Exploring the deadly sins of inclusive speaking – part 1
In today’s increasingly diverse world, now more than ever, it’s essential for event organizers, speaking professionals, trainers, and facilitators to go out of their way to create welcoming and inclusive experiences for all audience members, including those who have disabilities. Live, in-person, or virtual events provide people with unique opportunities for learning, networking, and collaboration. Therefore, it’s crucial to ensure that every attendee feels valued and included in these gatherings.
When audience members feel welcomed and cared for, they are more likely to engage actively, share their insights, and contribute to the overall success of the event. And, of course, fostering an inclusive environment also reflects positively on the speaker’s reputation and credibility, as it demonstrates their commitment to accessibility and social responsibility. As we regularly make the case in these pages, inclusive business is smart business, and it allows for true connections.
Of all the challenges commonly faced by attendees living with various disabilities, some certainly rear their ugly heads more often than others. Exclusion barriers cause more than their fair share of pain, frustrations, and disappointments to audience members, who are left with no other choice but to deal with them on a regular basis. These barriers significantly impact the quality of a person’s experience and their ability to fully participate in live, in-person or virtual events.
By identifying and addressing exclusion challenges directly at the source, event planners and speakers alike are offered a wonderful opportunity to not only do the right thing, but to foster a more inclusive and accessible experience for everyone involved. And while it’s always important to recognize that no two disabilities are the same, it’s also vital to realize that each individual is unique, and will therefore require unique accommodations or adjustments to ensure their own personal needs and expectations are met in a way that works for them.
Introducing the deadly sins
Based on my own experiences over the last two decades and extensive research, conversations, and interviews conducted over the last few years with audience members living with various types of disabilities, I’ve identified some of the most common challenges that are regularly faced by people with disabilities when attending live, in-person, or virtual events and workshops. These challenges encompass a wide range of issues, such as inaccessible venues, insufficient captioning, poor audio quality, lack of visual support, inaccessible digital formats, lack of disability awareness training, and many more.
Quite a few of these challenges are covered at length in my book “The Inclusive Speaker“, but for the sake of today’s blog post, I felt like sharing a high-level perspective on the most commons ones, so you can self-assess whether or not you might find yourself guilty of a few, or many of these deadly sins of inclusive speaking.
By growing a better understanding of what these challenges are and wrapping our heads around how they affect the experience of our audience members who have disabilities, we, as event organizers and speaking professionals, can build more inclusive spaces. And by taking the necessary proactive steps to address them, we then get to create more inclusive experiences within those spaces, experiences that truly have the power to engage those in our audience that live with a wide range of disabilities daily.
As we delve into today’s topic and explore some of the most common barriers that individuals with disabilities regularly have to face, it’s essential, once again, to keep in mind that each person’s experience is unique in its own way. These barriers, which often arise from a lack of awareness or understanding from event planners and speaking professionals, significantly hinder an individual’s ability to fully participate and engage in events or workshops.
By introducing and examining these barriers, inclusive communication considerations aim to raise awareness and inspire event organizers, speakers, and facilitators such as yourselves to make intentional efforts to create more inclusive and accessible environments. By addressing these challenges and providing accommodations, we can ensure that every attendee, regardless of their disability, feels valued, included, and supported when taking part in the live, in-person or virtual events that we put together, which, in turn, promotes a sense of belonging and enhances the overall experience for everyone involved.
In this four-part series, we will explore a total of twenty such barriers, starting today with the first five. I will be publishing the second, third, and fourth parts over the next three weeks, so make sure to come back to catch the next parts in this series.
Week one – Deadly sins 1 to 5
So without further ado, let’s explore some of these deadly sins of inclusive speaking, shall we?
Inaccessible venues (physical disabilities, mobility impairments)
Sitting at the top of our nefarious list are inaccessible venues, such as those with stairs, narrow doorways, or without ramps or elevators. These venues pose significant challenges for individuals with physical disabilities or mobility impairments. When a venue is not wheelchair accessible or presents challenges to those who have limited mobility, entire areas can quickly become “off-limits” to those who are unable to navigate the space the way everyone else does. Sometimes, this might mean that a certain area of the venue is unreachable, and in other cases, it might be the entire venue itself! In both cases, however, the lack of inclusivity consideration results in preventing certain audience members from fully taking part in the events or workshops.
