"Diversity Doesn't Stick Without Inclusion”
The purpose of this document is to create a comprehensive overview of things that can help make your conference or event more accessible to everyone, and under-represented groups in particular. It is not meant as a list of requirements for every conference or event. Please read it carefully and you may be surprised about the many things you can do without spending money (for more on the topic see the section Financial considerations). Also don't consider it “all or nothing”, taking steps that fit your budget is better than not doing anything at all.
Diversity represents the full spectrum of human demographic differences -- race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, socio-economic status or physical disability. A lot of companies consider lifestyles, personality characteristics, perspectives, opinions, family composition, education level or tenure elements of diversity, too.
As a starting point to assess diversity, you need to quantify the various constituencies -- demographic, social and otherwise.
Inclusion has to be understood as very different from diversity because simply having a wide roster of demographic characteristics won't make a difference to an organization's bottom line unless the people who fall into any one demographic feel welcomed.
Inclusion refers to a cultural and environmental feeling of belonging.
It can be assessed as the extent to which people are valued, respected, accepted and encouraged to fully participate in the organization.
Diversity Doesn't Stick Without Inclusion. As the Harvard Business Review article put it: "In the context of the workplace, diversity equals representation. Without inclusion, however, the crucial connections that attract diverse talent, encourage their participation, foster innovation, and lead to business growth won't happen."
So, it's true that diversity and inclusion work together to affect outcomes.
But understanding them as fundamentally different things is essential, because it separates and clarifies the primary challenge for leaders: understanding the implication that demographic variety has on business performance, and creating an environment that invites the full spectrum of employee perspectives and maximizes them.
Unconscious biases are shortcuts our brains take in processing information. We are all guilty of bias. Unconscious biases are learned and deeply ingrained stereotypes about other people based on traits like gender, social class, race, and height and weight. These hidden judgments can extend to a person’s educational level, disability, sexuality, accent, social status, and job title. While unconscious biases are automatic and unintentional, they can influence behavior.
Useful resources:
- Unconscious Bias @ work by Dr. Brian Welle, Director of Peeple Analytics at Google
- Unconscious Bias In The Workplace: You Can't Afford To Ignore It by Laura Berger
We can’t expect underrepresented individuals to show up when their daily lives are filled with harassment, fear and unequal treatment. Simply opening up an opportunity to broader public doesn’t constitute an inclusion strategy.
Often, diversity efforts are focused solely on gender (concentrating on including white women, to be specific). While it’s reasonable to start somewhere, diversity and inclusion are nowhere near one dimensional.
Read more about the Dimensions of Diversity.
Having used sexist language does not mean that the person who used it had sexist intent. However, continuing to include sexist language, and fighting against a change away from sexist language, has sexist effects regardless of intent. Lots of communication habits are deeply ingrained: changing the way you write or speak does sometimes take extra effort. With practice, it does get easier.
Knowing your audience is critical to ensuring that meeting room layouts, menus, and other elements of the event will allow every participant to engage fully. Make sure your registration materials and forms ask specifically about your audience's needs and accommodations.
What you write and what you say can enhance the dignity of people with disabilities and promote positive attitudes about their abilities. Examples of Affirmative Phrases (Do use) and Negative Phrases (Don't use).
Another useful list of words to avoid is here and here.
Avoid using male pronouns ("he", "him", "his") as a collective term in circumstances that describe people of any, or multiple, genders.
When talking to or about an individual, again avoid the use of gendered pronouns - use gender-neutral pronouns ("they", "them", "their") wherever possible. If a person has directly made clear what pronouns should be used, e.g. by directly stating (verbally or written) or displaying pronoun badges, respectfully use those pronouns. Do not assume people's pronouns from their presentation or your perception of them.
It is always better to use gender-neutral pronouns than to accidentally use the wrong pronouns i.e. to "misgender" someone.
More resources containing guidelines for inclusive language:
For example, avoid these words when addressing groups: Guys, Ladies & Gentlemen. Instead use: Folks, Everybody, People. More examples of nonsexist language.
