2026 CHI Conference Papers
Every year, the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) holds the Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) conference, the premier international conference in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. The 2026 conference will take place in Barcelona, Spain starting on April 13th.
The Department of Informatics at UC Irvine has a large and quality presence at the conference this year, presenting novel research in the venue’s major tracks. At the conference, PhD graduate Eunkyung Jo will receive the Outstanding Dissertation Award, recognizing the exemplary work that she did as a student. Our faculty and postdocs also helped with organizing the review process for the conference. Anne Marie Piper was a Subcommittee Chair for Accessibility, Emani Hicks was an Assistant to the Subcommittee Chairs. Elena Agapie, June Ahn, Paul Dourish, Kapil Garg, Aehong Min, Stephen Schueller all served as Associate Chairs.
Informatics students, postdocs, and faculty contributed to 23 full papers and journal articles which will be presented at the conference, including 2 recipients of Honorable Mention Awards. Informatics affiliates are bolded.
Reimagining Sign Language Technologies: Analyzing Translation Work of Chinese Deaf Online Content Creators by Xinru Tang and Anne Marie Piper (Honorable Mention Award Recipient)
“It’s trained by non-disabled people”: Evaluating How Image Quality Affects Product Captioning with Vision-Language Models by Kapil Garg, Xinru Tang, Jimin He, Dwayne R. Morgan, Darren Gergle, Erik Sudderth, and Anne Marie Piper (Honorable Mention Award Recipient)
Access in the Shadow of Ableism: A Collaborative Autoethnography on Higher Education Experiences of a Blind Student in China by Xinru Tang, and Weijun Zhang
AmIWrite: Exploring Scalable One-on-One Handwriting-Based Tutoring for Mathematical Problem-Solving with an LLM-Powered AI Tutor by Ziyi Liu, Yuzhao Chen, Haoyu Ji, Runlin Duan, Zhenzhe Zhu, Xiyun Hu, Kylie Peppler, and Karthik Ramani
Bridging the Gap between Automated Intervention and Actual User Experience: A Mixed-Methods Study on Mobile Accessibility Issues for Screen Reader Users by Syed Faitul Huq, Ziyao Hi, Yirui He, and Sam Malek
Care Workers’ Risk Work: How Nannies Manage Invisible Threats in Employers’ Homes by Seungmin Jeong, Jaime Lee, Myeong Lee, and Yunan Chen
CASEbot: A Conversational Agent for Structuring and Personalizing the Design of Self-Experiments in Personal Health by Sabrina Zaman Ishita, Sidarth Kaliappan, Mashrur Rashik, Daniel A. Epstein, and Ravi Karkar
Collaboration and Assistive Technology: Facilitating Joint Awareness for Noise Sensitivity by Emani Hicks, Luc Rieffel, Ariya Gowda, Aehong Min, and Gillian R. Hayes
Curating Digital Coping Ecologies: How Queer Emerging Adults Use Social Media to Support Their Mental Health by Michelle Liu, Colin LeFevre, and Y. Anthony Chen
Designing for Resistance: Analyzing Data Work Among Direct Service Providers by Christine Denise Head, Anne Marie Piper, and Melissa Mazmanian
Designing for Upstream Work: Learnings from Co-Design for Preventative Solutions with Urban Fire Departments by Rachel B. Warren, Ruchita A. Mandhre, Hiba Siraj, G. Mauricio Mejia, Myeong Lee, Yunan Chen, Kathleen H. Pine
Disability-First AI Dataset Annotation: Co-designing Stuttered Speech Annotation Guidelines with People Who Stutter by Xinru Tang, Jingjin Li, Shaomei Wu
Engaging Communities Meaningfully in Defining Disability Representation for AI Image Generation by Anja Thieme, Rita Faia Marques, Martin Grayson, Sidhika Balachandar, Cameron Tyler Cassidy, Madiha Zahrah Choksi, Camilla Longden, Reeda Shimaz Huda, Nicholas Ileve Kalovwe, Christina Mallon, Courtney Mansperger, Daniela Massiceti, Bhaskar Mitra, Ruth Mueni Nzioka, Ioana Tanase, Yuzhe You, Cecily Morrison
Everyday Disruptions to Goals: Implications for Wellbeing Technology by Meeshu Agnihorti, Mehreen Masood, and Elena Agapie
FamilyBloom: Examining Ecologies of Collaboration in Family-Centered Health Tracking by Lucas M. Silva, Aehong Min, Evropi Stefanidi, Franceli L. Cibrian, Jesus Armando Beltran, Cassie Zeiler, Sabrina Schuck, Kimberley D. Lakes, Gillian R. Hayes, and Daniel A. Epstein
From Efficiency to Meaning: Adolescents’ Envisioned Role of AI in Health Management by Jamie Lee, Kyuha Jung, Cecilia Lee, Lauren MacDonnell, Jessica N. Kim, Daniel Otterson, Erin Gregg Newman, Emilie Chow, and Yunan Chen
Hiding in Plain Sight: Understanding the Everyday Practices and Challenges of Car Dwellers by Rachael Zehrung and Yunan Chen
Hiring for Creativity in a World of UX Design Systems by Jon Kolko
Rhetoric vs Responsibility: How Tech Companies Shape AI for Accessibility by Aparajita S. Marathe, Quan Zhou, Achi Mishra, and Anne Marie Piper
Sharing Women’s Health Experiences Influenced by Genetic Factors: Practices, Challenges, and Opportunities by Ziqi Yang, Daniel A. Epstein, and Yunan Chen
Understanding Adoption, Use, and Abandonment Practices in Baby Tracking by Alexandra Papoutsaki, Mustafa Taha Dişbudak, Lily Galvan, Chau Vu, and Daniel A. Epstein
Unpacking How Pole Dancers Experience the Use of Fitness Trackers by Whitney-Jocelyn Kouaho and Daniel A. Epstein
“All I was told is that I’m not clean, I’m impure”: Understanding Muslim Women’s Experience of Menstrual Education by Zaidat Ibrahim, Novia Nurain, Sitha Ram Vallabhaneni, Priya Jain, and James Clawson
Informatics affiliates are also involved in works presented in a variety of other tracks at the conference.
Workshop: Engagement in Digital Health Interventions: Open Questions for Research and Design by Saskia M. Kelders, Iris ten Klooster, Sofia Bastoni, Isabella Cadoni, Kerem Doğan, Hanneke Kip, Nienke Beerlage-de Jong, Ruben Gouveia, Stephen M. Schueller, Bruna Oewel, Kevin Doherty, Guendalina Graffigna, Silvia Gabrielli, Tom Van Daele, Tobias Kowatsch, Gavin Doherty, Qinggang Yu, David Coyle, Olga Perski, Maria Karekla, Adriana Rios Rincon, and Sean A. Munson
Meet-Up: Knots & Flows: An Engagement Design Meet-Up by
Isabella Cadoni, Ruben Gouveia, Bruna Oewel, Kevin Doherty, Gianluca Schiavo, Eftychia Roumelioti, Roxanne Ziman, Laura Garrison, and Saskia M. Kelders
Workshop: Shaping HCI Research for Children’s Care Ecosystem Involvement by Evropi Stefanidi, Lucas M. Silva, Bengisu Cagiltay, Aehong Min, Eva Eriksson, and Gillian R. Hayes
Poster: Towards Context-Aware, Real-Time Personalization of Acoustic Environments for Noise Sensitivity by Jeremy Zhengqi Huang, Emani Hicks, FNU Sidharth, Gillian R. Hayes, and Dhruv Jain
The full CHI 2026 program is available online.