14 ways to make your charity’s online events, meetings & training more inclusive and accessible

At Third Sector Lab we are working to make our online training, events and meetings more inclusive. It’s about making them accessible to all, broadening the reach of our work and an aknowledgement that a diverse range of voices makes the work we do even better than ever.

I’ve gathered up some of the changes we have made or plan to make to ensure our events are more racially inclusive, more accessible for diasabled people and more welcoming to the LGTBQ+ community.

This is by no means an exhaustive list and it’s definitely not a finished piece of work — it never will be. There’s some stuff we do really well but there’s plenty we can improve on. I’d really welcome any comments with your own thoughts and ideas.

1. Co-design your events and training

This seems obvious right? Unfortunately lots of online events have diversity and inclusion as an afterhthought. You can’t meaningfully retrofit this. If you want to build more inclusive events for a wider range of people you need to start with co-design — understanding user needs, barriers and aspirations.

This week we ran a co-design session with employee resource groups from Google, Spotify, Salesforce and others to better understand how staff from minority ethnic groups engage with opportunities to become a trustee. This helps shape the format and structure of our Digital Trustees online events.

2. Understand your racial bias and have conversations about race at work

Unconscious bias is triggered by our brain automatically making quick judgments and assessments. They are influenced by our background, personal experiences, societal stereotypes and cultural context. It is not just about ethnicity but gender, sexuality, disability and other visible diversity characteristics.

I’ve taken unconscious bias training and an important step has been having more conversations in the workplace about race. CIPD have a really good resource on how to talk about race at work.

3. Find speakers from a wider range of ethnic minority groups

This takes time and research. If your speakers are largely white men there’s a good chance you’re not looking hard enough for more diverse speakers. They simply may not be as publicly known. Do the extra work to find them.

Great Charity Speakers is a good starting point. Would love to know if other have speaker lists they can share — please add them in the comments.

4. Have balanced gender representation

We work hard at Third Sector Lab to make sure we have balanced gender representation in terms of speakers and panels. Again, depending on the subject, it may take more research but it’s not hard — just do it. It’s also not tokenistic — there are plenty of amazing female, trans and non-binary speakers out there who are experts in their field and can really elevate your event.

5. Use gender neutral language and offer people the chance to share pronouns

By addressing your guests in a gender-neutral manner, you can make your space inclusive of people of all genders and prevent anyone from feeling excluded. Also give people the opportunity to add their pronouns to their name at the event — this is easy on Zoom and pretty much every other platform. This helps reduce the risk of misgendering your speakers and attendees.

Creating a warm and welcoming environment for everyone is key to much of what is on this list.

6. Ask for people’s accessibility needs upfront and act on them

The most important thing you can do is invite people with accessibility needs to contact you ahead of time. We include a line in all meeting invitations that says, “If you have additional needs, let us know and we’ll do everything we can to help you.” This will help you plan your event, support people during the call, and share relevant information before and after.

You could include the following:

Call for practise to test out the technology
Breaks for closed captioning
Personal reminders prior to the call
Options for participants who do not have a microphone or a camera

If you’re interested in making your events, training and meetings more accessible there’s some great advice from AbilityNet. Particularly around recodrding meetings, BSL and other adjustments. You need to plan in advance for adjustments in case you get last minute requests.

7. Think about how online sessions feel for neurodivergents

This affects me personally, which is tricky given how many online sessions I run every single week. I find congnitive overload can become a real issue — please avoid having too many different online tools, polls, docs, etc on a single call. Having an agenda and information before the event can make a huge difference for me.

I’m not going to try and fumble my way through a list on how to make your online events more accessible to those with ADHD, autism and other neurodivergents because David Whelan has a really good post on this.

8. Partner with the right organisations

The partnerships we build bring a couple of key advantages — they help us to be both more inclusive and diverse, and reach a wider specialist audience.

When it comes to our Digital Trustees online matchmaking events, it isn’t just about getting more digital professionals on boards — as part of that we want to drive an increase in the number of voices from those groups who are traditionally underrepresented when it comes to governance roles. By partnering with organisations who represent the interests of minority groups we are challenged to see our initiative from their perspective, gain access to their networks and provide a space in our series of events to amplify their voices.

Building these partnerships takes time, care and attention. Our partnerships so far have been with UK Black Tech, Queer Trustees, Reach Volunteering, Getting on Board, VONNE, Scottish Women’s Aid, YMCA, DataKind UK, Association of Chairs, SCVO and others.

9. Diversify your own events & training team

We are working hard to broaden the range of trainers we have — in particular those from minority ethnic backgrounds. The Curve training workshops we run are an area where we can make real impact — ensuring there are more people from diverse backgrounds delivering sessions for us in 2022, into 2023 and beyond.

10. Make your pricing accessible

Even though online events have the potential to include more people, cost can still be a huge issue. Although you may not be able to directly influence your audience’s ability to connect to the internet, you can design ways for those with lower income levels to attend your event.

Consider a sliding scale, pay what you can, donation-based tickets or perhaps a number of free tickets available.

Thanks to support from Catalyst and other funders we can offer places on Digital Trustess, Open Working Programme and The Curve completely free to non-profits.

11. Give people the schedule, structure and other information up front

Where possible share the presentation slides ahead of time, with explanations in the notes section. Inform participants about how you intend to distribute the slides during the event. Explain the event’s format and timings in a simple online doc. Include a list of those who are on the call. Include a description of the technology and how you intend to use it. Make expectations and conventions clear. Include details such as how you intend to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute.
Describe what happens after the event. Establish a single point of contact for all questions and concerns.

Again this isn’t an exhaustive list but should help you sense check what you’re doing right now. Please, please, please don’t send all the information in seven different emails — try to have a single point of truth for your event.

12. Avoid running your event during school drop-off and pick-up times

This is possibly just me being a moan as I do this half the week. It’s not hard to avoid having critical meetings or events at school drop-off and pick-up times. Given that it’s mainly women who take on this responsibility, this is an important change you can make when attempting to make your events more accessible to all genders. If your run events for internal teams take the time to understand any caring responsbilities people may have and build that into your programming decisions.

13. Leave plenty time for breaks and time for questions

I’ve already spoken about cognitive overload and the fact that many of your attendees will have caring responsibilities. Many people have hidden disabilities. Nobody wants an hour straight on Teams with no lull whatsovever. Build in breaks and time for questions — this isn’t optional.

14. Think about whether your event needs a content warning

You can include a content warning in your event description if your event will be discussing potentially sensitive topics. Including a content warning allows attendees to prepare for adequate engagement or, if necessary, to leave the event for their own safety. The purpose of content warnings is not to encourage attendees to avoid your events — forewarning your attendees about potentially difficult topics can increase their engagement by increasing trust in what you’re delivering.

Making events more inclusive is an ongoing process. What did I miss here? What’s your advice for organisations who want to improve what they’re doing? I’d love to hear what you think in the comments or over on Twitter.