Fostering Inclusion: Accessible Practices for Conferences and Beyond

Developing conference materials in advance and ensuring they are inclusive and accessible fosters a truly welcoming and enriching environment for all conference participants. By dedicating time to prepare materials ahead of the conference so that everyone can engage meaningfully with our content, we contribute to a more equitable conference experience for all.

Recommendations for preparing materials for sessions (posters and presentations) are provided below.

Posters

To optimize the attendee experience of viewing posters in a busy and crowded space, we encourage the use of alternative poster formats with images, clear headings, and minimal text. A repository of alternative poster formats can be found using this discussion thread at OSF for a “Better Scientific Poster” or at Poster Nerd

  • Formatting recommendations to maximize accessibility of your poster:
    • Font: Use a larger font size (44pt or larger), sans serif fonts (such as Arial or Calibri), and leave sufficient white space.
    • Contrast: Use high contrast between the background and the text color (e.g., black text on a white background or white text on a dark blue background).
    • Color: Use indicators other than just color for marking or highlighting items on your poster such as asterisks or underlining. Use indicators in addition to color in any figure (e.g., use crosshatch and dot patterns for different bars of a bar graph).
    • Text alignment: Use left-aligned text when multiple lines of text are being presented. Use between 1.2 and 2.0 line spacing.
    • Alternative (alt) text: Provide a short 1-2 sentence description of any visuals (e.g., images, photos, equations, graphs) that cannot otherwise be read by a screen reader. For PDFs, the best option for ensuring the readability of alt text is to include the description in a text box below the image.
    • Please use the Accessibility Checker function in PowerPoint to identify any issues that can typically be easily addressed by following the prompts provided. This is found under the Review tab.
    • If an accessibility check indicates that any hyperlinks are not accessible, here is a resource that can easily fix the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AU_wWDrCjg
    • QR code: Consider using QR codes so that attendees can download your results (e.g., tables or graphs) or any key presenter notes for use with a screen reader. QR codes should be 5"x5”. Free resources for creating QR codes are readily available online; one example is at https://www.qr-code-generator.com.

 

Session Presentations

  • Formatting recommendations to maximize accessibility of your presentation slides:
    • Templates: Using the templates provided in the presentation software will generally make it easier for screen readers to analyze the content.
    • Contrast: Use high contrast between the background and the text color (e.g., black text on a white background or white text on a dark blue background).
    • Font: Use a larger font size (18pt or larger), sans serif fonts (such as Arial or Calibri), and leave sufficient white space. Remember that people may be viewing your presentation on a relatively small screen rather than having it projected to a large screen on the wall. Use more slides with less text on each one.
    • Slides: Avoid placing text or images at the very bottom of the slides. Closed Captioning will often obscure this text.
    • Color: Use indicators other than just color for marking or highlighting items in your presentation such as asterisks or underlining. Use indicators in addition to color in any figure (e.g., use crosshatch and dot patterns for different bars of a bar graph).
    • Text alignment: Use left-aligned text when multiple lines of text are being presented.
    • Alternative (alt) text: Provide a short 1-2 sentence description of any visuals (e.g., images, photos, equations, graphs) that cannot otherwise be read by a screen reader. Because presentation slides will be converted to PDFs, the best option for ensuring the readability of alt text is to include the description in a text box below the image.
    • Please use the Accessibility Checker function in PowerPoint to identify any issues that can typically be easily addressed by following the prompts provided. This is found under the Review tab on PowerPoint.
    • If an accessibility check indicates that any hyperlinks are not accessible, here is a resource that can easily fix the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AU_wWDrCjg.
    • QR code: Consider using QR codes so that attendees can download your results (e.g., tables or graphs) or any key presenter notes for use with a screen reader. QR codes should be 5"x5”. Free resources for creating QR codes are readily available online; one example is at https://www.qr-code-generator.com.

Additional Recommendations Include:

  • If uploading slides to Whova ahead of the session, please consider including presenter notes for any slides that would not make sense without explanation.
  • Turn on the captioning feature. Directions can be found here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/office/present-with-real-time-automatic-captions-or-subtitles-in-powerpoint-68d20e49-aec3-456a-939d-34a79e8ddd5f
  • At the start of the session, please introduce each presenter, enunciating clearly. Including a title slide showing presenters’ names is also useful. It is helpful to name speakers before their speaking turn (e.g., include their name in the question, or signal the speaking order for sequential answers).
  • Please remind presenters to use the mics when speaking. Speakers often think they have a loud voice and thus do not need to use the mic, but they are not always correct about this. Keep in mind that it helps everyone including those in the back of the room when speakers use the mic consistently. This is particularly important if you are presenting in a recorded session as subsequent audiences will not hear presenters who do not speak into the microphone.
  • Kindly remind presenters to describe any figure, chart, or image. For example, instead of saying “this shows differences between conditions” you can say “this histogram shows differences between conditions, where on the left hand of the graph, Condition A….”
  • Presenters often forget to “pass the mic to the next speaker” during the informal portions of the session (e.g., discussions following presentations, answering audience questions). Please be mindful of handing off the mic consistently.
  • If the session includes a live Q&A portion, please repeat the questions in full to allow all participants to hear the questions.
  • Please remind presenters to use the full form of a term once before switching to acronyms. This helps users of closed captioning systems, as these systems aren’t always accurate for acronyms.
  • If the session includes pre-planned questions, please include those in the slides.

Thank you for your willingness to create presentation materials that are accessible and inclusive! If you have any questions regarding these guidelines, please reach out to either Lisa Finkelstein (lisaf@niu.edu), chair of the Disability Inclusion and Accessibility Conference Subcommittee or Shelly Rauvola (rrauvola@depaul.edu), chair of the Disability Inclusion and Accessibility Committee (DIAC).