A few aspects of an enforceable Code of Conduct are:
- List of unacceptable behaviors (“be nice to each other” doesn’t cut it)
- Specific guidelines on how the Code of Conduct will be enforced
- Detailed description of ways to report in person, online and anonymously
- Organizer contact information
- Emergency numbers and addresses within the vicinity of the venue
More information about Code of Conducts:
This means delegates/attendees, speakers, volunteers, sponsors, exhibitors, organizers and venue-staff.
It is important to communicate about the Code of Conduct visibly and often.
Share contact details of identifiable persons (cell phone number, e-mail address, twitter handle, etc.)
A person or a team who is responsible for assisting with any incidents that may arise.
There are coaches that can provide professional training for incident response handling:
Ensure not only the Code of Conduct ‘response team’ but the entire staff is well aware of precautions, reporting and the process set in place to ensure participants safety.
Venues include the conference venue, conference social venue, speaker’s diner, networking meetup and all other venues that are part of the conference experience.
Overall accessibility checklist for existing facilities from ADA: Checklist for Readily Achievable Barrier Removal. Also available in PDF.
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Large amphitheater room
If you have presentations in amphitheater, ensure there are spaces available for a wheelchair user to "park" themselves to follow the presentation. Ensure entrances to the amphitheater aren't at the high end of the room, and if they are, that there is a low gradient ramp to be able to go down. Avoid placing the wheelchair seating area at the back of the room only. -
Theater set-up
- Minimum widths for center and side aisles, and for the distance between accessible and standard rows
- Remove two chairs for each mobility device space.
- Offer multiple choices of where to sit. At a minimum set the front, back and middle rows accessible to ensure attendee choice of seats in the room.
- See drawings in pdf: Theater style layout and detailed layout.
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Classroom set-up
Same pointers, see drawing of Accessible classroom set-up -
Round Table set-up
Same pointers, see drawing of Accessible Round Table set-up -
Set-up of Dining Hall
If you offer meals, such as lunch, plan the layout of the dining hall carefully. Ensure there is enough space between the tables (including with people seating at chairs) for a wheelchair user or someone using a guide dog to be able to navigate through. Otherwise you risk forcing people with limited mobility to sit near the doors, or be unable to reach the buffet table.
People who are deaf or hard of hearing may require the assistance of a sign language interpreter to benefit from the presentations. Hiring interpreters to cover all sessions may turn out to be cost prohibitive if you have a particularly large event. Or you may even have a hard time finding interpreters in your area to cover all events. Where possible, all efforts should be made to ensure interpreters are available, if you know that you will have attendees that need interpreters.
Ask if the facility has experience offering Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) services, or if they have a local contact who can provide this service if needed. What is CART? Basically someone is typing what the presenter says and the transcription is projected on a screen near the main display screen. This has the added advantage that you end up with a transcript of the presentation that you can use to create subtitles for your videos (more on that later), or simply to provide for the attendees after the presentation.
For non-real-time transcription/subtitling see 13. Subtitling of videos
Find out in advance if your facility has any assistive listening systems or devices available, how the meeting room is wired and equipped for sound amplification, and if there are additional costs for accessibility equipment and associated services.
- Hallways should be wide and clear of obstructions. This will help people with sight impairments, particularly if they use a cane for mobility.
- Preferred seating will be reserved for the visually impaired.
- Also see instructions on slides/presentations in chapter “Speakers” and instructions on printed material in chapter “Designs & printed Materials”.
Make sure that all event and facility staff understand that service dogs are allowed in places of public accommodation, including hotels, convention centers, restaurants, and other venues that serve food. Service dogs are specifically trained to assist people with all types of disabilities.
Service animals may need space similar to mobility devices (plan for two seating spaces for each person bringing a service animal).
Point out in your materials any places that can be used as “relief areas” for service animals.
A gender neutral restroom is important for attendees who do not feel comfortable choosing between binary-gendered restrooms.
