The Rehabilitation Engineering & Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA) is calling for proposals for its bicoastal 2026 conference.
Next year’s RESNA conference will be held in collaboration with the Abilities International Accessibility Conference, the new Abilities Expo series designed for seating and wheeled mobility professionals.
RESNA will hold its conference at the Long Beach, Calif., venue on March 26-27. The second half of the conference takes place in Edison, N.J., April 30-May 1.
The submission deadline for the Developers’ Showcase — to be held only at the Long Beach conference — is Jan. 12, 2026. The Showcase is open to engineers, designers and consumers who want to share their assistive technology innovations with their peers. It features “new products, products under development, and products that are currently being enhanced or redesigned,” RESNA said in an Oct. 24 bulletin. “All types of assistive technology products are welcome, including hardware, software, standards or guidelines, and instruments or tools. Products may be open source or commercial, but may not currently be available on the market.”
RESNA also announced submission deadlines for scientific papers (oral presentations or poster): Nov. 17, 2025, for the Long Beach conference; and Jan. 12, 2026, for the Edison conference.
The Student Design Challenge, held only in Edison, provides undergrad, masters-level, and terminal clinical doctorate students “an opportunity to create, develop and showcase assistive technology designs that help people with a variety of disabilities to live more independent lives.” The submission deadline is Feb. 2, 2026.
The Student Scientific Paper competition will also take place only at the Edison conference. “Full time students in either an undergraduate or a graduate academic program are encouraged to participate!” RESNA said. “The winning submissions of the competition will be presented in a special Platform Session. All other submissions that are accepted will be asked to present their work as a poster.” The deadline for submissions is Feb. 2, 2026.
