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LOTI’s Inclusive Online Meeting Checklist:

1 - Design for accessibility and inclusivity

✓ Ask if participants need any reasonable adjustments - and put them in place.

✓ Assign dedicated roles for managing workshops

2 - Make people feel seen and welcome

✓ Invite people to introduce themselves in the chat

✓ Welcome participants by name

✓ Consider running a virtual ice-breaker

3 - Set inclusive expectations about participation

✓ Set expectations that everyone’s views are welcome, no matter their role or seniority

✓ Be clear about what will be recorded and shared afterwards and with whom

✓ Invite participants to leave their camera on, but recognise personal choice

4 - Design for extroverts and introverts

✓ Share content in advance

✓ Facilitate participation through the chat - with a dedicated role to manage it

✓ Ask participants what they hope to get out of the session at the start

✓ Leave time for silence

5 - Keep tools simple, open and anonymous

✓ Use online collaboration tools simply

✓ Check tool settings allow access without logins

✓ Enable participants to contribute ideas anonymously where possible

6 - Share recordings and summaries of meetings

✓ Share exactly what you said you would

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1 - Design for accessibility and inclusivity

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Design for accessibility and inclusivity

✓ Ask if participants need any reasonable adjustments - and put them in place.

Just as we ask about guests’ accessibility requirements in advance of physical meetings (e.g. wheelchair access), it’s important to consider participants’ needs for taking part in online meetings.

For advice on how to make sessions accessible to people with various disabilities, see the great advice provided by:

NHS England: Making meetings accessible
AbilityNet: How to host an accessible online meeting.

Example considerations include:

Enabling captions / offering sign-language interpreters
Encouraging presenters to use a headset or quality microphone to ensure audio clarity
Ensuring slides are clear and uncluttered
Simplifying screen sharing to show only the speaker
Describing the content of slides - especially graphs and images.
Building in predictable breaks into longer sessions.

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Design for accessibility and inclusivity

✓ Assign dedicated roles for managing workshops

When running an online session, LOTI assigns the following roles to team members. All have a part to play in ensuring meetings are accessible and inclusive. One person can sometimes perform more than one role.

Host	Chat Facilitator	Presenter
Leads and chairs the overall session to ensure it stays on track and achieves its objectives. Focuses on setting inclusive expectations and facilitating open discussion. Checks slides in advance to ensure accessibility of content. Shares any pre-reading in advance.	Focuses on the chat function. Reminds participants to introduce themselves in the chat. Welcomes late arrivals and informs them which agenda item is being covered. Shares useful links. Highlights key comments and questions to the Host or Presenter.	Delivers content during their specific section of the meeting. Ensures their slides are clear and accessible. Provides slides and relevant documents in advance for pre-reading.
Screen Sharer & Recorder	Tech Support	Note Taker
Shares screen to ensure that the Host and Presenters can more clearly see participants. Records the video where required.	Admits participants to the conference. Ensures that breakout rooms are managed seamlessly. Checks that any collaboration tools have correct settings to be open and anonymous.	Focuses on capturing notes for sharing afterwards. Helps summarise each discussion during the session itself to support the Host and Presenters in synthesising participants’ contributions.

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Make people feel seen and welcome

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Make people feel seen and welcome

✓ Invite people to introduce themselves in the chat.

✓ Welcome participants by name.

With online events, we miss out on the initial greetings and acknowledgements of each person’s presence that takes place with in-person events.

This can leave some participants with a sense that no one would even notice if they weren’t there.

The Host can address this by:

Inviting participants to introduce themselves. In small meetings this can be done verbally. In large meetings, ask everyone to introduce themselves in the chat.
Greeting people by name as they arrive - or for larger sessions, looking at the list of participants, and saying out loud that they note who is present and welcome them.
Inviting participants to come off mute to clap or otherwise acknowledge the contributions of guest presenters.

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Make people feel seen and welcome

✓ Consider running a virtual ice-breaker

Consider running an ice-breaker exercise. �

Pros: They can be useful not only for helping participants learn more about each other, but also to warm them up to more actively engage in the session. E.g. you could ask some questions that involve people raising their virtual or physical hands, or leaving a comment in the chat.

Cons: Be aware that some people find icebreaker activities uncomfortable - particularly any that deviate from the core purpose of the meeting.

Thea Snow, Director of the Centre for Public Impact, Australia and New Zealand, has helpfully crowdsourced this list of icebreakers for setting the tone of a meeting. Be sure to note Thea’s words of caution in the “At the beginning…” section about using icebreakers purposefully and with empathy to create a safe space for participants.