Conference childcare allows parents and guardians to attend your event and more fully participate than they would be able to if they had to primarily care for a child. Interesting read: Helpful thoughts for Conference Organizers
A room containing baby changing bench and other baby facilities (like microwave to heat food).
A quiet room is a comfortable room where talking and other interactions with other attendees aren’t allowed.
An area containing a washroom and private cubicle(s) (possible to lock from the inside) where people of all faiths can pray or meditate in a peaceful environment.
Corridors on the floor marked with tape in which people could move, but shouldn’t be stationary, allowing clear travel paths through the event. Important for people with anxiety of crowds.
- If the presenter is expected to speak on a stage, is there a ramp or level entry to get on the ramp. If there isn't, find another room for wheelchair using speakers. Don't offer to lift them and their chair bodily up on stage. It is neither dignified nor safe!
- Are there accessible bathrooms near the conference and dining rooms? This includes having stalls large enough to permit a wheelchair to go in, as well as sinks and taps that can be reached from a wheelchair. Accessible bathrooms should be in near proximity, but sometimes accessible bathrooms are only available on different floors of the venue than the one where the conference is being held. If that is the case, ensure appropriate signage and information so people who need accessible toilets will know how to get to them.
- Hallways should be wide and clear of obstructions. This will help mobility for wheelchair users.
- Registration desk - if it is a high surface, offer an alternative location for wheelchair users or people of short stature to be able to interact with staff.
Outlining what to expect becomes crucial to welcoming anyone with hearing, sight impairments or mobility issues. Examples:
- Format of provided materials
- Communication Aids
- Mobility devices
- Accompanied by service animal or personal assistant
- Dietary restrictions / Food allergies/intolerances
In addition to a check-box (where you can ask “What do you need to fully participate?”), leave a space to write-in preferences and sensitivities including food allergies, chemical sensitivities. Follow-up to clarify individual needs and advise how they will be accommodated.
Collect information about your attendee’s dietary needs during the registration process. It’s the responsibility of attendees to notify you of their needs in advance so you can make appropriate plans. More information on Dietary requirements in Chapter Catering.
Service animals may need space similar to mobility devices (plan for two seating spaces for each person bringing a service animal).
Point out in your materials any places that can be used as “relief areas” for service animals.
A fixed amount of free tickets could be given out to individuals from underrepresented groups, who couldn’t attend otherwise. If you do, consider using diversitytickets.org. Diversitytickets.org is a Travis Foundation which helps conference organisers reach out to minority groups. You can add your event/conference, specify the number of free tickers and once the event is approved, it becomes publicly listed on the website and applicants can apply for it.
You can offer an unlimited set of “Diversity Tickets” that can be purchased by anyone and donated to the Scholarship Program pool.
You can offer students a major discount to attend a single event.
Speakers can help making the conference more accessible by adhering to a few accessibility rules for their slides and presentation.
- Use a sans serif font (e.g., Arial)
- Use a large font size -- at least 22 point
- Use a dark text font and a light-colored background
- Text on a slide should have nothing behind it (no watermarks or images)
- Provide “alternative text” descriptions for all images, pictures, graphics, tables, etc.
- Use a PowerPoint theme to structure your presentation, with only short sentences and/or bulleted phrases (about 4 lines of text/40 words per slide).
- Avoid using epilepsy-inducing videos and animations
Detailed information can be found in the article Best practices for making PowerPoint presentations accessible.
Use lasers to point only; resist the urge to wiggle the light around the screen (this can be problematic for people with a variety of conditions, including vision disabilities), and turn it off when not in use.
Always use the microphone; individuals may have hearing aids or may be using an assistive listening system that cannot pick up your words if you do not use the microphone. This has nothing to do with how loud you speak or how well you project.
- If you ask the entire audience a question, offer several ways to respond, including raising hands, calling out, standing, nodding; this will facilitate participation for those who may not be able to raise hands, speak, or stand.
- Following the response to an audience question, let the audience know the count or estimate, such as “about half responded yes“.
