Equity, Justice, and Access Commitments
CHI 2022 is committed to creating an equitable, just, and accessible environment that is safe for everyone to conduct their professional meet-ups. Assuming a hybrid event, this accounts for both virtual and in-person parts of CHI 2022. We have dedicated Equity, Justice, and Access teams working independently and collaboratively towards this goal. Christina Harrington and Katta Spiel lead these teams with Anupriya Tuli and Cayley MacArthur serving as assistants to ensure high-level representation within the executive team for CHI 2022. Overall, our guiding ideals are to create a conference experience that is accessible and enjoyable for everyone contributing to and/or attending CHI. Please feel free to contact us at equity@chi2022.acm.org in case you miss any commitments here or have any other feedback. In the remainder of this post, we’ll introduce the individual teams.
The Accessibility chairs (Dhruv Jain, Garreth Tigwell, Zainab AlMeraj, and Kotaro Hara) will work towards ensuring that different physical and digital access needs among the committee, presenters, and attendees are met swiftly and adequately. However, beyond a notion of making CHI ADA compliant, we strive towards building a welcoming environment for CHI attendees and will specifically attend to how we may create spaces attuned to disability culture(s). You can reach them at accessibility@chi2022.acm.org.
The Family chairs (Pamela Gibbs, Theresa Tanenbaum, and Annika Wolf) will create infrastructures for facilitating attendees to participate in the conferences with their children. They will closely collaborate with potential attendees to ensure that their needs are met in presence as well as virtually. They are available to you at family@chi2022.acm.org.
Social Justice Event chairs (Minha Lee, Patrick Gage Kelley, Rua Williams, and Gopinaath Kannabiran) are planning activities and meet-ups oriented toward addressing Social Justice issues more generally. Look out for their upcoming survey soliciting community input about what people with marginalized identities and historically excluded groups in and around CHI desire from such an event. Share your ideas with them at socialjustice@chi2022.acm.org.
To decrease the barriers of access for communities around the world, the Global Inclusion & Equity chairs (Annu Sible Prabhakar, Cuauhtémoc Rivera Loaiza, Eiad Yafi, and Susan Dray) develop and support structures facilitating that access. They will work with the SIGCHI local chapters to identify opportunities for our global communities to lower barriers to participation and support networking efforts. You can contact them at global@chi2022.acm.org.
The Sustainability chairs (Parisa Eslambolchilar, Özge Subasi, and Kristin Williams) will review and advise on purchasing decisions, hybrid conferencing, carbon offsetting, and collect data to shape CHI’s environmental impact for the better in both the short and long term. Look out for a separate dedicated blog post discussing our sustainability efforts in detail, including the data collection process. Send them your feedback at sustainability@chi2022.acm.org.
Finally, the Allyship chairs (Siobahn Day Gray, Rina Wehbe, and Cale Passmore) will establish a code of conduct and guide a group of volunteers to be first responders in the incidents where harassment occurs to support targets. Hence, they will organise preventative and educational initiatives as well as organise the reactive processes for virtual and in-person settings. Any requests or further input can be sent to allyship@chi2022.acm.org.
From the beginning of our organizing process, we’ve been committed to principles of equity, justice and access. This is the first CHI to create overarching EJA chairs to advocate for these principles. These chairs are part of every meeting and conversation in the conference executive team. One of the principles of justice we have is to give power to a broad set of people. To do that, we had an open call for chair positions, and now have decision-makers from a wide range of communities.
All these people are oriented towards making CHI 2022 a productive, safe, and enjoyable experience for everyone. Contact chairs at equity@chi2022.acm.org to share your ideas for how we can achieve that goal. We hope you’ll join us!
