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":

 begin quote 
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.
 quote ends 

Ideas? Thoughts?

Comments

[yarram]

Mods should be repeating questions anyway, because some of the panelists (*ahem* like me *ahem*) have hearing issues themselves. Other than that, what the others said about the shyness bit rings true to me, so reworking strikes me as a good idea.

One bit of microphone etiquette I learned at Minicon is that you really do have to let the thing invade your personal space. One foot away isn't close enough; my experience suggests that optimal distance is about 3-4 inches - close enough for the mic to pick up your voice, but far enough that those of us in the first rows trying to lipread still can do so.