2 links 14 nov 2014

[sasha_feather]

Hannah Thompson at Blind Spot: Practicing Inclusive Access

Jacquelyn Gill at the Contemplative Mammoth: To Tweet or Not to Tweet: Live Tweeting at Conferences

Comments

[davidgillon]

The first article inclines me to *headdesk*ing. It's bad enough that disability studies conferences are having access-fails, but a lot of the stuff being asked for is good practice whoever your audience. When doing work presentations I always tried to have no more than 3 or 4 points per powerpoint slide, and no special effects whatsoever. The object is to get the message across, not show them how good you are at making powerpoint perform tricks. OTOH the points about describing and/or circulating copies are ones to definitely bear in mind.

I'm not too sure about the second article, I basically agree with the author, but think the whole 'if you don't want the information passing it on, why are you talking about it in public?' question needs to be asked a bit more insistently.

[sasha_feather]

I agree!

[selkiechick]

I was quite surprised to attend a conference about inclusion of people with disabilities and discover that they had overlooked making sure aisles in panel room were wide enough for wheelchairs, and they did not have any wheelchair parking spaces, (or even space at the back).

While I recognize that conventions cannot do everything, but it seems to be a big thing to let fall through the cracks.

[davidgillon]

*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

Talk about falling at the first hurdle! That's as basic as it gets.

Wheelchair Parking Spaces

[jesse_the_k]

The first time I saw wheelchair parking spaces was when I laid them out in blue tape at WisCon. I'm hoping someone else did this first, or as well, and this seems a good time to discuss best practices. (In what follows, "we" means WisCon, including myself, sparkymonster, sasha_feather, antarticlust, and others whose deeds are memorable but names have faded.)

1. Size: two standard "stack chairs" wide & two deep. Why? Permit scooter/wheelchair maneuvering room, enlarges one portion of the aisle it abuts.

2. Marking: 2 inch wide blue "paint safe" painter's tape, completely around the box. Why? Unused stack chairs magically migrate into untaped spaces. Blue is part of consistent signage, almost matching the color used in the "International Symbol of Accessibility."

3. Position: Always on a wide-enough aisle (at least 36" in US). Always two: one in 1st or 2nd row, one in the back. Otherwise, 1 for every 100 people. Why? We want our members to be able to move freely. Having to get the attention and the permission of each person one passes is exhausting for some. Some of our wheeling members have hearing/vision impairments, and some need to be in the back of the room so they can breathe, or duck out to ease claustrophobia. One in 100 is a handy number (averages ADA 2010 requirements). If an org knows that there are many people who use wheelchairs, they need to plan for them. (At SDS2014, there were at least three wheelchair users in every panel; some had 10.)

4. Include All Activities: principles 1-3 are fine for standard panel setup, where there's 3 to 5 people at a short table, facing 10 to 500 people in a rectangular space. But most conventions includes event spaces that aren't tidy boxes, and we have to include blue parking spaces there. Best example from WisCon is the dessert function: two large ballrooms tightly packed with 10-seat round tables. Seven hundred in attendance means at least seven spaces, all nearest to the aisles, some closest to the CART screen, some far enough away for the most claustrophobic.

SO! What do you think? How do you do it?

Re: Wheelchair Parking Spaces

[davidgillon]

A few comments based on Loncon experience (as con-goer, not access-staffer).

'1st or 2nd': not certain if this should have been '1st and 2nd'. If not, and it effectively becomes '2nd and 3rd' then you get the potential of a six foot eight hulking rugby player sat in front of a petite woman in a chair who can't see past him to lip-read. Using front row seats also has the advantage of potentially only removing chairs from a single row if you can project forward safely.

2x2 spaces: absolutely needs to be two deep - only active user chairs with tucked back footrests are going to be able to fit into a single depth space and it'll be awkward getting there, single width you might just get away with for standard width manual chairs, - or better 1 and 1/2 if you have a 2x3 block with access to front or rear as well as the side.

Need to provide for chair-using panellists. If the panel is on a dais, then there needs to be a ramp, and in either case need to ensure there is space for them to get behind the table - this wasn't the case in most of the Loncon panel rooms and a wheelie panelist would have been stuck on the end of the panel as a very obvious afterthought. If space is really at a premium, and you can't provide this, then maybe have ops pull the tables apart and let the wheelie reverse in to sit in the middle, not as an afterthought at the end.

Someone has scrawled 'reserved for mobie' on all the Loncon wheelie space marker tapes - only problem being no one knew who 'mobie' was. 'W/C' or 'mobility' would have been a lot better - messages should be easily understandable to someone who has never been to a con before.

A couple of thoughts on wider room layout issues - parking spaces are no use if you can't get to them!

Doorways! I left more skin from my knuckles.... Make sure all rooms have doorways with adequate width for wheelies to access in a crowd which will be making it difficult for them to hit the optimum angle to get through , and if they have a second half-width panel that can be opened at the side, ensure that these are unbolted at all times, there won't be space to safely get at the bolts in a crowd.

Cable runs, speaker stands and so on - these all have the potential to interfere with wheelie access in a way that they don't for walkies. I didn't meet anywhere I couldn't get to at Loncon, but they certainly didn't make it easier in a couple of rooms. I also seem to remember a couple of rooms where getting to the wheelie spaces involved some fairly tight turns that would have been even more difficult for scooters, so think about layout and turn radius!

Think about the intersection of panel topics and space provision, if you get a panel on disability in SF or similar, then it's probably going to draw more wheelies, so it needs to be in a room with more spaces.

Also consider the potential of wheelies not just coming in singular. I had one wheelie complain to me while chatting that he couldn't sit next to his - also wheelchair using - friend (not sure if they were a couple or not) in most rooms. Pairing wheelchair spaces on either side of an aisle may be an acceptable compromise.

WRT one space in a hundred, some wobblies, like me, are more likely to use a chair for a con, particularly a large one like Worldcon, or one that requires a lot of travel between rooms, so needs might well go higher than ADA specifies, so consider that a lower bound.

'Include all activities' - especially remember to include any scheduling for kids!

And following on from all of the above, it may be a good idea to remind people in the con guide/whatever that there are going to be a lot more people in the crowds at below eye-level than they are used to, so don't just walk around without looking where you're going. I got thoroughly sick of people trying to walk through me at Loncon. And equally that we can't hop out of the way/stop on a dime - emergency-grabbing-the-wheels-hard-stops hurt!

[jazzyjj]

Thanks for these links. I only read the first one thus far. Safari's been acting up a bit, will try Chrome. But anyway, the author makes some very valid points. I help run the Twitter account for a local nonprofit disability-related organization. I am the only one with a visual impairment working there, and thus far everybody has been great about reading things out loud and telling me other things. I used to actively participate in team meetings, and our founder was always very good about telling me what she had written on the board. Not only that, but written communication has always been emailed to me in a timely manner. I no longer attend team meetings for our organization, but that's because I haven't been properly shown how to get to the new office. In addition though, I am or was on a committee at my church to promote environmentally-safe practices. We haven't met for ages, but the other committee members and our leader were always great about emailing me important communication well in advance of our meetings. I also used to be a frequent lay reader at my church, and my readings were always given to my parents in advance for one of them to dictate to me. I then put those readings into Braille.