Inclusion and the OGP Summit
Inclusion was a key focus for the Open Government Partnership Summit in Ottawa this year. To quote the description, the goal was to:
“Empower under-represented citizens regardless of gender, race, or sexual orientation, to engage actively with governments. This allows for more equitable governments.”
The schedule didn’t completely ignore accessibility, but far too often, well-meaning folks forget disability.
Canadians need to embrace disability for what it is: an integral part of the human experience. It’s not that it is more important than gender, race or sexual orientation, but that there is no other disadvantaged group that is so distributed across society. Aging is inevitable. If we are lucky enough to live long lives, we will all face more barriers than we did when we were younger. People born with disabilities, or those who acquire them early on life, simply have to face barriers sooner.
It Often Isn’t Constructive to Complain
Organizing conferences is complicated, even if they are a lot smaller than this. The size is also probably nothing compared to the complexity of it being international, politically-charged, and ensuring that it does justice to feminism and indigenous issues. Despite this, it is not acceptable to leave accessibility as an afterthought.
The conference, by in large, was well run. There was a multitude of interesting sessions happening at all times, and people were treated with great care. I very much enjoyed participating, and I think that everyone who attended will have learned something from it.
Rather than talking about the failures for People with Disabilities (PwD), this article will engage a counterfactual approach. I’m going to imagine that after the 2010 Canadian Supreme Court case with Donna Jodhan, that government embraced inclusiveness. I am going to pretend that the verdict compelled the Canadian Government to fundamentally rethink how they address accessibility issues — not that there haven’t been some improvements in government communications, but the approach hasn’t changed.
The following is mostly fictional, but will be based on a false assertion that accessibility issues are well-understood and treated as a high priority in the public sector. Hopefully, with the Canadian Accessibility Act becoming law later this month, we won’t have to use our imagination much longer.
Re-imagined Side Event
I arrived a bit late to the Feminist Open Government Day. The room was packed and there were quite a few people standing. I was happy to see that there was speech-to-text transcription (CART — Communication Access Realtime Translation) up allowing live transcription of the event in both English & French.
There was room between the tables to easily allow people in wheelchairs to move in closer. The room was set up with some flexibility so I could see how people with guides or assistance animals could be more easily included. I didn’t see any speakers with disabilities but the room was set up without need of a stage or a podium.
It is now uncommon to find speakers with physical disabilities (requiring assistive devices like walkers or wheelchairs) excluded from the stage, because organizers are no longer assuming that everyone is six-feet tall and able-bodied.
I really wanted to know what I had missed, and fortunately the CART transcript was easy to find. The government had developed a comprehensive approach to speech to text into their event organizing. I found it helpful that I could scroll through what had already been said and make sure that I caught the key messages of the day.
I was highly impressed by the number of powerful speakers. It was beneficial that the team transcribing the content was sharing it in real-time. I could just review the transcript and copy and paste the relevant quote to help me Tweet out some of the amazing work that was being done.
Inclusion has come a long way in the government, but many still face discrimination. Disability is still there, along with race, gender, orientation. The discussions involved a rich intersectional account of the work that still needs to be done.
While speaking to some of the organizers over lunch, I was told that it wasn’t that hard for them to create an accessible event since much of the best practices were now normalized. For instance, there were already equipment and contracting arrangements with CART suppliers, so extra effort wasn’t required to set this up. There was a great event organizing guide upon which they were able to build. This guide had been shared on GitHub, and several organizations around the world have been contributing. The goal of this guide was to define a best practice for event organizing and provide organizers with resources to make organizing inclusive events easier. Yes, it was still more work than producing an inaccessible event, but it was much more impactful for those who could make it (as well as those who couldn’t).
After lunch we came back to small group conversations. There were five discussions happening in the room and I found it hard to hear. The organizers handed out a tablet and a microphone, which were set up to go to an automated speech-to-text translation service. The quality wasn’t as good as it had been for the larger session, but everyone could read what the speaker had said and most of the time, it was correct. This was particularly useful for some of the attendees whose first language wasn’t English, or those who had trouble understanding speakers with thick accents.
There were some challenges with one attendee who had a speech impediment. The automated speech-to-text tools still aren’t good at supporting people with Cerebral Palsy. With some help from others at the table, the attendee in question was able to get their points across.
Imaginary Opening Plenary (Day One)
The opening was amazing. I walked in and was easily able to see which side of the room would have English translations. I was walking in with a blind friend, and we navigated over to the far side of the room. My friend was easily able to find the video description channel that allowed her to understand what was happening on the stage in front of us. This allowed me to focus on what was happening. It was also great to be able to just look up and read the CART text when the speaker switched to French or Spanish.
The CART text was on a separate screen in a high contrast. We didn’t have to worry about having to read white text on a white background.
It was terrific to see the opening event feature Minister Carla Qualtrough and Deputy Minister of Public Service Accessibility, Yazmine Laroche. It was National AccessAbility Week so both were already very busy at other events. It was exciting to see they were able to pre-record a video with a message about some of the great work that was being done across the country to remove barriers for Canadians. Minister Qualtrough is the first legally blind person to sit in Cabinet, and Madame Laroche is the highest ranking public sector employee in Canada, ever. I know how important it is to see PwD in leadership roles in society.
