Supporting Accessibility & Disability Justice Language

As GIA conceptualized and celebrates its first virtual convening, Power, Practice, Resilience | Remix’d, we have explored ways to make our annual gathering as accessible as possible. We strive to host inclusive, accessible keynotes, sessions, and workshops that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to fully engage.

Accessibility at #GIARemixd will include:

All keynote, breakout sessions, and workshops will have live captioning (CART) provided. Roundtables will be captioned by request.
To honor privacy and the safe space of our convening, only keynotes will be recorded and available later on in GIA’s YouTube channel.
Accommodation requests can be completed during registration. If you have additional requests or did not make your accommodation requests during registration, email us at gia@giarts.org!
Pre-recorded media will be captioned in English when appropriate.
GIA has worked with speakers and facilitators and shared best practices to create accessible presentations and sessions.

Additionally, here are recommendations for how to prepare for the convening while supporting disability justice and language justice at the 2020 GIA Virtual Convening.

Throughout the convening:

When speaking, announce your name, share your pronouns, and consider describing yourself if using your camera. Some participants may be blind or have low vision and visual descriptors are essential.
Recognize that participants are primarily joining from personal spaces. They may be caring for children or another person while also attending the conference, which may result in background noises or the need to suddenly step away.
Try to find a balance between muted and unmuted time in breakout sessions and roundtables. While background noise can sometimes be distracting, it can also be a cue for understanding, support, questioning, or other reactions to what is being discussed.
Speak loudly, clearly, and at a moderate pace so participants, captioners, and translators can hear you.
Be patient and ensure that only one person speaks at a time.
Understand that language is sensitive, imperfect, and that everyone has their own preferences.
Avoid using ableist and other harmful language. More information can be learned from Self Defined.
Recognize the difference between identity-first and people-first language, especially when discussing disability. More information on this can be learned from Cara Liebowitz's “I am Disabled: On Identity-First Versus People-First Language,” on The Body is Not an Apology blog, or discussed in the Summer 2020 issue of the GIA Reader.

Preparing for and presenting during your sessions:

When preparing for your session ensure slides, prep materials, and other electronic materials are accessible:

Provide alternative text for images and mark up headings.
Make text and important visuals big enough to be read on any size screen, this includes graphics on slides, videos, pictures, and any relevant visual materials.
Use an easy-to-read font such as Arial, Calibri, Century Gothic, Helvetica, Tahoma or Verdana, which are all sans serif fonts. Avoid fancy, stylized fonts that are difficult to read.
Use sufficient color contrast: We recommend using light text on a dark background as the Zoom platform defaults to a dark color setting. See Color contrast guidelines and evaluation tools for more detailed guidance on this.
Make media fully accessible — including audio and video used in sessions, and recordings of sessions provided afterwards: for example, provide captions and/or transcripts as appropriate for audio, and provide audio description for videos as needed. For additional detail, see guidelines for digital media, which includes specific guidance such as providing an alternative for audio-only content like podcasts.

During presentations ensure the session space is an accessible, inclusive, and respectful environment:

Speak loudly, clearly, and at a moderate pace so participants, captioners, and translators can hear you.
Avoid or explain jargon, acronyms, and idioms, for example, expressions such as “raising the bar” can be interpreted literally by some people with cognitive disabilities and can be confusing. Additionally, do not assume everyone know what your acronym means, explain the meaning and use and allow for reminders throughout your presentation/discussion/session.
Give participants time to process information. Pause between topics. When you ask if anyone has questions, recognize that folks will need different amounts of time to process their thoughts or to form their thoughts into words. Be conscious of people with cognitive disabilities, different learning styles, and the wide spectrum of participation requested in virtual meeting spaces.
Additionally, understand that there is a wide variety of ways that people communicate, process information, and express themselves. If you mention something verbally, follow it up with a written message.
If you are comfortable, please use your camera, especially if you will be speaking as body language, facial expressions, and lip reading are important to many people. Be careful not to face away from the camera/audience to read projected material.
Edit your name to include your pronouns by selecting “participants” ➔ find yourself ➔ select “more” ➔ select “rename.”
Use a microphone when speaking, most computers have built-in microphones, however these can pick up a lot of ambient noise. We recommend using a separate microphone, this can include headphones with microphone, noise-canceling headsets, or a stand-alone microphone device.
Ensure that all relevant sound is audible through the sound system, for example, if a question or comment is shared in a chat box or other written way, read aloud before replying.
Cover all displayed text, this means say all of the information that is on each slide. This does not mean that you have to read the slide exactly as it is. It just means that you cover the visual information in what you say. However, if there is a lot of text on the slide that you realize you do not need to read, consider eliminating this text or incorporating this information in another way, such as through supplemental materials.
If using supplemental materials, ensure that these are legible. This means having documents that have alt-text, text size which can be changed, uses high-contrast, and/or can be read via screen reader. For example, neither a digital photocopy of a book nor a graphic without alt-text will not be readable by everyone.
Describe pertinent parts of graphics, videos, and other visuals. Describe visuals to the extent needed to understand the presentation. You do not need to describe — and consider editing out — decorative images or graphics.
Describe other visual information, for example, if a speaker asks participants to raise their hands to indicate an affirmative response, the speaker should then describe the visual response: “About half raised their hand.”
Be patient with the tech if you notice any issues with folks accessing captioning or the technology is not working correctly, please let the Zoom Room Tech know.

Please feel free to check out these more comprehensive resources: