descent Optimization”
Lecture 2/3 “Error Analyses for Adam and further Accelerated and Adaptive Optimizers”
Lecture 3/3 “Deep Learning for High-Dimensional Partial Differential Equations”

* Pushmeet Kohli, Google DeepMind, UK
Lectures TBA

* Panos Pardalos, University of Florida, USA
Lectures TBA

* Michal Valko, Stealth Startup, INRIA, MVA at ENS Paris-Saclay, France
Lecture 1/3 “Lightspeed RL Fine Tuning for LLMs”
Lecture 2/3 “Online and Offline RL Considerations for LLMs “
Lecture 3/3 “New Advances on the Theory of Language Generation and Hallucination”

* David van Dijk, Yale University, USA
3 Lectures TBA

* Jason Weston, META, USA
Lecture 1/3 “Self-Improving Language Models”
Lecture 2/3 “Self-Improving Agents”
Lecture 3/3 “The Future of Self-Improvement & the Promise of Co-Improving AI”

More Lecturers TBA

📑 LECTURES:
🔗 https://acdl2026.icas.events/lectures/

📚 PAST LECTURERS:
🔗 https://acdl2026.icas.events/past-lecturers/

✅ VENUE:
🔗 https://acdl2026.icas.events/venue/
Riva del Sole Resort & SPA
Località Riva del Sole‚ Castiglione della Pescaia (Grosseto)
CAP 58043‚ Tuscany‚ Italy
p: +39-0564-928111
📧  booking.events@rivadelsole.it
🔗 https://www.rivadelsole.it/en/

PAST EDITIONS: 🔗 https://acdl2026.icas.events/past-editions/

📚 CERTIFICATE & 8 ECTS:
The 9th Advanced Course on Data Science & Machine Learning – ACDL 2026 is a full-immersion five-day Course at the Riva del Sole Resort & SPA (Castiglione della Pescaia – Grosseto  – Tuscany, Italy) on cutting-edge advances in Deep Learning, Data Science and Generative AI with lectures delivered by world-renowned experts. The Course provides a stimulating environment for PhD students, Post-Docs,  junior academics (only up to assistant professors), early career researchers,  and industry leaders (and highly motivated, promising and brilliant Master students / BSc students). Participants will also have the chance to present their results with talks, and to interact with their colleagues, in a convivial, professional and productive environment.

PhD students, PostDocs, Industry Practitioners and Junior Academics (only up to assistant professors)  will be typical profiles of the ACDL attendants.The Course will involve a total of 36–40 hours of lectures, according to the academic system the final achievement will be equivalent to 8 ECTS points for the PhD Students (and some strongly motivated Master Student – BSc Student) attending the Course.

Language: English.

To participate in the ACDL 2026, all attendants must

(1/2) register for the course (by April 23, 2026) and
(2/2) book accommodation at the course venue, “Riva del Sole Resort & SPA” (by April 23, 2026); all attendants must stay at the “Riva del Sole Resort & SPA”. Booking accommodation at the Riva del Sole must be made exclusively using the accommodation form attached to the registration confirmation email. No other methods must be used (if you use other booking methods the hotel will cancel the reservation).  Finally, it is not possible to extend the stay, the special accommodation rates are valid only for the period of the course, no exceptions will be made. To contact the Riva del Sole Resort & SPA (the course venue) use the following email: booking.events@rivadelsole.it

Once accommodation has been booked at “Riva del Sole Resort & SPA“, the participant must send this information (including the Booking Number) to the ACDL organizing committee (acdl@icas.cc).

ACDL is a residential course, so all lecturers and participants must reside in the same Hotel (Riva del Sole Resort & SPA). No exceptions are made.
 
For privacy reasons, the Hotel can not match people. If you have someone to share the apartment with (or a double room in Hotel), please send to the Hotel ( 📧  booking.events@rivadelsole.it ) the name, surname and email address. Otherwise the solution is to book a hotel room in single use.
 
Please note that only ACDL registered participants can book a room (in hotel or apartment) at the Riva del Sole Resort & SPA with the accommodation form attached in the registration email and with the ACDL Discounted Rates. The Booking Office of the Riva del Sole Resort & SPA will  verify the names of the participants and the corresponding registration number to confirm the booking.

Anyone interested in participating in ACDL 2026 should register as soon as possible.

See you in Riva del Sole in June!
         ACDL 2026 Directors.
         ACDL 2026 Scientific & Organizing Committees.  

🔗 https://acdl2026.icas.events
📧 acdl@icas.cc

https://x.com/TaoSciences

https://www.facebook.com/groups/204310640474650

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/10048467/

Obviously this is only a Call for Participation, to have complete and updated information we recommend you access the relevant website: 🔗 https://acdl2026.icas.events