Inclusion and accessibility are critical elements to incorporate into every stage of your event planning process. Not sure where to beginning? Each month we will share some tidbits to get you started!
Thursday, February 10, 2022
Scheduling Respectfully
Religious Holidays
It’s important to be mindful of major religious holidays and time zones before locking in a date and time for your event. Religious holidays can affect a person’s ability to participate in events as they may need to observe special worship obligation or partake in fasting, for example.
- Yale’s Chaplin’s Office recently published the Multifaith calendar for the academic year
- A more comprehensive calendar can be found on the ReligionFacts website
Time Zones
Time zones play a bigger role in virtual events as participants can log-in from anywhere in the world. Try to select a time that works with the majority of your audience and, if possible, make available a recording of the event to those who were not able to attend. See a time zone map here.
And speaking of time, we’ve learned from experience that weekend virtual events are not well-attended and that shorter virtual sessions (30 to 90 minutes) keep participants engaged and safe from the dreaded “Zoom fatigue”.
For more event guidance, please contact us at conferencesandevents@yale.edu.
Tuesday, March 8, 2022
Making Your Virtual and Hybrid Events More Accessible
Getting Started
An event or activity is considered accessible if all potential members of an audience can take full advantage of it without the need for other accommodations.
You are much less likely to run into issues down the road if you start brainstorming and implementing ways to make your events accessible from the very beginning stages of planning.
Quick Tips
- Think about accessibility before choosing an event platform for your virtual / hybrid events. Platforms may say they are accessible, but if they have not been tested widely, you should consider other options, like Cvent.
- Provide attendees with opportunities to request accommodations on registration materials. Along with this, be sure to also ask presenters if they require any accommodations.
Captioning
There are so many benefits to adding captions to your virtual / hybrid events, like:
- Making your event acessible to those who are deaf or hard-of-hearing
- Improving comprehension for those watching in their non-native language
- Increasing attendee engagement and information retention
- Allowing attendees to stay in the loop without audio
- Creating a full transcript post-event
Quick Tips
- If you don’t have access to Zoom captioning, you can use third-party, auto-generated captions with applications like Web Captioner and Speech Logger. You can also use captions in Microsoft PowerPoint, plus translation!
- Schedule a captioning test for the platform you will be using in advance of the actual event to make sure that captions are showing up in the right places and are legible.
- If you have the resources, choosing live captioning will result in a better attendee experience than using auto-generated captions. Live captioning entails hiring a professional to manually edit auto-captions as people are speaking, ensuring that the captions will be more accurate.
Thursday, April 7, 2022
Making Your Virtual and Hybrid Events More Accessible
Describe and Share
Another great way to make your virtual event accessible is by using more descriptive language when presenting/speaking to help those with visual impairments visualize what’s on the screen.
Also, be sure to always save and share the contents of the Chat Panel, especially if there were links and other resources shared.
Quick Tips
- Describe yourself physically in your introduction and ask others to do the same. This helps normalize the fact that not everyone is able to see the screen in the same way.
- Use the “spotlight” feature on Zoom to focus on speakers in a larger video view so that attendees can better see who is speaking.
Color Contrast
Higher contrast ratios between foreground and background components makes it easier for everyone to:
- Read text
- Interpret graphical elements
- Identify buttons, icons, menu bars, etc.
- Notice when the above components change
Black and white have the highest possible contrast ratio.
People with low vision often have difficulty with low contrast ratios. The problems can worsen if the person has a color vision deficiency that further hinders the perceived contrast.
Quick Tip
Be sure to use high contrast ratios in presentations and documents. There are many tools available to help you choose what combinations of colors will have better visibility. One such tool is the Color Contrast Analyzer in Accessibility Insights for Windows.
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
Making Your Virtual and Hybrid Events More Accessible
Event Documents
A document is considered accessible when it is as easily readable by a sighted reader as a low vision or non-sighted reader. Regardless of document format, be sure to keep accessibility top of mind from the very beginning stages of its creation to make the process easier for you and your team.
Whenever possible, left justify your text! It is much easier to read.
Quick Tips
- Use Optical Character Recognition for all of your PDFs. OCR is a technology that enables you to convert scanned documents, PDF files, or images into editable and searchable data. This tool ensures that your document will be easily read by someone using a screen-reader.
- Whenever possible, use meaningful hyperlinks in your documents so that screen-reader users can easily identify links instead of having their screen-reader dictate a long URL (which is difficult to follow!).
Staff Training
A knowledgeable and well-trained team can ensure that your virtual events are not unintentionally excluding participants with disabilities. Make accessibility training a priority for you and your team to learn the techniques and best practices needed to make your virtual events accessible to all.
Quick Tips
- There are many training options available so make sure you and your team complete the same sessions from the same training organization. This will keep you all on the same page and using the same techniques and guidelines.
-
Feeling overwhelmed trying to learn and do it all? Consider hiring an outside vendor specializing in virtual accessibility. With the accessibility portion of your event in knowledgeable hands, you will worry less and have more time to focus on other tasks.
For more event guidance, please contact us at conferencesandevents@yale.edu.