Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research in real-world settings may lead to unanticipated, emotionally charged moments. While impacts of these moments on participants are reported in the literature, researchers’ emotions, which can affect participants’ experiences, are often left unreported. Learning from these moments is essential for advancing HRI quality and real-world deployment success. We introduce "Emotional Entanglements" as a lens in HRI to define a researcher's capacity to anticipate, absorb, respond to, and recover from emotionally impactful events. Collecting testimonials using collaborative autoethnography from eleven researchers, we surface recurring emotional entanglements experienced in HRI studies, including tears with mixed meaning, participant attachment and loss upon robot withdrawal, and consequential participant decisions attributed to the robot, as well as how researchers navigated them amidst protocol constraints. This paper provides an actionable guide to "Emotional Sustainability in HRI", raising awareness of these often unreported situations and offering strategies for mitigation.

Introductory coding environments have been used in early education to promote computational thinking, supporting the development of cognitive, critical, and social skills. Many environments focus on individual use, which has limited benefits compared to collaborative learning. In this paper, we present the results of a 10-session study at a local primary school engaging eleven children with visual impairments and three inclusive education teachers in collaborative programming activities. Based on participants' behavior, reactions, and feedback, we contribute an improved understanding of collaborative design in educational settings, focusing on the impact of Goals, Workspace, Interdependence, and Shared Awareness. Our main findings outline how collaboration dynamics can be shaped by asymmetric tasks, workspace proximity, and group awareness. We further discuss factors that led to a lack of investment in the shared goal and instances of unbalanced collaboration, reflecting on challenges and opportunities for designing collaborative inclusive coding kits.

This paper introduces a hands-on workshop centered on participatory design (PD) approaches tailored for engaging young children, with a special focus on failures, challenges, and successes in prior experiences within the child-computer interaction (CCI) domain. Although previous efforts have highlighted the advantages of engaging young children in PD, research has overlooked their involvement as co-designers, leading to a lack of exploration and understanding of their unique perspectives and challenges in the design process. Through an interactive session and collaborative activities, this workshop will facilitate discussions surrounding challenges, successes, and lessons learned through PD with young children. By evaluating and exchanging experiences, we aim to enhance our understanding of PD and refine its methodologies for this particular population. By synthesizing the shortcomings, difficulties, and successes of past experiences, the workshop will bring together researchers and practitioners to initiate efforts toward closing this research gap. Together we will establish the groundwork for enhanced approaches and a deeper understanding of how to involve young children in PD, which will enhance future efforts in the field of CCI.

Accessibility research has gained traction, yet ethical gaps persist in the inclusion of individuals with disabilities, especially children. Inclusive research practices are essential to ensure that research and design solutions cater to the needs of all individuals, regardless of their abilities. Working with children with disabilities in Human-Computer Interaction and Human-Robot Interaction presents a unique set of ethical dilemmas. These young participants often require additional care, support, and accommodations, which can fall off researchers’ resources or expertise. The lack of clear guidance on navigating these challenges further aggravates the problem. To provide a basis on which to address this issue, we adopt a critical reflective approach, evaluating our impact by analyzing two case studies involving children with disabilities in HCI/HRI research. Flowing from these, we call for a shift in our approach to ethics in participatory research contexts to one that is processual, situational, and community-led.

Shape-changing skin is an exciting modality due to its accessible and engaging nature. Its softness and flexibility make it adaptable to different interactive devices that children with and without visual impairments can share. Although their potential as an emotionally expressive medium has been shown for sighted adults, their potential as an inclusive modality remains unexplored. This work explores the shape-emotional mappings in children with and without visual impairment. We conducted a user study with 50 children (26 with visual impairment) to investigate their emotional associations with five skin shapes and two movement conditions. Results show that shape-emotional mappings are dependent on visual abilities. Our study raises awareness of the influence of visual experiences on tactile vocabulary and emotional mapping among sighted, low-vision, and blind children. We finish discussing the causal associations between tactile stimuli and emotions and suggest inclusive design recommendations for shape-changing devices.

Children with visual impairments often struggle to fully participate in group activities due to limited access to visual cues. They have difficulty perceiving what is happening, when, and how to act-leading to children with and without visual impairments being frustrated with the group activity, reducing mutual interactions. To address this, we created Touchibo, a tactile storyteller robot acting in a multisensory setting, encouraging touch-based interactions. Touchibo provides an inclusive space for group interaction as touch is a highly accessible modality in a mixed-visual ability context. In a study involving 107 children (37 with visual impairments), we compared Touchibo to an audio-only storyteller. Results indicate that Touchibo significantly improved children's individual and group participation perception, sparking touch-based interactions and the storyteller was more likable and helpful. Our study highlights touch-based robots' potential to enrich children's social interactions by prompting interpersonal touch, particularly in mixed-visual ability settings.

