We have two new blog posts out on the SIGCHI Medium:

First is a summary of topics discussed at the quarterly town hall on Nov 13---awards, ACM Open, and accessibility. We thank those who attended, and Kentaro Toyama (Adjunct Chair for Awards) and Dragan Ahmetovic (VP Accessibility) for co-presenting and sharing updates on awards and accessibility.

Second is SIGCHI's annual report. Every year, the SIGs submit an annual report to the SIG Governing Board, describing their activities and accomplishments of the year. We submitted ours to the SGB back in August, but thought we could also share these in blog format with you all, particularly to offer an overview to those who keenly follow our SIG and an introduction to those who are new to it.

Nominations for the 2026 cycle of the SIGCHI awards and special recognitions are now open. Please nominate your colleagues and recent Ph.D. graduates! The deadline is December 13, 2025 (Sat), at 11:59pm Anywhere on Earth (AoE).

Nomination form (requires a Submittable login): https://sigchi.submittable.com/submit/339253/2026-call-for-nominations-for-sigchi-awards

Please reach out to the AC for Awards Kentaro Toyama at toyama@umich.edu with any questions. Refer to the call below for more information:

Please forward this call widely to your HCI-related networks.

People can't get awards for which they are not nominated, so we hope that you will help by nominating not just your closest colleagues, but also deserving people from institutions and organizations around the world, especially from the Global South.

SIGCHI Awards identify and honor leaders and shapers of the field of human-computer interaction. We currently present awards in six categories and have four awards subcommittees to oversee their review.As we did last year, we are also inviting SIGCHI Special Recognitions to celebrate and honor individuals/groups who have made exceptional contributions to HCI in ways not captured by our existing awards. These can be of any meaningful type, but here are some examples:

• Emerging Researcher

• Excellence in HCI Education

• Community Building and Outreach

• Significant Contribution to Diversity and Inclusion in HCI

• Impactful Industry-Academia Collaboration 

• Lifetime Achievement in HCI Mentorship

• Etc.

Special recognitions are not awards, but they will help us identify new permanent awards to propose for future cycles.

Please join us for our upcoming quarterly town hall. We will be discussing ACM Open, accessibility, and awards, while leaving some time at the end for more open-ended feedback and Q&A:

1. ACM Open: What’s Next?: 2026 is the transition year as ACM moves to 100% open access. Most of our authors are already covered through ACM Open agreements. For those who are not yet covered and would like to apply for a Financial Hardship Waiver to cover Article Processing Charges (APCs) through SIG funds, the SIG will be setting up a process for enabling Financial Hardship Waivers. If you have any concerns about whether and how you will be covered, please attend.

2. Accessibility across SIGCHI: Dragan Ahmetovic, SIGCHI VP Accessibility, will present his vision for accessibility across SIGCHI our conferences, and invites you to attend and discuss where we can do better. If you have been or wanted to be an access chair at any SIGCHI conference, please join.

3. SIGCHI Awards 2026: With Kentaro Toyama as our new chair (see our announcement), we are ready to dive into SIGCHI Awards Season. The call for nomiations will go out shortly, and Kentaro will be at the Town Hall to answer any questions about the process. If you are thinking of nominating someone but do not know which category to nominate them under, or how to go about the application process, you are welcome to join!

What: Quarterly Town Hall When: November 13, 2025, 2pm UTC (in your time zone) Where: Zoom