If you offer transportation from the airport and/or hotel to the venue, consider whether or not the shuttles are wheelchair accessible. If not, think of alternate solutions: Can you organize taxi vouchers for your speakers who are using wheelchairs? Can you rent an accessible van to organize pick up and drop off?
Don’t forget to ask your speakers about their dietary needs and/or food allergies and intolerances. See chapter “Catering” for more information.
Catering does not only include conference food, but also (if applicable) speaker’s dinner and breakfast at the hotel.
The number and variety of special diet requests has grown significantly in recent years. These needs include attendees with food allergies and intolerances, as well as those on special diets for medical, health, religious or other reasons.
Useful document from Webster University with definitions and descriptions.
Avoid high-risk allergens, such as peanuts and shellfish. Other common foods or ingredients that can cause allergic reactions or other problems for some people include eggs, cow’s milk, wheat and gluten, fish, tree nuts and soy.
For common restrictions, e.g., vegetarianism, expect that people will eat that food even if they don’t have that restriction. Have the bulk of the food catering to the common restriction, and only a small amount of food that those attendees can’t eat. For example, if your event is 50% vegetarian, cater as if 80% of attendees are vegetarian. Then there is plenty of food for the people with the restriction and other attendees get to enjoy it as well. It is an uncommon pleasure for people with dietary restrictions to be over-catered to.
Develop a plan to provide attendees with food items that meet their needs.
Avoid items that are difficult to cut or handle (such as lobster in shells).
- Buffet service tables should be no higher than 36 inches (91 cm).
- Set plates, cups, and other service items, as well as food and beverage items, at table height, within reach of people using mobility devices and those of short stature. Avoid food set-ups with multiple tiers.
- Set buffet tables in straight lines (avoiding patterns will reduce wait times).
- Keep chafing dishes for hot food (also known as “chafers”) as low as possible. Avoid gel fuel heaters, since they are a frequent source of reaction for those with chemical sensitivities.
- Avoid soup as a buffet menu option (it can be difficult for some people to serve or carry); serve soup at tables.
- Provide additional servers to assist attendees. Buffet style service is difficult for many people with various types of disabilities. Servers may offer assistance describing items, reaching for food, and carrying plates and drinks to tables.
- Attendees may have personal assistants with them to help get food and/or eat. Assistants who are eating may need to go through the buffet line twice.
- Consider setting extra buffet lines if many attendees have disabilities, as they may need a little more time to go through the line.
Intoxication (usually drunkenness) both genuinely lowers inhibitions and provides people with an excuse for acting badly even if they genuinely knew better. Additionally, intoxication affects people’s ability to defend themselves, and some intoxicants including alcohol cause amnesia. Given this risk, decide whether you want to have alcohol available at your event.
If you do have alcohol, make it clear to attendees that the anti-harassment policy applies to the entire event, including when alcohol is served. Additionally, make sure attendees know that/when alcohol will be available so they can prepare accordingly.
At the event, make sure there are an appropriate number of sober staff on hand to assist with any problems if they arise. Make sure to clearly identify the staff members at the beginning of the event. Read more on serving alcohol at social events.
The purpose of a name badge is to identify people easily. As such, it should be easy to read! You should use a large, easy to read font. Sans serif fonts are generally regarded as a good choice. Make the name stand out and contrast well - avoid grey on grey! A font size of 18 points or bigger if you can make it fit would make a difference.
Consider allowing people to define or even write in their preferred name, rather than simply printing their legal name and do not require photo ID but rather use a QR code send by e-mail to allow people to identify themselves. In order to normalize the use of preferred pronouns, names and pronouns should be on the same item to prevent people who "disagree" with needing to specify pronouns from ignoring and not using such things when they are offered. Alternatively consider providing pre-made buttons/stickers if this isn't possible.
It may make sense to provide stickers for people to denote things like "first time attendee", "ask me about [ - space to write in- ]", "talk to me" to foster more interaction between attendees.
