Seeking Crowd Wisdom

[jesse_the_k]

...to help us spread the word about speaking up.

One of the goals of this year's WisCon access endeavor is to improve the con's experience for members with hearing impairments. We're supplying more mics for the panels. We reserve spaces front and center (marked with blue tape) which are handy for people who are speech reading.

But the crucial element is cooperation from all the members. I've come up with a wordy and sober statement. I'd love it if the collective wisdom could make this more succinct, more powerful, more impressive, more funny ... it just needs a whole lot of "more":

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It's important for all panelists to use the mics when provided, without hesitation, shyness, or complaint. What we say is interesting enough for the people without hearing impairments. If we don't use the mics, we're effectively preventing members with hearing impairments from participating. Since members in the audience don't have mics, we ask panelists to wait until the moderator has repeated the question before responding.
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Ideas? Thoughts?

Comments

[redbird]

One practical thought that goes beyond wording the statement: This is going to be a little hard on moderators if audience members have long questions, or multi-sentence comments or contributions to the discussion. My memory isn't good enough to repeat a lengthy question and be sure of getting it right.

We may need to, when we get to audience questions, either ask people to keep them brief or encourage audience members to use the microphone. Possibly some combination, varying from one panel to another. I moderated one last year that was basically me introducing the topic briefly, the panelists each saying a bit, and then moving around the room as people offered examples. I'd have gone hoarse if I'd tried to repeat every audience comment for 40 minutes.