What the Local Voices Network learned about accessibility for digital community conversations
Note: This post describes some of the strategies that the Local Voices Network has adapted for accessibility in our digital community conversations. If readers have additional tips and strategies for making your conversations more accessible please reach out and share!
At the Local Voices Network, we believe in the power of small group conversations. Over the past two years, we’ve trained hundreds of facilitators across the country and thousands of Americans have participated in conversation at local library branches or at events hosted by local media outlets and civic groups. Conversations build relationships, deepening community resilience and offer space for people to share resources and ideas for their neighborhoods and cities. The LVN process, designed to center conversations in the local, lived experience of participants, has adapted, along with the rest of our lives, to create space for constructive online conversations during the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve found that several obstacles to inclusivity for in-person conversations become less problematic when people are able to participate remotely.
Many civic meetings, hosted in buildings not designed for accessibility, exclude community members who are not able-bodied. Parents with children are often unable to attend in-person community meetings scheduled over dinnertime. For community members living with poverty, the cost to take a bus or train can prohibit participation in public meetings. Given the increased accessibility made possible by virtual conversations, we plan to continue to offer digital community conversations, even when people are able to safely gather again in person.
One of our earliest LVN conversations in Madison, WI was organized by community facilitator Phil Haslanger, to include members of the deaf and hard of hearing community in Dane County. Participants in the conversation shared stories about the challenges they had faced in the community and the experience of accessibility being an afterthought from community events to takeout lanes at restaurants.
Digital community conversations remove many of these challenges. Earlier this summer, LVN partnered with Public Narrative, a nonprofit based in Chicago that works with journalists and nonprofit organizations to tell better stories. For the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Public Narrative and LVN teamed up for a conversation event. For participants who are Deaf and hard of hearing, we utilized a combination of ASL interpretation and Closed Captioning on Zoom. For ASL interpreters we used the “Spotlight Video” function in Zoom by right clicking on the video of the ASL interpreter or clicking the ellipsis in their video screen. Zoom recently updated their system to allow users to spotlight multiple video screens.
Closed Captions require a setting to be turned on in your Zoom account. Log into zoom and go to your account settings. In the meeting settings, you can turn on Closed Captioning, allowing the meeting host, or someone the host assigns, to type captions.
Meeting participants, using the web application, can then follow along once a captioner has been assigned.
If you are using breakout rooms for smaller group conversations, we recommend asking participants in advance if they require ASL interpretation and/or Closed Captioning and communicating what accessibility accommodations will be available in the breakout rooms to make sure participants are able to participate in the breakout spaces in addition to the main room of the meeting. Participants shared appreciation for the opportunity to join in conversation and digital meetings make these accommodations much easier than an in-person event. For your digital events, we recommend finding a local interpreter agency by reaching out to a local reference librarian..
From California to Massachusetts, participants in digital LVN conversations speak dozens of languages. Digital community conversations provide event organizers with the opportunity to create dialogue across linguistic barriers. For our small-group conversations, we’ve utilized Zoom’s interpretation function to facilitate communication between English and Spanish.
In that same settings section where you can turn on closed captioning for meetings, you can turn on multilingual interpretation. When scheduling your zoom meeting, make sure to turn on interpretation and assign an email to your interpreter. While in the meeting, the meeting host will be able to assign interpretation responsibilities to the interpreter. Once assigned, participants joining by computer, tablet and/or phone will all have the ability to choose the language they would prefer
The LVN platform currently supports conversation transcription in English and Spanish. We look forward to greater inclusion as we grow our capacity to engage in more languages and build reciprocal access across languages into our platform. Digital events have turned out to be a key to broadening access and possibility.
Each of these events provided a learning opportunity for LVN. We are grateful for our partners who helped us adapt and offer more inclusive and accessible opportunities for participation, and as an organization, we are committed to continue to learn and grow in this area.
What have you learned about making your conversations more accessible? Please reach out and share feedback and tips!