Providing stickers or different lanyards (colors and patterns) to enable people to choose if they want photos taken of themselves and how these may be used. For inspiration see here. Make sure that these identifying features are large enough to be seen post-event while processing photos for publication.
- Use a strong, simple font and avoid fine or ‘fancy’ fonts. Minimum font size should be 18 points.
- Text should begin at the left margin (centered text is harder to read).
- Narrow text columns rather than wide ones, and right margins that are ragged, not justified.
- One-and-one-half or double spacing between lines.
- Spacing between letters that is not too tight or too loose.
- Lower case letters with initial capitals rather than all capitals.
- Use dot leaders for tables of contents.
- Lines of text should be no longer than 6 inches (15cm). Anything longer will not track well for people who use magnifiers.
- Black lettering on white, non-shiny paper. The best contrast with the least glare is bold type on yellow paper (white paper can produce too much glare). If white paper needs to be used, use an off-white paper that will still give good contrast while producing less glare than white.
- The paper should not be larger than standard Letter (8 1/2" x 11") or A4 (21 x 29,7cm).
Color vision deficiency, also known as color blindness, is the decreased ability to see color or differences in color. About 8% of people have some form of color vision deficiency. So if your running a conference for say 200 attendees, up to 16 will see your design different then intended.
Design pointers for better color accessibility
- Use both colors and symbols - don't rely on color alone and use symbols to convey the message
- Keep it minimal - fewer colors leads to fewer instances of confusion
- Use patterns and textures to show contrast
- Use a range of clearly contrasting colors - there are several tests available on the web, for example Coblis where you can upload your design and the algorithms transform the image into the same image as seen by people with different kinds of color vision deficiencies (red-, green-, blue- or completely colorblind).
- Avoid bad color combos - not only the well-known combination of Red & Green, but also Green & Brown, Blue & Purple, Green & Blue, Light Green & Yellow, Blue & Grey, Green & Grey, Green & Black
Read more on Types of Color Blindness. It shows the visual effects of color vision deficiency very well.
Your website should be accessible. This means that it can be used by people who have different abilities, and may rely on assistive technologies. The guidelines here would be to adhere to WCAG 2.0. Here are a few things to consider:
- Can you navigate your site using only the keyboard?
- Can text be resized without losing information?
- Are links easily identifiable?
- Is the color contrast sufficient? See pointers for designing here 9.3 Color vision deficiency
- Do all informative images have alternate text?
- Are labels associated with form inputs?
Schedules are often complex information delivered through one or several HTML data tables. Ensure that these tables are coded according to standards so assistive technologies can interact programmatically with them. This is especially true if you are running several tracks in several rooms on different days.
List clearly what attendees can expect (and what not to expect).
Use (stock) photos of people from underrepresented groups in professional settings. Showing only white males reinforces the stereotypes.
- Appoint a response team to assist with any incidents that may arise.
- Ensure not only the Code of Conduct committee but the entire staff is well aware of precautions, reporting and the process set in place to ensure participants safety.
If alcohol is served during the event, make sure there are an appropriate number of sober staff on hand to assist with any problems if they arise. Make sure to clearly identify the staff members at the beginning of the event.
We sometimes hear (and maybe use) the argument that speaker line-ups that fail to adequately represent women are not the product of systemic discrimination, but rather an inevitably frequent occurrence in an industry as male-dominated as ours. On the face of it, this makes intuitive sense. As human beings are notoriously bad with probabilities, it's safer to use this Conference Diversity Distribution Calculator. It shows that in an unbiased selection, you’re significantly more likely to see more than the expected number of women than none at all.
- Fempire: a list of women tech speakers & organizers
- 1,000 Tech and Science Speakers Who Aren't Cis Men
- WomenTalkTech community
Make sure you have a diverse team reviewing the CfP abstract as this will stimulate a more diverse selection of talks.
Use a review systems that allows for concealing the author identities from the reviewers. When you use this system, it's important to not only conceal the name of the author but also the details of additional information you may have asked on the CfP form like links to video, slides and reviews of the talk. This blind review helps to combat the unconscious bias we all have, see 2.1 Combat unconscious Bias
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Interesting blog post by Julia Evans about how Anonymous talk reviews worked at !!Con.
