Virtual meetings have increasingly become the norm for hosting professional, educational, and/or recreational events. They allow access to people across geographies, schedules, and abilities. However, simply starting a video conference for your event may not be enough to promote access for all. A recent EDIS publication explains key ways to make room for accommodations and accessibility features in virtual events.

Who We Are Accommodating

Accommodations can benefit everyone regardless of ability. Oftentimes, accommodations that are meant for people with disabilities also benefit people without. Making events more accessible will extend your message reach, gain the trust of your audience, and maintain equal opportunity among participants.

What to Do

EDIS publication #AEC794, “Getting Engaged: Facilitating Virtual Events for Maximum Accessibility,” foremost advises event hosts to inform their potential participants of accommodations and accessibility features already planned for the virtual event. Ideally, provide as many common accessibility features as resources allow. Hosts should also offer a means of communicating any additional requests. Initiating these lines of communication will remove some of the pressure on disabled people for self-advocacy.

When planning and implementing your virtual event, consider the following accommodations according to the different needs of your participants:

• Time: Include ample breaks for rest periods and attending the bathroom. Provide breaks for lunch or schedule the meeting around expected meal breaks. People’s schedules may not always allow for their attendance of virtual events; offer recorded versions or multiple session dates, whether live or asynchronous.
• Health: Understand that participants may leave on behalf of sudden or expected health concerns.
• Family: Allow participants to leave early or leave and easily rejoin the meeting due to childcare obligations.
• Participation Expectation: Be upfront about what level of participation is expected from the participants, as a whole or depending upon the activity. Understand that some participants can only stay involved more passively than actively at times.
• Flexible Materials: Make sure to use materials that are accessible to all. Materials should have live text, adequate color contrasts, correct captioning, and so forth. Make sure to turn on captioning for the video call. Add ASL interpreters if necessary and within budget.
• Change: Needs may change during the meeting. Consider adding one or more co-hosts designated to assist participants who need new accommodations during the live virtual event. Also, make sure participants are aware of any sudden failures of accessibility features originally promised for the event.

See #AEC794 for detailed information about how and why to implement these accessibility features in your virtual events, as well as more examples that will better include people with disabilities.

Other Resources

Learn about making materials accessible for your audiences at this blog about charts and graphs: https://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/edis/2024/07/19/tips-and-tricks-for-edis-authors-accessible-charts-and-graphs/.

Read a blog by the publication’s author about recent conversations over AI as a tool for accessibility: https://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/aecdept/2024/01/16/ais-potential-for-assisting-people-with-disabilities/.

To read other EDIS publications on accessibility, check out Ask IFAS and see the topic page for accessibility: https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/topics/accessibility. Also, see other parts to the EDIS series, Getting Engaged: https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/collections/series_getting_engaged.

1