See the accessibility related recommendations by UK Home Office
Ask the person with the accesibility issues if they would like to sit in front, close to the speakers etc.
- Designate a helper to specifically pay attention to the attendee with a hearing issue to make sure that they get all the information.
- Introduce the designated helpers in the beginning to the attendee and encourage them to reach out to the helper to get the missed information.
- See more recommendations
- Make sure that the venue has an accessibility map
- You can check wheelmap (if the venue is not annotated on the map, you should consider adding the annotation).
- Make sure that there is ramp or an elevator to support people in wheelchairs.
- Make sure that the isles are clean of anything that may be blocking them from moving.
- Tables and desks should be placed in a way so that there is room for a wheelchair to pass between them.
- When having a conversation, make sure to talk to them at their eye level.
- Check the United Spinal’s Disability Etiquette Publication that offers tips on interacting with people with disabilities.
- Also, check this Disability Etiquette for what not to say to someone in a wheelchair
- Most people who have low vision have some functional vision. This can fluctuate during the day and with different lighting conditions so do not assume what they can or cannot see. If you want to know how much they can see, ask them: “Can you see alright, or would you like me to help you?”
- Keep the text on screen large and check by asking everyone. Helpers can move to the end of the classroom to help you adjust the text and screen.
- Check the building and room can accommodate service animals if needed.
- See more recommendations
- Use colour pairs (slides, post-it notes, text, etc.) that are colour blind safe.
- A few pairs that should be avoided
- Green & Red.
- Green & Brown.
- Blue & Purple.
- Green & Blue.
- Light Green & Yellow.
- Blue & Grey.
- Green & Grey.
- Green & Black.
- When requested by the participants, make sure that a designated quiet space for lactation or breastfeeding is provided.
- Make sure that these spaces are not public rooms (e.g. kitchen, common staff room) or toilet
- Whenever possible (if the location allows), and if you budget allow, set aside some money to support participants who are new parents and might need to travel with their infants. When this is not possible, clearly state on the workshop website.
- Create Bingo sheet to facilitate interaction.
- Run an icebreaker that prompted by questions following clustering or sorting of participants that will require them to interact with each other.
- Assign them in groups and ask them to introduce themselves to each other and share their motivation to attend the event.
- If you have new ideas, add them to this document by sending a pull-request or an email.
- Make sure that the training room has excellent audio support; and dedicated speakers that can cover the entire room (for e.g. daisy chained Jabra’s, etc.).
- Request relevant demographic information from the participants in the registration form and share them with the admins (anonymized) gender distribution, highest education - Ph.D., postdoc, group leader, research topics - medical, industry, hobbies.
- Arrange two large screens to access the multiple channels (Zoom, 2 google documents, etc.) at the same time while teaching.
- Use headphones with isolated microphones.
- Enlarge the shared browser window to a minimum 120%
- Helpers should be aware of the available “published history”, in case participants being left behind.
- The Carpentries Instructor Training Chapter on Motivation
- Supporting someone with hearing loss
- Supporting someone with low vision
- United Spinal’s Disability Etiquette Publication
- Find wheelchair accessible places with https://wheelmap.org
- UK Home Office recommendations to improve accessibility