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Set inclusive expectations about participation

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Set inclusive expectations about participation

✓ Set expectations that everyone’s views are welcome, no matter their role or seniority

Be aware that some participants may not be used to speaking up or sharing their views - especially if more senior colleagues are present. �
It’s the Host’s responsibility to make explicit that all participants’ views are welcome. �
At LOTI, we set this expectation with a simple slide at the start of every workshop - see image.�
Consider using online tools that enable participants to share their ideas and preferences anonymously, e.g. Slido, Wooclap, etc.

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Set inclusive expectations about participation

✓ Be clear about what will be recorded and shared afterwards and with whom

While LOTI always encourages working in the open, some participants may feel inhibited about speaking if they feel their comments will be viewable (e.g. by their boss!), quoted or otherwise ‘on the record’.�
As a result, consider whether:

The video recording should be shared publicly or only with other participants.
Any written notes should attribute comments to specific speakers, or be anonymised.�

In all cases, be completely clear at the start of the session what will be recorded and shared afterwards and with whom.

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Set inclusive expectations about participation

✓ Invite participants to leave their camera on, but recognise personal choice

Social norms haven’t yet caught up with the way we now use video conferencing platforms. �
It can feel intimidating to speak up at a meeting where most participants have their camera off - like speaking into the void.�
LOTI likes to start meetings with the Host warmly inviting everyone to keep their cameras on - helping us to connect with participants, see facial expressions and have a more natural conversation.�
HOWEVER, it’s important that the host also acknowledges that there are many good reasons why someone might not wish to have their camera on - including for some people with neurodiverse conditions. We therefore make clear that it’s down to personal choice.

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Design for extroverts and introverts

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Design for extroverts and introverts

✓ Share content in advance

Not everyone likes or feels able to give rapid, in-the-moment feedback on ideas and discussion items. Wherever possible, share content to read in advance to give participants time to reflect before offering their view.

✓ Facilitate participation through the chat - with a dedicated role to manage it

During online meetings, technical limitations mean that one person speaks at a time. As a result, meetings can be dominated by extroverts, biasing the meeting towards those with the loudest voices. �
LOTI ensures that every session has a team member responsible for managing the chat: the Chat Facilitator. �
The Host should state at the start of the session that anyone is welcome to contribute their views via the chat. The Chat Facilitator will take responsibility for highlighting key comments and questions to the Host or Presenter.

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Design for extroverts and introverts

✓ Ask participants what they hope to get out of the session at the start

To ensure that the direction of an online workshop is not dominated by the loudest voices, LOTI likes to run a quick exercise at the start to invite all participants to write down and share what they most hope to get out of the session.�
We tend to do this by including a blank slide, with edit access open, to which anyone can list their idea or suggestion.�
The Host can keep referring back to this list to ensure they are keeping the session relevant to the concerns and interests of as many participants as possible.

✓ Leave time for silence

During ideation sessions, it can be deeply distracting if the Host or other participants are constantly talking. It can be helpful to say “Let’s pause for five minutes to think and write quietly before discussing our views”, to allow more people to contribute effectively.

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Keep tools simple, open and anonymous

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Keep tools simple, open and anonymous

✓ Use online collaboration tools simply

✓ Check tool settings allow access without logins

Many workshops make use of online collaboration tools like Miro, Mural, GroupMap and Jamboard to help with ideation sessions. While these are useful, not everyone finds them intuitive or easy to use. �
Some tools can be visually inaccessible - for example where there are lots of moving post-it notes! Others may find them technically inaccessible if their organisation has blocked the URL. Therefore:

Use tools in the simplest way you can. In many LOTI workshops, we invite participants to type their ideas directly into our slide deck by leaving edit access open.
Don’t assume everyone has used the tool before. Before the session, share details of which tools you’ll be using. (You could even share a link to a demo instance of the tool for participants to practise with). During the workshop, do a brief walk through.
Check all settings to avoid participants having to sign up and agree to terms and conditions they don’t have time to read. This will also speed up your ideation exercise!
If you’re using breakout rooms, use the main room as a breakout space. This ensures that anyone who falls out of a breakout room, or who arrives late, is still included.
Use the Chat Facilitator role to paste comments from the meeting chat into �the collaboration tool if any participants need help.

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Keep tools simple, open and anonymous

✓ Enable participants to contribute ideas anonymously where possible

When designing a workshop exercise, consider carefully whether you really need to know who proposed a specific idea.�
You can encourage more honest sharing of ideas by enabling participants to comment or share ideas anonymously (another reason to ensure settings do not require them to sign in with their name and email address.)

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Share recordings and summaries of meetings

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Share recordings and summaries of meetings

✓ Share exactly what you said you would

Sharing video and written summaries afterwards can be great for transparency and furthering the reach of your session.�
It enables other people to contribute who may not have been able to attend the session itself.�
It can also be helpful for more introvert personalities to reflect and share their ideas with you after the session.�
However - be sure to only share what you said you would.