Insufficient captioning (deafness, hard of hearing)
For deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals, the lack of accurate, real-time captioning during live or virtual events results in significant barriers to participation. With the rise of automated, real-time captioning services, these barriers have in fact, shifted. Over the last few years, we’ve gone from a lack of synchronized captions to a reliance on automated solutions that are still less than ideal. True, automated captioning services are pretty good, and probably up to 90-95% accurate, depending on the speaker, whether they have a thick accent, and the rate at which they speak. But consider this: if you depended on synchronized captions to follow along, and one word out of every ten or so was inaccurate and left you wondering what might have, in fact, been said, how might that affect your audience’s ability to process the other nine while you’re left puzzled? And what about that embarrassingly inaccurate word that might find its way into your transcript? Yes, something is probably better than nothing, but if you give some thought to how confusing and distracting automated synchronized captions can be, you’ll soon realize that your event will be better off with more reliable, human-based solutions.
Poor audio quality (deaf, hard of hearing)
Poor audio quality is another oftentimes overlooked consideration that makes it challenging for people with hearing impairments to fully understand spoken content during events or workshops. This barrier also directly impacts a person’s ability (or disposition, even) to fully take part in conversations, potentially limiting their ability to meaningfully engage with the activity or the rest of the participants. Whether the issues around poor audio quality originate from a speaking professional forgoing the microphone, ambient background noise that can’t be suppressed, distracting echoes or feedback loops, noisy ventilation systems that can’t be turned off, or low-quality audio equipment, these barriers exacerbate the challenge faced by some audience members when it comes to hearing what’s going on. Investing in a good AV system, selecting a quiet venue, controlling how noisy the environment will be and making sure the audio quality is optimal will go a long way in ensuring more participation. Not just for individuals with limited hearing, but every attendee.
Lack of visual aids (visual disabilities, neurodiversity)
Another classic deadly sin of inclusive speaking when it comes to visual disabilities and neurodiversity certainly relates to a lack of visual aids or support during presentations and workshops, such as not providing large-print materials as an alternative format for printed handouts, unstructured slides that are hard to read from a distance, a lack of meaningful text descriptions for important visuals assets and making assumptions about what the audience can, in fact, see and perceive. All of these examples of “speaking faux-pas” – and so many more – can create significant barriers for neurodivergent individuals as well as those who live with visual disabilities or challenges. Without the proper visual aids, attendees may quickly find themselves struggling to understand what’s going on, or find themselves unable to follow the content of presentations or workshops, which quickly leads to feelings of frustration, exclusion, and disengagement from the event.
Inaccessible digital content (visual disabilities, neurodiversity)
Last but not least, for this first instalment in our four-part series on deadly sins of inclusive speaking pertains to digital content and formats, such as websites, downloadable documents, or multimedia files that are not created to be accessible to people with various types of disabilities. Inaccessible information consequently causes significant barriers for individuals with specific accessibility needs, or those that require assistive technologies to consume content. As an example, digital content that is not compatible with screen reader technology, that lacks alternative text for images, or is difficult to navigate without the use of a mouse quickly prevents certain individuals from accessing important information, participating in interactive activities, or engaging with other attendees as expected. It is absolutely the responsibility of event planners and speaking professionals alike to make sure that their content meets basic accessibility guidelines, in order to maximize every audience member’s chance to fully participate and enjoy the content in a way that works for them.
One down, three more to go!
And with that, we will conclude part one of this four-part series on the deadly sins of inclusive speaking. I hope you’ve found this first post to be insightful, that you are inspired to take action in order to avoid these sins yourself and that I will see you again next week for part two! Remember that the road to inclusive speaking requires that event organizers and speaking professionals like yourselves to recognize the importance of creating welcoming and inclusive experiences that cater to audience members with various disabilities. By identifying and addressing the most common barriers, all of us can promote accessibility, foster an inclusive atmosphere, and enhance the overall experience for all attendees, not just those who have disabilities.
By raising awareness about these barriers, my goal is to inspire intentional efforts for you to take part in creating these more inclusive environments, that ultimately benefit everyone involved in live, in-person or virtual events. So make sure to join us for the next three parts of this series, as we will delve deeper into the challenges faced by individuals with disabilities and provide practical solutions for overcoming them.
Together, we can make a positive difference in fostering true connections and creating experiences that are truly inclusive for all. It begins with small, little steps, and these elements we covered today are all great places for you to start.
Catch up on this four-part series!
- Exploring the deadly sins of inclusive speaking – part 1
- Exploring the deadly sins of inclusive speaking – part 2
- Exploring the deadly sins of inclusive speaking – part 3
- Exploring the deadly sins of inclusive speaking – part 4
About Denis Boudreau
Founder and Chief Inclusion Officer at InklusivComm, Denis has taken his inclusive communication expertise to hundreds of organizations around the world. Through workshops, counsel, and training, Denis has, to this day, empowered tens of thousands of busy professionals with powerful tools to bridge the gaps that can potentially exclude up to 40% of their audience members, based on disabilities, ageing, and other technical challenges.