Preparing your accessible conference presentation. Congrats on having your paper accepted! ACM FAccT 2026 aims to ensure that its meetings, communications, and other activities including documents, papers, and publications shall be accessible to any and all persons, and will make every reasonable effort to accommodate their needs for attendance and participation. This document includes steps you as an author can take to ensure your presentation is well organized and accessible.
If you (as a presenter) have specific accessibility requests, or if there is otherwise anything we can do to make your presentation experience more barrier-free, please let the Accessibility Chairs (accessibility@facctconference.org) know ahead of time, so the organizing committee knows to take this into account when planning the sessions.
Make sure to ensure that even people who have little familiarity with your sub-area can understand at least the main points:
In fact, even the experts in your area don't need to understand more than these points; for the rest, they can read the paper.
It is best to present a series of "exhibits:" images, videos, system demos, diagrams, graphs, or tables. You can explain and elaborate on these exhibits while people are looking at them. In general, you don't need to write what you say on the slides. Anyone who wants to see the points you made in black and white can read your paper. Carefully preparing an exhibit can take at least 10 times as long as dashing off a bulleted list, but your audience deserves nothing less.
Use text sparingly: Keep your points in short, concise, outline form. This will inform the viewer about the topic, and will also help you remember your key points for discussion.
Please avoid using effects in your video that could trigger an adverse reaction. For example, flashing lights can induce seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy. Avoid using complex animations (e.g., simple appear/disappear is okay, but aggressive flickering should be avoided), unsteady camera work, flashing strobe lights, loud sounds, or repetitive alarms. If you include components, such as police car lights and sirens, consider warning viewers at the start of the video or right before the content so they can look away or mute their computers. The Trace Center offers an analysis tool to help authors assess whether their video is safe for people with photosensitive epilepsy (https://trace.umd.edu/peat/).
Pay special attention to types of material that often turn out to be illegible: screenshots and complex graphics. If an exhibit like this can't be shown legibly as a whole, find a way to zoom in on individual parts of it as they are discussed.
Present only material that helps you to convey your points effectively. If you must include your institution's logo on each slide, make sure that it is not the most conspicuous and interesting element on any slide.
We suggest providing your accessible presentation:
Rehearse your presentation before attending FAccT, and cut content if you're cutting it close. It is better to be under your allotted time than to be over it. There is always more time during the coffee break to chat in further detail. Tip: When practicing your final presentation, ask your practice audience to help you identify if anything in your talk would be inaccessible to people who are blind or have low vision, or who are deaf or hard of hearing, or have a cognitive disability. Raising awareness is key!
Arrive 20 minutes before your session to test your presentation setup with the session chair. If you transfer your presentation to present on someone else's laptop, do everything possible to maximize its portability, and test the presentation at the earliest opportunity, leaving plenty of time to fix any problems (e.g., replacing missing fonts).
Conclude with a slide that helps the audience remember your talk the way you want them to remember it. This is typically achieved by summarizing your main contributions; this is a rare case where a bulleted list may be appropriate. This slide will help people to think of important questions to ask, and will help them remember the key points of your talk, so they can go tell their colleagues how great it was.
Answer each question directly and concisely, without digressing into related topics. Give others a chance to ask their questions as well.
Some of you may choose to create a PDF of the presentation. Keep in mind that changing fonts, titles, and sizes can be done easier in the .PPT format and then made PDF again. We recommend you follow the steps above that apply to your content.
For details on how to use Adobe Acrobat Pro XI to ensure your PDFs are accessible, please follow the detailed SIGACCESS Accessible PDF Author Guide.
These include:
You may also wish to explore the Adobe Acrobat Pro Accessibility feature to find and fix all accessibility issues (note this may be difficult to follow but knowing your errors is the first step to fixing them – reach out to the accessibility chairs if you have questions accessibility@facctconference.org).
If you have any questions or concerns about creating accessible content, please contact the Accessibility Chairs at accessibility@facctconference.org.
Credit to CUI 2026 for the original draft of this document.