I understand that in an international event like this, Canada is going to want to highlight some cultural elements. I did enjoy the performance by Propeller Dance, which is an inclusive dance company in Ottawa. Rather than portraying PwD as inspirational due to their disabilities (inspiration porn), the dance troop simply explored movement. The dancers had a mixed set of abilities. They were able to get the crowd to loosen up a bit by engaging us all in some basic movements and some laughter. The choreography made many of us appreciate a fuller range of expression.
I took notice of the wheelchair ramp that allowed anyone to go up on the stage. It felt important that it was left for the rest of the conference. We can’t make assumptions about the temporary needs of people. I didn’t know if anyone else might have needed assistance, but frankly the organizers might not have either.
In looking at the event website, I could easily decide which session I would like to attend. Since it had been properly set up to ensure that it met WCAG 2.0 AA, I found it was easy to navigate with my phone. I appreciate when colour contrast and font size are properly considered. I could navigate the website easily, even when sitting by the big windows in the sun.
Rebuild — Designing an Open and Accessible Government
There were many parallel events at this conference. Given the confusion participants often face when attending these big events, a schedule of the day’s events were posted outside of each room of the conference. There was no need for a braille poster, as the web version had been properly tested to support blind users. The Shaw Centre had already invested in the BlindSquare wayfaring system for the blind. My friend who is blind was able to navigate easily to the room she was interested in, which was, not surprisingly, the same one I was interested in.
We both arrived a bit early to the talk on Relaxing Barriers to Participation. We chatted about how far we’ve come since the Donna Jodhan victory, and acknowledged that there is still more work to be done.
In mainstream conferences, it is still hard to pack a room with an accessibility talk. Knowing this, the organizers of the conference had gone out of their way to promote this session. Several Canadian Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) had been approached beforehand to see that they were aware of the event and the conference’s focus on inclusion. Material had been sent out beforehand in both an accessible PDF and EPUB versions, so that attendees would be able to plan their days accordingly.
A small group of attendees who are deaf were expected to attend the accessibility talk, so American Sign Language (ASL) and Quebec Sign Language (QSL) were provided. Other sessions relied on CART services.
There was a short slide presentation at the beginning of the panel. The sign language interpreters and CART providers had been given the slides beforehand so that they could get the wording right. The presenters had built alternative descriptions of images into their slides so people with vision disabilities did not have barriers to their participation.
With the bilingual CART services, everyone could follow along. Each session had live streaming, which a friend confirmed to me later on, having watched the live stream of the video from another room in the conference centre. She had hoped the session she was attending was going to be more technical. Unfortunately, she sat in a middle row and couldn’t easily get out in the middle of the session. It was wonderful that she was able to watch the live-stream of the accessibility panel with the volume off and still keep up, due to the captions. The live stream allowed the user to switch between a view of the stage, a view of the slides and a split screen, so nothing was missed.
Inclusive Artificial Intelligence (AI) After-party
It is common at conferences to have a social after-party: a meet-and-greet of sorts that is more conversational and provides folks with more opportunities to talk. A great evening panel was organized in an accessible venue on Elgin St. The organizers could see it would be far too ironic to organize an event on Inclusive AI if everyone couldn’t attend.
Anyone from Ottawa knows that much of Elgin Street is under construction. The organizing committee had provided both written and audio instructions to make sure that people could make their way to the social. It is always a bit of a challenge finding ways in a new city, so maps were provided to help guide folks there in the most direct way.
Wayfaring isn’t integrated yet into Ottawa’s Open Smart City infrastructure, but that should be coming soon. It was helpful that people were clearly identified as volunteers and there was a centralized volunteer location where people who needed assistance could easily find a volunteer if needed.
The social also engaged automated CART services in English, and broadcasted it on all of the screens in the pub. As with the discussion tables for the feminist open government session, the organizers used an automated speech-to-text service to provide the translation. This was a reasonably technical panel, so some of the translations were pretty funny (automated speech to text still has its problems). That said, there were people who went outside to enjoy the sun, and who were still able to catch most of what was said by the panel.
Most attendees acknowledged that planning a fully-accessible social event is difficult, but that reasonable efforts had been made that day to be inclusive. The more limited accommodations in the informal event were properly described. One attendee who is deaf and had hoped to attend knew that there wasn’t going to be ASL, therefore chose not to attend.
This Didn’t Happen
Most of the accessibility elements described above simply didn’t happen. It is a misconception that accessible events require large budgets. I feel that many of the barriers I saw were simply because we are not used to organizing events in this way. A national event like the OGP summit simply wouldn’t happen in Canada without professional interpretation services (everything is in English and French). Why is CART seen as an exception, rather than the norm?
Having a clear guide of best practices that is embedded with other organizations’ handbooks could make this something that is affordable, reliable and routine. Yes, it will take time to develop. Yes, no conference will be perfect. But as a modern, developed country with brand new, national accessibility legislation, we have to raise the bar.
It is really sad that a conference in 2019 with a specific focus on inclusion would come with so many barriers to participation. It is particularly discouraging, as it occurred during National AccessAbility Week, a time when we should all try to do better. The entire public sector needs to work to eliminate barriers, and it needs to be a consistent, collaborative, ongoing effort that adapts and continues year-to-year.
