This guide describes a best practices model for making the Connecting the Dots workshop an accessible experience for both disabled and able-bodied participants. The descriptions serve as instructions for how to provide access as well as templates for communicating access and limitations in your promotional materials (feel free to borrow our content!)
Accessibility is an ongoing learning process, and so it is important to communicate your efforts with your community and to be open to suggestions for improvement.
Collective care
Everyone has different needs. To make this space as welcoming and inclusive as we can, we ask participants to:
- Include their pronouns in their displayed Zoom profile name
- Describe themselves and their backgrounds during introductions
- Example: I’m Caitlin Gebhard from Cambridge. I use they/them and she/her pronouns. I am a white femme person with pink hair sitting in my office with plants behind me and my cat perched on my office chair.
Creating access is an ongoing and collective process. We ask everyone to be open to suggestions about to make this space more accessible and welcoming.
The conversations we have during this workshop can be heavy. We will be discussing deep-rooted, complicated issues that affect each of us in different ways. Our collective exploration of these problems might touch a nerve, bring up uncomfortable memories, or trigger a variety of complicated emotions. We will take time to check in with ourselves and reflect on these emotions at several points during the workshop, but we also encourage you to take time and space before and after our workshop to take care of yourselves and each other.
Video conferencing
The lecture and discussion portions of the workshop are hosted on Zoom. You are welcome to join the Zoom call through your laptop, desktop, or phone, by voice or by chat, with video or without — and you are always welcome to simply listen and learn.
We recommend that you update to the latest version of Zoom on your preferred device.
If you would like to familiarize yourself with Zoom before the workshop, you may find the following tutorials helpful:
The following tutorials may be particularly helpful for screen reader users:
Live captioning will be provided by Rev. The captions will appear at the bottom of your screen.
To turn the captions off, click the caret (^) above the “Live Transcript” button in the bottom menu and select “Hide Subtitle”.
To view the running transcript of the captions, click the caret (^) above the “Live Transcript” button in the bottom menu and select “View full transcript.” The transcripts usually appear on the right side of your screen.
In addition to captions, the lecture, breakout room discussion, and group discussions will be interpreted in American Sign Language. Interpreters will indicate their role and in their name on Zoom (e.g., “ASL”).
Miro whiteboard exercise
The exercise portion of the workshop is hosted on Miro, an online whiteboard tool. You can participate in our Miro exercise using either a mouse and keyboard (recommended) or only a keyboard (see Miro Keyboard Shortcuts).
Miro is a visual-based tool. While you can zoom to 400% scale, unfortunately, the tool is not very accessible to screen readers. As part of the debrief and reflection portion of the workshop, we will describe the big themes, patterns, and systems illustrated in our map.
If you would like to familiarize yourself with Miro before the workshop, we encourage you to check out the two short Youtube videos linked below:
Timing
The workshop is designed to be 3 hours long with two 10-minute breaks, one between the lecture and exercise and one break between the exercise and the conclusion. Although we will try to start on time, you are welcome to join or leave the workshop at any point for any reason.
Language
This workshop is being held in English. If you would like an interpreter present at the workshop, please let us know in the registration form, and we will work with you to find the right interpreter.
We hope to hold this workshop in as many communities in as many languages as possible. Please contact us if you would like this workshop to come to your community.
Materials
The lecture slides, the causality map created during the workshop, and a textual summary of the causality map will be made available after the workshop. For privacy reasons, recordings of the workshop and saved transcripts will be made available on a case by case basis.
Need anything else?
If you have any questions or want to request additional accommodations, please do not hesitate to contact [facilitator or access coordinator contact information].
Creative Commons Attribution: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This license lets you remix, tweak, and build upon this work non- commercially, as long as you credit us and license your new creations under the identical terms.
Connecting the Dots Community Toolkit 