Interview with Shawn Thompson

QUESTION 01 Can you tell us a bit about yourself, and how your disability might impact your experience, as someone who attends live in-person and virtual events?

My name’s Shawn Thompson, and I’m an accessibility advisor for the Accessibility, Accommodation, and Adaptive Computer Technology (AAACT) Program, working for the Canadian Federal Government.

I have a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), resulting from having been hit by a car in 1998, as I was crossing a street. Due to my cognitive disability, I have a hard time reading, remembering, and processing written information. I use assistive technologies to help me read content, specifically text-to-speech software, without which, reading and retaining information is almost impossible. I don’t use screen readers much, because I can’t really remember what the shortcuts and the commands are. When attending presentations, I find it hard to focus on content and write down notes at the same time. This makes it difficult to remember the information shared by the speakers. Trying to summarize the key aspects of the information is challenging, as I try to capture every word, and I quickly get overwhelmed.

During in-person live events, I often struggle with finding my way around venues and remembering where the different rooms are, or when specific sessions take place on the calendar. Venue maps will help but memorizing the information from the maps is hard. Retention is challenging. Virtual events ten to be easier for me, because I don’t have to deal with the fact that I’m not familiar with the space. Not having to remember room locations reduces cognitive load. Accessible applications that organize the information about the event are very helpful, but if the information is disjointed, then it makes everything so much harder.

QUESTION 02 Thinking back on some of your experiences attending in-person or virtual events, what are some of the worst things speakers, trainers, and other communication experts can do to ruin your experience as an attendee?

“Ruin” might be a little strong. It’s more like things that will hinder my experience. For me, it’s all about being able to manage the cognitive load.

The main thing that causes me issues is when speakers fail to provide a summary of their presentation prior to the session, or don’t stick to the one they provided. Without a reliable summary, it’s harder for me to prepare my notes, and it will impact what I manage to remember. I never really know what part of the presentation I’ll retain, due to my struggles with note-taking. All I can do, is hope that I remember the important details.

Speakers who don’t share an abstract or a summary ahead of time and resources at the end of their presentation make it that much harder for me. If they’re not very clear about where I can find their materials, resources, or handouts, I will probably not know where to go back to. Will I take the right notes, will I remember the right things? If the speaker’s summary doesn’t fit their presentations, it makes everything very confusing.

Finally, unless I’m very interested in the topic, I don’t want the speakers to try and sell me stuff, or fish me in. I don’t want to be sold to.

QUESTION 03 Can you share some of the great things speakers, trainers, and other communication experts sometimes do that make a positive impact on your ability to fully enjoy your in-person or virtual event experiences?

Speakers who supply their presentation materials, abstract, agenda or summary before their presentation really set me up for success. If they make their content available after the event (like their presentation materials, or even better, a recording), then I can more successfully reference back to it later, remember it later, boost my retention, etc. It allows me to double-check the information that was shared, validate the notes I took, confirm my understanding after the event, etc. When I’m given means to validate my memory, then I can check if I remembered properly.

Sharing their materials before and after their session is immensely useful. Speakers who are clear about where they will share their materials, or any content or information that was given out, help me more easily find the place where I can access that information later. Sharing them beforehand helps me prepare my notes properly and know what to expect. Sharing them after the fact allows me to go back and validate what I learned, retained, and remembered. Remembering more means a better outcome. Not sharing their materials will hinder my memory otherwise.

QUESTION 04 If you had one piece of advice to give speakers, trainers, and other communication experts, so their content became more inclusive of people who have disabilities, what would it be?

I would say for speakers to encourage their audience to share their individual notes with other participants. The speaker’s notes and materials are great but getting access to the notes of other people also helps with putting the pieces together, as the different perspectives are complementary. It helps bring me back to the good parts or the details, to the elements that were important and that I might have missed as I was trying to take my own notes. Make the event presentation available after the presentation is over (the recording itself if available, whether it was an in-person or virtual event).

QUESTION 05 Thank you for sharing some of your insights with us today. As we wrap up our conversation, is there anything that you’d like to add, such as another thought, another piece of advice, another perspective, etc.?

I would say pay attention to the work we are doing over at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) around making content usable for people with cognitive and learning disabilities (https://www.w3.org/TR/coga-usable/).

This document is for anyone who creates content and gives advice on how to make that content more inclusive of people with cognitive and learning disabilities. It covers many aspects related to cognitive disabilities, learning disabilities (LD), neurodiversity, intellectual disabilities, and specific learning disabilities.

It can support speakers and content creators alike, doing a better job at helping users find what they need, it provides advice on using clear content (text, images, and media), it helps audience members avoid mistakes, and helps them with their ability to focus as well. It can also ensure that processes don’t rely just on memory, it provides help and support, as well as ideas for adaptation and personalization. Finally, and maybe more importantly, it advocates for testing the materials and delivery of the content to audience members who have disabilities, which is a huge part of how making the materials more inclusive.