Accessible and Inclusive Virtual Meetings

Kevin P. Murphy, Digital Accessibility Consulting Engineer

Agenda

• Introductions
• Before the meeting
• During the meeting
• After the meeting

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Introductions

Disability types and accommodations

Introduction

Virtual meetings are the future

• 26% of the population has some form of disability
• Virtual meetings are now a reasonable accommodation
• Proactively accessible meetings

26%

Language

Avoid using ableist language

• Stand-up (or Standing) Meeting
• Instead use "weekly meeting"
• All-hands meeting
• Instead use "company-wide" or "all-inclusive"
• Walkthrough
• Instead use "demonstration" or "tour"

Disability types�and accommodations

Attendees with visual disabilities

Not just blind, but low vision and color-blind users as well

• Can’t perceive content presented visually
• Presenter must describe what is on screen
• Don't use color alone for meaning
• May be using a screen reader simultaneously
• Provide materials in advance of the meeting
• If appropriate, explain where you are in the presentation such as "now on slide 7 we see…“
• Chat features are a challenge

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Attendees with auditory disabilities

Not just Deaf but also hard of hearing attendees as well

• Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART)
• Captions by a live person
• ASL interpreters
• Interpreter appears in their own window
• Telecommunications relay service (TRS)
• Always provide a dial-in number
• Auto captions
• Better than they used to be

Attendees with motor skills disabilities

Not just people in wheelchairs, also includes arthritis, broken arms, and more.

• Ensure full participation without a mouse
• Includes chat features, polling, etc.
• Also includes any team building, and icebreaker type activities

Attendees with cognitive disabilities

Participation in a large group can be a challenge

• Allow for questions in advance
• Read by a facilitator
• Avoid ice-breakers and team exercises
• Post-meeting transcripts

Before the meeting

Meeting type

Meeting materials

Invitation and accommodations

Email instead of meeting

What kind of meeting?

• Most accessible option
• Best when:
• You need specific answers
• You only want feedback
• You are just disseminating information
• You are having a meeting for the sake of having a meeting

Phone call instead of meeting

What kind of meeting?

• Phone bridge – Many listeners, few speakers
• Accommodations for the Deaf
• Telecommunications relay service (TRS)
• Communication Access Realtime Translation Service (CART)
• Live interpreters
• Accommodations for the hard of hearing are lacking

Video meeting

What kind of meeting?

• The de facto standard for the post COVID world
• Best for:
• Remote attendance
• Different modalities
• Non-verbal communication

Hybrid meeting

What kind of meeting?

• Having some people in person and some online is the most difficult
• Don't ignore your virtual audience
• Consider virtual first and in-person second
• Especially true for technology such as microphones
• Repeat/Rephrase any questions asked in the room
• Use online polling for in-person AND online
• Keep chat available
• Facilitator is required

Meeting materials

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here?

But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand—miles of them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues—north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?

Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd’s head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd’s eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm wanting?—Water—there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick—grow quarrelsome—don’t sleep of nights—do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;—no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook,—though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board—yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;—though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.

Text

Text on screen needs to be easy to read

• Use easy to read fonts
• Font size:
• Minimum 18pt for virtual meetings
• Minimum 24pt for in-person/hybrid
• DO NOT USE ALL CAPS
• Do not use justified margins
• Keep line length short
• Do not have too many words on a slide
• Have empty space

Charts and Graphs

Other issues

Consider all the visuals of your presentation

• Animations and Transitions
• Keep to a minimum
• Consistent layout and design
• Color contrast
• 4.5:1 for regular text
• 3:1 for large text and visual elements
• Imagery
• Describe when appropriate
• Ignore when decorative

Meeting invitation

Meeting invitation content

Get the meeting rolling right

• Include all pertinent information
• Meeting agenda
• Meeting tools
• Accessibility accommodations
• Provide materials in advance if possible
• As part of invitation ideally
• During the meeting as a last resort
• Accommodation statement or questionnaire

I will need the following accommodations to participate:

• Captioning
• ASL interpreter
• Large print
• Advance copy of slides
• Other:

Subject: 2021 Steering Committee Meeting�Location: Zoom Meeting at https://fake.url/12345

Dial In: (800) 555-9876 meeting ID #12345

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In this meeting we will be discussing projects for the 2020-2021 school year. The agenda includes:

• New major programs
• Graduation rates
• Student recognition and graduation ceremonies

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There will be a PowerPoint presentation (attached), and the meeting will use live chat and polling. Realtime captions will be provided, and a video with captions and transcript will be posted after the meeting.

