Guide to Inclusive and Accessible Submissions

The IEEE Haptics Symposium is committed to creating an inclusive and accessible environment for all participants. Therefore, authors are expected to follow the IEEE Haptics Symposium Guide to Inclusive and Accessible Submissions. By following this guide, authors can ensure that the widest possible audience considers their work and that their findings are shared with the broader community.

Inclusivity Guidance

Gender & Sex

Please use a gender-neutral language.

• When referring to a generic person, avoid “he or she”, “he/she”, or s/he. Use “they” as a gender-neutral pronoun.
• If you refer to a specific person, first ask which gender they self-identify, and then use the pronoun that they use.
• Only refer to sex information (female/male/intersex) when the context is relevant, for example reporting participant information for human experiments in which biological factors (e.g., skin mechanics) may play a role in the findings. Otherwise, it is recommended to use genders that participants self-identify.
• Avoid positioning specific genders as “normal”, “abnormal”, or “anomaly”. Source and more detailed information can be found:
  https://www.morgan-klaus.com/gender-guidelines.html

Disability

Please avoid using offensive language.

• Avoid using terms that equate people with their disability such as “quadriplegics”, “the deaf”, and “the disabled”. Instead, use “people who use a wheelchair”, “deaf people”, “people who are deaf”, and “people with disabilities”.
• When referring to people with disabilities, avoid terms such as “normal and/or abnormal”, “victim of _”, “suffering from _”, “afflicted with _”, “defective”, trendy euphemisms (Expressions such as “physically challenged”, “special”, “differently abled”, and “handi-capable” generally are regarded by the disability community as patronizing and inaccurate) and “patients” (use this word only when referring to people who are residing in a hospital or need medical attention).
• When referring to people with a degree of vision loss, avoid terms such as “sight deficient”, “people with sight problems”, “unsighted”, and “visually impaired”. When you need to specify a degree of vision loss, instead use “blind” or “low vision”. If you aim to indicate accessibility needs related to vision, try to be specific. For example, if you want to specify that your participants are screen readers, use “people who use screen readers as their primary means of accessing a computer”.
• When referring to people with a degree of hearing loss, avoid terms such as “deaf and mute”. It is also better to ask these individuals how they self-identify. Most deaf people prefer to be called “deaf”, “Deaf”, or “deaf and hard of hearing”. However, some elderly people who have lost their hearing ability, prefer to be referred to as “hearing impaired”.
• When referring to people who use wheelchairs, avoid terms such as “restricted to a wheelchair”, “confined to a wheelchair”, “wheelchair-bound”, “deformed”, “crippled”, and “physically challenged”. Instead, use “person who uses a wheelchair” or “wheelchair user”.
• When referring to motor disabilities, terms such as “motor disability” or “physical disability” are acceptable.
• When referring to people with cognitive disabilities, be specific about the condition (e.g., autism, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, schizophrenia, depression). Avoid using the term “people with deficits”.

Telerobotics

Please avoid using offensive language.

• Avoid using “Master/Slave” terminology. Instead, use alternative terms, such as “Main/Secondary”, “Haptic Device/Remote Robot”, “Leader/Follower”, “Driver/Driven”, and “Teleoperating/Teleoperated”. Source and more detailed information can be found:
  https://www.sigaccess.org/welcome-to-sigaccess/resources/accessible-writing-guide/

Accessibility Guidance

A document or application is accessible if it can be used by people with disabilities, including those with mobility, visual, auditory, or cognitive disabilities. We strive for accessible paper and video submissions to foster an inclusive community. Below, you can find the instructions that should be followed for accessible submissions.

PDF Accessibility

• Don’t rely on only color: Avoid relying solely on color to differentiate elements within charts or figures. This consideration extends to those with color vision deficiencies and those who print papers in grayscale. To enhance accessibility, incorporate distinct shapes, patterns, and textures to complement color cues.
• Avoid using images for tables and equations: Construct tables as native table structures rather than embedded images. Clearly identify header cells within the table. Present equations using appropriate markup techniques, avoiding images of equations.
• Manage metadata: Accurately set the metadata associated with the document, including author information, title, abstract, keywords, headers, and lists. This metadata enhances discoverability and accessibility for users relying on assistive technologies.
• Provide a text description for all figures and tables: These descriptions serve as an alternative to the visual representation, conveying essential information that may not be explicitly stated in the figure caption or the accompanying text. Refrain from simply replicating the caption; instead, offer a detailed narrative of the figure’s content. For guidance on crafting effective figure descriptions, refer to:\ https://www.sigaccess.org/welcome-to-sigaccess/resources/describing-figures/ More details and instructions on PDF accessibility for Word and Adobe users can be found in the SIGACCESS Guide.

Video Accessibility

Providing alternative means of accessing information is valuable for people with sensory disabilities and also enables engagement in a variety of contexts, e.g., if the video is muted. We request that authors utilize both written text and recorded narration to explain their videos. Please describe all figures, images, and charts with sufficient detail so that their descriptions can be captured by closed captioning software.

Closed Caption

Please create a closed caption file for preview videos for IEEE ToH Short Papers and Technical Papers and supplemental videos for WIPs and Demos. This section introduces how to create a closed caption file using YouTube Studio (authors may create a new account for this purpose if they wish or use their existing account). Google Chrome is a recommended browser. Authors may also create a YouTube-supported closed caption file using alternative software.

Additional information about uploading to YouTube can be found here.

Supplemental Videos for IEEE Trans on Haptics Short Papers and Technical Papers

For Supplemental Videos published along with papers, authors should directly “burn” closed captions into the video due to technical limitations in IEEE Xplore. In other words, these captions are not provided as a text file, but rather as subtitles in the video itself (this is called “open captioning”, rather than “closed captioning” because the captions are always visible).

If you have questions about the video accessibility described here, please contact the Video Chair mailto:videos@hapticssymposium.org

If you have questions or need assistance with any of these activities, please reach out to the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Chairs mailto:edi@hapticssymposium.org.