IMPACT-SPEECH

Welcome!

IMPACT-SPEECH is a full-day workshop focused on identifying, measuring, preventing, and assessing bias in speech-enabled large language models and multimodal speech systems.

Co-located with EMNLP 2026 • Full-Day Workshop

Workshop Objective

SpeechLLM has accelerated the shift in human–computer interaction from predominantly text-based systems to speech-enabled and multimodal interfaces. These technologies are increasingly embedded in everyday applications, enabling more natural and accessible forms of interaction. However, this rapid progress has outpaced our understanding of the limitations, biases, and broader societal consequences of such systems. These systems have been shown to exhibit and even amplify biases related to accent, speaker identity, gender, socioeconomic status, and other factors. Such biases can lead to unequal performance, exclusion of certain user groups, and unintended harms in real-world applications. Despite growing research efforts across natural language processing, speech processing, and machine learning, work on bias remains fragmented, with limited integration across modalities and disciplines.

The IMPACT-SPEECH workshop aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, developers, and end-users from diverse fields, including speech processing, natural language processing, machine learning, social sciences, fairness, and ethics, to address these challenges. The workshop seeks to foster collaboration and build a coherent research agenda around bias in speechLLMs. Through interdisciplinary exchange, the workshop aims to advance methods for identifying, measuring, preventing, and assessing the consequences of bias, while examining the real-world consequences of these systems, particularly in terms of fairness, accessibility, ethical responsibility, and societal impacts.

Invited Speakers

Call for Papers

We invite contributions on topics of Interest that are central to the workshop theme.

Submission types:

• Archival papers: Research papers presenting original empirical or theoretical results
• Non-archival papers: Previously published, work-in-progress, and extended abstracts

Paper lengths:

• Long paper: Up to 8 pages
• Short paper: Up to 4 pages
• Extended Abstract: Up to 2 pages

All submission types are welcome at any length tier. Only Archival accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings. All papers will be assessed based on their relevance to the workshop themes. Archival submissions currently under review at other venues are permitted; however, to be formally included in the workshop proceedings, authors of accepted contributions must ensure their withdrawal from any other venue where the work remains under concurrent consideration.

Papers should be submitted in the ACL format following the ACL Author guidelines. The review process will be two-way anonymized; therefore, all identifying information must be removed from submissions.

Workshop Theme

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Fairness evaluation for speech models, including methods to measure disparities across accents, genders, speaker identities, socioeconomic groups, and other factors.
• Bias detection and benchmarking datasets for speech systems, including the development of datasets designed to identify and evaluate bias in speech recognition, speech generation, and speech-enabled LLMs.
• Ethical considerations in speech AI development, including responsible data collection, annotation practices, transparency, accountability, and governance of speech technologies.
• Evaluation of Speech LLMs for fairness and inclusivity, including methods to assess bias in speech understanding, speech generation, and multimodal speech-language systems.
• Cross-lingual and multilingual fairness, with a focus on challenges faced by underrepresented languages, dialects, and low-resource speech communities.
• Bias mitigation strategies for speech systems, including algorithmic approaches, training strategies, and fairness-aware adaptation techniques.
• Real-world impacts of biased speech technologies, including implications for accessibility, employment, digital inclusion, and human–AI interaction.
• Responsible deployment and governance of speech technologies, including best practices for monitoring, auditing, and mitigating bias in real-world applications.

Important Dates

• Direct paper submission deadline: 1 June 2026
• Pre-reviewed ARR commitment deadline: 25 June 2026
• Extended abstract: 25 June, 2026
• Notification of acceptance: 3 July, 2026
• Camera-ready paper due: 1 August, 2026
• Workshop date: TBD

Submission

Submission link: Coming soon

• ACL Rolling Review (ARR)
• OpenReview (Direct Submission)

Workshop Organizers

Program Committee