Here is a suggested checklist for organizers running on accessible online meetings. It was put together by our member the Swedish Disability Rights Federation
Preparing for online meetings
- Always ask for accessibility and find partners, suppliers for cooperation to improve quality of services.
- Communicate information to participants well in advance, also about how to participate.
- Allow users to express requirements for remote participation at registration for the meeting.
- Include accessibility in the budget.
- Check and test that the communication tools are accessible.
- Make sure that staff and users can operate the tools before the meeting. Assign a special online moderator and technical support at the meeting.
- Provide training sessions to users, moderators and staff
- Provide instructions to presenters before the meeting.
Moderating an online meeting
- Make time in the beginning of the meeting to make sure everybody is familiar with the meeting procedure.
- Describe the context, room and participants.
- Encourage online users to use chat to communicate any problems during the meeting.
- Stick to the structure of the agenda, make sure all participants say their names when they speak.
- Summarize discussions and every decision before moving on to the next agenda item.
After the meeting
- Communicate the real time text transcript from the meeting to all participants.
- Evaluate the accessibility by asking users.
- Share experiences on web and social media to increase knowledge and cooperation on how to improve the Right2Participation via Accessible Online meetings.
Resources
Guidelines
- The Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility and Disability
- Remote participants HUB resources (diplo)
- How to make presentations accessible to all (W3C)
Live streaming
- Livestream guideline (YouTube)
- Add subtitles and closed captions (YouTube)
- Accessible media playlist (examples and demos)
Reports and research
- Meaningful participation for people with disabilities by Special rapporteur Catalina Devandas, March 2016
- Towards a framework to understand mental and cognitive accessibility in a digital context (PDF), Licentiate thesis Stefan Johansson, March 2016
- Bibliography of interpreting and translations by University of Alicante Spain, 2001-2016
- Social media report by Media Access Australia, March 2016