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.

[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.