There was a Fire at the Conference

   I just came back from a conference and I’m filled with conference thoughts. I heard some great papers, notability on fandom and accessibility at Cons. Fandom studies is not my field of study but accessibility in different areas is something I’m always interested in hearing more about.

   One of the last panels of the conference was on disability studies and professional development. It was such an amazing space for sharing ideas and best practices but unfortunately we were on the 19th floor (the top floor of the hotel) in a room with a very loud mechanical noise coming from the ceiling (I am assuming it was a heater). All of a sudden the noise stopped and I was really happy because it was making the space inaccessible for some. I had my back to the offensive sound but when it stopped the person who was sitting beside me said “do you smell that?” And well I couldn’t, because, I have anosmia, but when I turned all I saw was smoke. Fire, something was on fire.

   So we quickly left the room and people went to alert others on the floor to evacuate their conference rooms as well. We walked down 19 flights of stairs- a completely ableist scenario. After 40mins or so we had the all clear that the situation was under control but it caused me to formulate a list of things conferences have to do for accessibility. This is by no means comprehensive but it’s a starting point.

1. Only have conferences at accessible places. No hotels with stairs everywhere and lacking elevators to get to mid-floor points.
2. Organize the conference schedule to have spaces for downtime and have a space for that downtime to happen. Seating is important.
3. Use microphones always and have them available. No more of this “I can project my voice” stuff- your projection won’t help the hard of hearing folk, use a microphone.
4. Make your conference schedule accessible. This means UDL principles, different ways of access but also from a chunking information point of view have the schedule organized in a way that is easy to read.
5. Make your media accessible. Caption any talking video. Watch the colour contrast on slides.

This is not to pick on this particular conference, I had a great time and the disability area chairs had a wonderful selection of papers. I would love to add to this -what do you think needs to be on this list?