Gallaudet expertise stands out at disability-focused computing conference

Organizers of the 26th annual ASSETS Conference — which bills itself as “the premier forum for presenting research on the design, evaluation, use, and education related to computing for people with disabilities and older adults” — gave themselves a challenge this year. They offered attendees a fully synchronous hybrid experience for the first time ever.

For Dr. Abraham Glasser, a Gallaudet assistant professor who served as Accessibility Co-Chair, that meant considering the needs of all attendees, whether they planned to come in person to the October conference in St. John’s, Canada (the easternmost city in North America), or log on from anywhere else in the world.

“My role involved helping with PDF and video accessibility, interpreting and captioning service contracting and implementation, wheelchair ramp access, and food allergy coordination,” says Glasser, who notes he also oversaw conference sessions to make sure presenters, audience questions, CART captioning, and interpreters were accessible in-person and online.

These efforts were much appreciated by the Gallaudet faculty, students, and alumni involved in the conference, says Dr. Christian Vogler, Co-Director of Gallaudet’s Accessible Human-Centered Computing (AHCC) program, who was part of the organizing committee for ASSETS in 2021 and 2022.

AHCC Co-Director Dr. Raja Kushalnagar, who is on the ASSETS Experience Reports Program Committee, received an award during the event for his extensive undergraduate mentoring. (Read more about that honor here.)

Research at the conference featured several projects related to deafness, captioning, and American Sign Language. That included “Insights from Immersive Learning: Using Sentiment Analysis and Real-time Narration to Refine ASL Instruction in Virtual Reality,” a poster by Gallaudet’s Dr. Md Shahinur Alam, Joseph Palagano, ’22, and Dr. Lorna Quandt. 

Glasser will serve as Accessibility Co-Chair again for ASSETS 2025, which will be in Denver, Colorado, October 26-29, 2025.