Post by Markus Wieland

What a week. 🇸🇬 I just returned from DIS '26 in Singapore, where I presented our paper "The Ambivalent Experience of Eye Contact for People with Visual Impairments: Mechanisms and Design Challenges" and we received an Honorable Mention. 🏅 Our paper argues that making gaze visible is only a partial response. Eye contact is not just a missing signal. It is interactional infrastructure. And understanding why it breaks down requires going beyond the perceptual layer. This year's theme was "Beyond Interaction" and the paper sessions reflected that well. A lot of work that pushed past the interface and asked harder questions about participation, context, and what it actually means to design for people. A huge thank you to my co-authors Phillip Koch and Michael Sedlmair. This work would not exist without them. And to everyone I met in Singapore: it was a pleasure. The conversations in the hallways were just as valuable as the ones in the session rooms. Also: Singapore, you were stunning. 🌴 #DIS2026 If you're interested, you can read the full paper here: https://lnkd.in/d56tf7gb