Call for Papers

IDEATExR – 2nd Annual ISMAR workshop for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, Transparency, and Ethics in XR
To be held in conjunction with the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2023)
Sydney, Australia and Online

Workshop: https://ideatexr.carrd.co/
October 16, 2023

ISMAR 2023: https://ismar23.org/
October 16-20, 2023

Submissions deadline: July 23, 2023

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

Due to the important, evolving, and shifting nature of inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, transparency, and ethics in XR, this workshop has five main goals:

1. To provide a vehicle through which to understand better the pulse of the community surrounding these issues of inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, transparency, and ethics in XR,
2. To shine a spotlight on these issues for community members who perhaps haven’t given them much consideration,
3. To celebrate those that are engaging in research either true to the spirit of inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, transparency, and ethics in XR, or those engaging in research about these topics specifically,
4. To help researchers better understand how to ensure their work are more inclusive, diverse, equitable, accessible, transparent, and ethical,
5. And to bring together disparate perspectives and research foci together under a shared goal to be inclusive, diverse, equitable, accessible, transparent, and ethical in XR. This goal can be shared by software, hardware, and human-focused researchers.

The potential benefits of XR should be for all, regardless of their cultural background, gender identity, race, neurodiversity, ethnicity, economical status, age, etc. However, our community is still facing challenges preventing everyone from being involved in xR.

Most research within this space relies on the M-WEIRD population and researchers (Male, White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic), effectively missing 95% of the world’s population [1], thus hindering generalizability of findings and diversity of ideas. In fact, approximately 95% of the global population is excluded from VR research and only 15% of first-paper authors at ISMAR and IEEEVR are women [2]. Moreover, the ethics informing XR research have been identified as one of the grand challenges facing human-computer interaction research today, with the replication crisis featuring transparency as a critical step for remediation. These factors make formal discussions surrounding inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, transparency, and ethics in XR not only timely – but necessary. And we want you to be a part of them.

Premier venues for AR/VR (or XR) research do not have a clear code of ethics including issues surrounding diversity that could help provide greater DEI initiative consistency between conferences and guidance to researchers. It’s important to note that these concerns are also relevant to technical work not involving human participants as they also play a role in research teams, ideas, proposed solutions, conduct, etc.

Participants in this workshop will have the opportunity to provide their insights on what is working for our community, as well as what isn’t – effectively helping to shape the future of ISMAR.

LOGISTICS

TOPICS OF INTEREST:
This workshop has six facets: inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, transparency, and ethics. We expect researchers to submit early work that have already shown a commitment to one or more of these aforementioned facets. These could include work with diverse participants, work examining skin-tone rendering in AR, computer vision algorithms for differently-abled hands, testing of accessibility and usability of a VR app for those with different sensory abilities, etc. Further, while we anticipate this next type of paper to be rarer, we anticipate papers that feature research explicitly regarding the realm of diversity in XR. Finally, position papers informed by either survey of the literature or profound experience in the facets of this workshop are also well within our scope.

IMPORTANT DATES:
Paper Submission Deadline: July 23, 2023 (Sunday)
Acceptance Notification: August 7th, 2023 (Monday)
Camera-Ready Submission Deadline: August 21st, 2023 (Monday)

SUBMISSION:
We welcome paper submissions from 2-4 pages, excluding references. Authors should also provide a brief explanation (At least one paragraph; no more than 1 page attached in supplementary materials) of how they feel their paper fits into this workshop or achieves the workshop’s facets. Paper quality versus length will be assessed according to a contribution-per-page judgment. Papers will be considered in relation to their intended scientific merit AND their contribution or adherence to inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, transparency, and ethics in XR.

To publish your paper in the ISMAR proceedings, papers must be written in English and follow the IEEE Computer Society VGTC format described at: https://tc.computer.org/vgtc/publications/conference/

Submissions will be reviewed by at least 2 program committee members following a single-blind review process. Accepted papers will be given guidelines for preparing and submitting the final manuscript(s) together with the notification of acceptance.

Paper submissions must be done through this form: https://forms.gle/wTTpLDEPMNdwmXST7 OR emailed to cassidynelson@vt.edu

Email any questions to cassidynelson@vt.edu

ORGANIZERS

Cassidy R. Nelson, Virginia Tech
Nayara de Oliveira Faria, Virginia Tech
Rafael N.C. Patrick, Ph.D., Virginia Tech

CITATIONS

1. T. C. Peck, K. A. McMullen, J. Quarles, K. Johnsen, C. Sandor, and M. Billinghurst, “DiVRsify: Break the Cycle and Develop VR for Everyone,” IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl., vol. 41, no. 6, pp. 133–142, 2021, doi: 10.1109/MCG.2021.3113455.
2. T. C. Peck, L. E. Sockol, and S. M. Hancock, “Mind the Gap: The Underrepresentation of Female Participants and Authors in Virtual Reality Research,” IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph., vol. 26, no. 5, pp. 1945–1954, 2020, doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2020.2973498.