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Interesting article by Shira Shamban, sharing her experience of running CFPs aiming to increase participation of women and other minorities as speakers: How to run an inclusive CFP and have a more diverse line-up of speakers?
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powerful article by Karl L. Hughes about the lack of diversity in speaker line-up and why Conference Organizers have to help fix this. On Diversity in Conference Speakers. The article explores the problem and presents solutions.
For people with hearing impairments, captions are the only way to enjoy, and benefit from, the video content. Even for those able to lipread, a large chunk of video content features people speaking off camera, or sound overlay over images or other visuals.
Additional benefits of subtitling video:
- up to 85% of users watches video content with no sounds
- about 65% of people are visual learners
Find more information and reviews of free video captioning tools. A summary of some of the findings:
- Google Doc Voice-typing Tool(combined with Soundflower)
Super easy to use, however, the accuracy of using microphone input might be affected by the surrounding noise. A way to get around this problem is to use Soundflower. It's about 85% accurate and supports multiple languages and accents - Amara
Directly syncs your subtitles with YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and Twitter without extra steps of download/upload (if you own the channel) and easy to use for collaborative translation after captioning. Used by TED and Udacity. - YouTube Automatic Subtitles
It’s also super easy to use. If your video is in English, they will start the auto-captioning at the time you upload your video.
Accuracy of speech recognition
Speech recognition accuracy can be as high as 90% when your video has one person in a quiet location speaking clearly using simple terms. In these cases, you should still allow time for cleaning up the file because even at the high quality level of 90%, this still means one in every ten words is wrong and that can grossly impact comprehension.
Provide sufficient time between talks, events etc. Remember it can take more time to navigate a venue with a mobility device, especially if it is crowded. So consider the suitable time between talks/events for your conference.
Some of the things suggested here cost money: some more, some less. These costs may seem prohibitively high given the tight budget of conferences.
Low conference ticket prices are an important factor to enable inclusion, so simply increasing ticket prices to enable a child day care may not be in the best interests of inclusion efforts.
Also note once again, it's ok to initially focus on the topics that do not cost money and then later take the next steps.
Here are some concrete ideas to finance diversity and inclusion efforts at your conference:
- Bring costs down by asking for volunteers
- Maybe someone knows sign language in your community?
- Maybe volunteers are willing to help staff registration to help with handing out pens so people can write in their names on their badges as well as handout and explain pronoun buttons?
- Set up specific sponsor packages
- Allow attendees to optionally donate when buying their ticket
- Potentially give them a small token of appreciation like a button, a free drink ticket at the conference party ...
- Set up an (all year) sponsor fund to collect donations
A slightly more out of the box approach could be to save money that usually goes towards speakers. Some of the suggestions can have the bonus effect at getting more people involved in speaking in public which is also great for diversity. Also keep in mind that while conferences are traditionally very focused on having speakers share their knowledge, a very significant (if not even the most significant) aspect of conferences is networking.
- Focus more on regional speakers to reduce travel costs
- Allow for more user generated content by providing an un-conference track. The focus of these talks is about connecting people working on similar topics, so a talk about “what do I do at work” is totally fine and can be a great stepping stone towards a future talk on a more specific topic.
- How to make your conference accessible – and why you should care! - Nicolas Steenhout
- Accessible Meetings, events & conferences Guide - ADA Hospitality
- Inclusion has to be proactive - Karolina Szczur
- Example accessibility statement - CSSConf AU 2018
- Nonsexist language - Geek Feminism Wiki
- Inclusive event catering - AdaCamp Toolkit
- How to write a great code of conduct - Uplift
- When a Code of Conduct becomes harmful - Karolina Szczur
- How to design for color Blindness - Robyn Collinge
- The Importance of Subtitling: Accessibility for All - Amara Subtitling Blog
- 20 Tips for a More Accessible Event - Shawna McKinley