Playful robotics engages children in learning through play experiences while simultaneously developing critical thinking, and social, cognitive, and motor skills through play. Such playful experiences are particularly valuable in inclusive education to promote social and inclusive behaviors. We present TACTOPI, an inclusive and playful multisensory environment that leverages tangible interaction and a robot as the main character. We investigate how TACTOPI supports play in 10 dyads of children with mixed visual abilities. Results show that multisensory elements supported children to experience activities as joyful. Storytelling and guided-play added a layer of meaningfulness to the activities, and the robot engaged children in minds-on thinking. TACTOPI afforded children to engage in collaborative social play and facilitated supportive and inclusive behaviours. We contribute with a playful multisensory environment, an analysis of the effect of its components on social, cognitive, and inclusive play, and design considerations for inclusive multisensory environments that prioritize play.

Collaborative coding environments foster learning, social skills, computational thinking training, and supportive relationships. In the context of inclusive education, these environments have the potential to promote inclusive learning activities for children with mixed-visual abilities. However, there is limited research focusing on remote collaborative environments, despite the opportunity to design new modes of access and control of content to promote more equitable learning experiences. We investigated the tradeoffs between remote and co-located collaboration through a tangible coding kit. We asked ten pairs of mixed-visual ability children to collaborate in an interdependent and asymmetric coding game. We contribute insights on six dimensions - effectiveness, computational thinking, accessibility, communication, cooperation, and engagement - and reflect on differences, challenges, and advantages between collaborative settings related to communication, workspace awareness, and computational thinking training. Lastly, we discuss design opportunities of tangibles, audio, roles, and tasks to create inclusive learning activities in remote and co-located settings.

Inclusion is key in group work and collaborative learning. We developed a mediator robot to support and promote inclusion in group conversations, particularly in groups composed of children with and without visual impairment. We investigate the effect of two mediation strategies on group dynamics, inclusion, and perception of the robot. We conducted a within-subjects study with 78 children, 26 experienced visual impairments, in a decision-making activity. Results indicate that the robot can foster inclusion in mixed-visual ability group conversations. The robot succeeds in balancing participation, particularly when using a highly intervening mediating strategy (directive strategy). However, children feel more heard by their peers when the robot is less intervening (organic strategy). We extend prior work on social robots to assist group work and contribute with a mediator robot that enables children with visual impairments to engage equally in group conversations. We finish by discussing design implications for inclusive social robots.

Accessible introductory programming environments are scarce, and their study within ecological settings (e.g., at home) is almost non-existent. We present ACCembly, an accessible block-based environment that enables children with visual impairments to perform spatial programming activities. ACCembly allows children to assemble tangible blocks to program a multimodal robot. We evaluated this approach with seven families that used the system autonomously at home. Results showed that both the children and family members learned from what was an inclusive and engaging experience. Children leveraged fundamental computational thinking concepts to solve spatial programming challenges; parents took different roles as mediators, some actively teaching and scaffolding, others learning together with their child. We contribute with an environment that enables children with visual impairments to engage in spatial programming activities, an analysis of parent-child interactions, and reflections on inclusive programming environments within a shared family experience.

Introduction of computational thinking training in early childhood potentiates cognitive development and better prepares children to live and prosper in a future heavily computational society. Programming environments are now widely adopted in classrooms to teach programming concepts. However, these tools are often reliant on visual interaction, making them inaccessible to children with visual impairments. Also, programming environments in general are usually designed to promote individual experiences, wasting the potential benefits of group collaborative activities. We propose the design of a programming environment that leverages asymmetric roles to foster collaborative computational thinking activities for children with visual impairments, in particular mixed-visual-ability classes. The multimodal system comprises the use of tangible blocks and auditory feedback, while children have to collaborate to program a robot. We conducted a remote online study, collecting valuable feedback on the limitations and opportunities for future work, aiming to potentiate education and social inclusion.

Previous attempts to make block-based programming accessible to visually impaired children have mostly focused on audio-based challenges, leaving aside spatial constructs, commonly used in learning settings. We sought to understand the qualities and flaws of current programming environments in terms of accessibility in educational settings. We report on a focus group with IT and special needs educators, where they discussed a variety of programming environments for children, identifying their merits, barriers and opportunities. We then conducted a workshop with 7 visually impaired children where they experimented with a bespoke tangible robot-programming environment. Video recordings of such activity were analyzed with educators to discuss children's experiences and emergent behaviours. We contribute with a set of qualities that programming environments should have to be inclusive to children with different visual abilities, insights for the design of situated classroom activities, and evidence that inclusive tangible robot-based programming is worth pursuing.