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These situations can be avoided easily if meeting and conference organizers are committed to planning accessible events. In fact, everyone can claim that commitment by planning a New Year’s Revolution to fight for more accessible meetings. Here’s how:
- Sending out evites is great if they are accessible to people who rely on screen readers. Make sure they, like all invitations, include a place for people to request accommodations for disabilities.
- In all documents use a strong sans serif font such as Arial. Stay away from bold, colors, underlines and italics. Stick with good contrast such as black print on a white background. Whenever possible make your default font size 14 pts. If you can’t, make large print documents available.
- Provide organizers’ contact information via phone, email, website, etc. Different people use different contact methods better than others.
- Whenever possible provide real time captioning at all events. This makes comprehension possible and easier not just for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, but also people with learning disabilities, ADHD, brain injuries and cognitive disabilities from other causes. It also helps people whose first language is not English.
- Choose the venue very carefully. Never take the word of venue management that it is accessible as some people define the term way too loosely. Before making a final decision visit the venue and take a good look. If the venue is in another city, find a disability organization and ask them if someone might look at the venue and let you know what they think. Here’s what to look for:
- Is it on a public transit line? Many people, especially people with disabilities, rely on public transit to get around town.
- Is there a clear, safe path from the bus stop to the front door?
- Is the front door easy to open? Better yet, does it open automatically?
- Is there a covered drop-off entry?
- Are there enough bathrooms to handle the number of participants you expect?...