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A thread about burying heads in sand re accessibility, equity, diversity and inclusion...
I was invited last week to give a talk at a conference being organised by a big well known membership organisation in our sector (not gonna name them but you might guess).
I was invited last week to give a talk at a conference being organised by a big well known membership organisation in our sector (not gonna name them but you might guess).
Now, this organisation pride themselves on relying on volunteers and generally don’t pay speakers. But they also don’t offer a decent compensation package either. For example, even speakers are often asked to pay to attend the events they speak at. Yep. I’m not okay with that.
But my real beef is with their attitudes to accessibility and inclusion in their communications. For years and years I championed for them to do better and kept being told “don’t worry Tracy, our new website is coming.” I even offered to give them content strategy advice for free
They never took me up on the offer. So, the new website came. But accessibility didn’t come with it. An example: when they host event info on their site, they often use pdfs or - worse still - images to share programme info. Or bury those details deep down. Their copy is poor.
So, when they invited me to speak I said that I was only really willing to do so if for this specific event they could ensure that they presented the info in an inclusive and accessible format.
Guess what?
Guess what?
I received an email from their Exec Director yesterday saying that they’ll just find another speaker then.
In other words, they don’t care to listen to concerns about inclusion, accessibility and equity (I also called them out on the compensation thing). But it’s worse...
In other words, they don’t care to listen to concerns about inclusion, accessibility and equity (I also called them out on the compensation thing). But it’s worse...
In the ED’s email footer they’re promoting a book from their OWN bookstore that’s all about diversity, equality and equity in our profession!!!
None of this is good enough. And also none of what I’m calling them to higher standards on is difficult to implement. They just choose not to. And it IS a choice.
From my own experience of running many events now - and often not getting it “right” - there are two ways to deal with the shame that comes up when you’re called out on something like this:
1) listen and just try something new, even if it’s incremental steps to start with (my own events are far from perfect but we lean into the thing that we’re failing at, instead of option 2)
2) Bury our heads in the sand and push those who are standing for better away.
2) Bury our heads in the sand and push those who are standing for better away.
You can hide from shame, or you can do something with it.
I’ll commit to call people forth to do the latter. And I’ll keep chipping away at the stuff I’m not doing well enough in my own events.
And I won’t silence those who hold me to better standards. I welcome them.
I’ll commit to call people forth to do the latter. And I’ll keep chipping away at the stuff I’m not doing well enough in my own events.
And I won’t silence those who hold me to better standards. I welcome them.
So this year for @ContentEdLive for example we’re figuring out a way for every speaker to receive a payment plus other perks (free full place, coaching, discount codes for contacts, etc). It’s not perfect and it may screw me financially, but we’re doing it.
I wasn’t happy that our compensation for @utterlycontent speakers went far enough and that will change for our 2021 event. Again, I don’t know how to make the numbers balance, but I’m darned well gonna try! Giving up isn’t good enough.
We now caption all sessions. Next week my team and I at @picklejar will all personally start the job of 100s of hours of captioning work for the @ContentEdLive event. It’s a lot of work. But it’s worth it. It’s a big driver for us pre-recording many sessions by the way.
For @ContentEdLive in particular ( @utterlycontent was better) we’re not there yet on diversity in our line up. We have POC speakers, speakers with disabilities, LGBTQ speakers but not enough. This is where I often feel stuck by working in the education sector. But we keep trying.
We offer inclusion scholarships for our events so finances need not be a barrier. And we offer payment plans to spread payments (and yep, we’ve been scammed by someone on this for @utterlycontent but we choose to trust that most people will pay and not cancel their payments).
There is so so much more that we can, should and will do. And we need people to keep calling us out on our stops and barriers because as human beings we have blind spots! And sometimes it evokes a deep sense of shame to be called out. But we have to be okay with that.
So my suggestions to event planners:
1) Hear the thing
2) Welcome the voices of those who see your blind spots, and consider that they come from love and championing you, not hate
3) Lean into it and change something. Anything. Even if it’s stopping using images as text!
1) Hear the thing
2) Welcome the voices of those who see your blind spots, and consider that they come from love and championing you, not hate
3) Lean into it and change something. Anything. Even if it’s stopping using images as text!
And above all else, be okay with shame. It just shows that you listened and deep down you do actually care. Acting on it helps you to move past it. Don’t sabotage yourself by continuing to exist inside of it. Take action and allow yourself a way out of the shame.