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Realtime Captions URL: https://fake.url/67890

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If you have a disability and require assistance, please inform Leland Stanford by replying to this invite with your requirements or call Leland at (999) 555-1234.

During the meeting

Roles and responsibilities

Meeting rules

Presentation

Presenter

Only in small meetings should one person do it all

• Use do not disturb
• If possible, share your secondary screen not primary
• Multiple presenters need to coordinate
• Backchannel communication with Slack or other
• High quality video

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Video positioning

Room background

Virtual backgrounds

Clothes

• Don't wear stripes or patterns
• Moiré pattern
• Avoid standard 'chromakey' colors, such as blue and green
• Neutral colors are best

Presenter audio

Quality audio is key

• Use a dedicated microphone!
• Conference room audio can be terrible
• Even with conference systems
• Big room audio is even worse
• Recording Comparison
1. Laptop microphone
2. Apple Earbuds
3. Sennheiser Headset
4. Blue Nano

Microphone comparison #1

MacBook Pro Internal Microphone

Harvard Sentences

1. The birch canoe slid on the smooth planks.
2. Glue the sheet to the dark blue background.
3. It's easy to tell the depth of a well.
4. These days a chicken leg is a rare dish.
5. Rice is often served in round bowls.

Microphone comparison #2

Apple Ear Buds - $20

Harvard Sentences

1. The birch canoe slid on the smooth planks.
2. Glue the sheet to the dark blue background.
3. It's easy to tell the depth of a well.
4. These days a chicken leg is a rare dish.
5. Rice is often served in round bowls.

Microphone comparison #3

Sennheiser Headset - $200

Harvard Sentences

1. The birch canoe slid on the smooth planks.
2. Glue the sheet to the dark blue background.
3. It's easy to tell the depth of a well.
4. These days a chicken leg is a rare dish.
5. Rice is often served in round bowls.

Microphone comparison #4

Blue Yeti Nano - $80

Harvard Sentences

1. The birch canoe slid on the smooth planks.
2. Glue the sheet to the dark blue background.
3. It's easy to tell the depth of a well.
4. These days a chicken leg is a rare dish.
5. Rice is often served in round bowls.

Other roles and responsibilities

Meeting leader/facilitator

Let someone else handle the logistics when 5 or more people

• Provide structure to the meeting
• Welcome participants
• Accessibility check
• Manages attendees
• Promote inclusion

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This role should be mandatory in hybrid meetings

Chat monitor

Promote inclusion and conversation

• Monitor the chat
• Raise questions
• Share documents
• Solve problems

Technology troubleshooter

• Help users connect
• Monitor the captions/interpreter/etc.
• Monitor the chat

When to add dedicated roles

Other participants

Note taker

• May be required
• Provides a summary rather than a transcript

Attendee

• Different devices
• Desktop, mobile, tablet, etc.
• Don't require video

Meeting rules

Speaking guidelines

Not just for presenters, but for everyone involved

• Clear Speaking voice
• Intentional pauses
• Say speaker name every time it changes
• One speaker at a time
• Plain language

Managing conversation

Enforce the rules so that everyone can participate

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• Don’t let certain voices dominate
• Raise hand
• Queuing participants

After the meeting

Captions/Transcripts

Survey

Post-meeting

• Finish the recording caption
• Caption services
• YouTube
• Edit the file
• Survey the attendees
• How productive was the meeting?
• Were you comfortable sharing your opinions?
• Were there any barriers to participation?
• Additional feedback?
• Distribute meeting notes, transcripts, etc. in an accessible format

WEBVTT�Kind: captions�Language: en-US

00:00:02.000 --> 00:00:05.000�[ Music plays ]

00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:12.360�Bicycling is a lot of fun,

00:00:12.360 --> 00:00:14.820�good exercise, and the fine means of

00:00:14.820 --> 00:00:16.080�transportation.

Post-meeting housekeeping is important

Questions?

Thanks for attending!

References

• Center for Disease Control and Prevention: Disability Inclusion
• DIVERSEability Magazine: How To Pick An Accessible Virtual Meeting Platform
• IAAP: Accessible Remote Working Environments - Webinar 1: Making Virtual Meetings Accessible
• International Foundation for Electoral Systems: Holding Accessible and Inclusive Virtual Meetings
• New York City Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities: Accessible Virtual Meetings Guide [PDF]

• National Deaf Center: How to Host Effective and Accessible Online Meetings with Deaf Participants
• National Disability Authority: Centre for Excellence in Universal Design
• PEAT: How to pick an Accessible Virtual Meeting Platform
• PlainLanguage.gov
• Smashing Magazine: Which Video Conferencing Tools Are Most Accessible
• University of Washington Accessible Technology: Hosting accessible online meetings

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