Considering the audience members you typically don’t think about

As I’ve mentioned a few times in the past, either in these pages or on social, I’m in the process of writing a book on inclusive speaking. Actually, I’ve been working on that book more less diligently for the better part of the last 4.5 years.

The book is meant to help speaking professionals become more inclusive in their approach to creating content and delivering from the platform, so that they can better reach the thousands of audience members out there who have disabilities, are getting older, or are somehow marginalized by our use of technology. I’m currently wrapping up what I believe to be the last chapter of that book, so I’ll definitely share more on that in the near future.

For today’s post though, I’d like to follow up on the conversation started last week, in which I was exploring some of the different ways in which a live, in-person or virtual experience might go wrong for audience members who live with one or more disabilities, and the importance for speaking professionals to learn from other people’s perspectives.

Very early on in my writing process, I figured there wouldn’t be any point to writing a book such as this one, if it didn’t put people with disabilities, their experiences, their various needs and their expectations front and center. As I was working towards putting this book together to help its readers become more inclusive in their delivery, both on and off the platform, I naturally started surveying as many people with disabilities as I could.

The goal was to learn and document as much as possible about their experiences, while attending sessions where speakers weren’t particularly mindful about inclusion needs and expectations. Little did I know, this experience would quickly transform my own perspective on inclusion as well.

Rooted in relevancy, not theory

It mattered to me that the insights shared in this book are more than just educated opinions from someone who has been tinkering with these ideas for decades. More than what I wanted, the topic demanded that these insights relate to what audience members with disabilities needed, informed by some of the most relevant, impactful, first-hand experiences I could gather.

If you follow our content regularly, you might have noticed the interviews I publish weekly in the Inclusive Interviews section of this blog. So far, I’ve interviewed over 25 people, and dozens more will keep coming week after week, for months and years to come. This is an incredible trove of information for anyone eager to learn about inclusion as a speaking professional.

I chose to turn some of these experiences into personas, to flesh out the valuable nuggets that were shared. These personas represent real people with disabilities. People I’ve met. People I’ve spoken to. People I’ve interviewed. People who come to see or hear us speak. People who regularly struggle because of the way we deliver our content from the stage, from the front of the room, from the virtual platform. People that matter.

People who we can choose NOT to discard as edge cases, because we believe deep within our core that every person in our audience is worth being welcomed, included, and cared for.

Though these personas will be introduced throughout the book to illustrate some of the barriers faced by various audience members with disabilities or challenges, I still wanted to quickly introduce them to you this week, as a preview of what’s to come. But also as a way to help you think a bit differently about your own audience members.

Through their stories and examples that I will keep sharing through this platform, you will grow a better understanding of how a lack of inclusion often results in unknowingly excluding actual human beings from our conversations.

Through their perspectives, together, we can and will humanize the concepts paving the way to becoming a more inclusive speaking professional.

These personas will help us grow our awareness about diversity, equity an inclusion (DE&I). They will help us understand that any DE&I initiative that doesn’t also naturally factor in disability will be inherently flawed, and will miss the bigger picture.

These personas, hopefully, will allow you to grow into more empathetic professional communicators along the way. I know for a fact that they’ve helped me grow in more ways than even I can realize.

The ones who fade out of our conversations

As weeks and months pass, moving forward, the following folks are going to guide us through this journey down the path of the inclusive speaker. Below is an example of some of the questions or comments they might have for you, when you fail to provide content that is inclusive of their needs and expectations. You’ll get a chance to meet each one in the book, but also here, as we pursue these conversations.

Tell me, just by reading the perspectives of these different people, can you already get a sense of what they might be expecting from you as a speaking professional, in order to be able to truly connect with you and your message? Can you see just how diverse these needs and expectations will be, from one individual to the next?

Can you see why being able to imagine what their experience might look like matters, in order to create a truly welcoming and inclusive experience for everyone in your audience?