How to design accessible and inclusive events

I walked into the Committee Room to present to the external advisory group. Despite the beige walls and mismatched chairs, standard for many municipal rooms, the room was bustling with chatter as the committee members caught up with each other and prepared for the meeting. Two other projects were presented prior to mine. All three of our presentations were discussed thoroughly, with great feedback from the committee. Kind of a boring story about day to day government activities.

Except I skipped a key detail. This is an Accessibility Committee composed of community members with disabilities. As with all groups of people, each person had unique needs and many required physical, digital or personal support to enable communication with the rest of the committee members. This included a sign language interpreter, voice to text tools, software that changes text to audio and many other devices that could be seen, as well as many that would not be visible. Despite all of the possible communication barriers within this group, the meeting ran smoothly with all members being part of the broader discussion. The presenters were all brought easily into the discussions.

This meeting highlighted to me not only the importance, but the possibility, of making city services accessible for all of us. It reminded me, as I always am at public meetings, that there is so much to learn from having a variety of voices at the table.

In addition, as we go through life we will have experiences that will require levels of accessibility. This can include pushing baby strollers or having a broken leg where accessible doors, ramps and elevators will ease movement throughout the city. Along with this, some of the most exciting new technologies, in my opinion, are creating a level playing field to enable all people to engage in, and not be excluded from, public life.

By designing an accessible city, we really are designing a city for all of us. So what does this look like in government services?

There are many ways that accessibility can be incorporated into the work we do. In this article I will share with you how Mississauga designed an event around the theme of accessibility...and hopefully encourage you to do the same.



Accessibility and Inclusion “Idea Jam”

In our Smart City Master Plan, accessibility was always a feature. We came up with this great idea to run a one day “Idea Jam” with the theme of Accessibility and Inclusion that would invite members of the public to relook at city services and come up with new ideas for services that would be accessible and inclusive, and have some element of technology.

After we brushed off our lapels with pride for our idea we realized that that was the easy part. If we were going to have an event based on accessibility and inclusion we would need to design it so that the event itself was accessible and inclusive.

Here I’ve outlined some of the key steps we took to develop our event:



Have the right voices at the table...from the beginning

Our first stop was inviting the city’s Accessibility specialists to the team, and sharing our idea with the aforementioned Accessibility Committee. The internal Accessibility team was an integral part of planning the event and the Accessibility Committee was communicated with throughout the process. At the time of developing this event the city did not have an Indigenous Relations team, nor a Diversity and Inclusion team. Both of these are now in place and I would encourage these specialists to be included, if they exist in your place of work.

Consider accessibility when planning an event

As with any good event, there are many behind the scenes decisions that are almost invisible when done well. These details, though, are also important in creating an atmosphere that is comfortable, safe, and fun for the attendees. This is also where people who are already marginalized can feel more excluded if not considered. One thing we did was supplement event information (on things like wheelchair ramps, lighting conditions, audio and visual set-ups, technology available), with questions for participants to let us know if they required any specialised assists such as a sign language interpreter, water or food for guide dogs, escort for those with visual impairments.

Accessible location: Mississauga is a sprawling city that can be difficult to navigate without a car. We chose a location that was central and close to transit. We also offered other modes of transport for those that required it, such as Wheeltrans (accessible taxi services), taxis, transit tickets. The location also needed to have accessible spaces including a series of breakout rooms, and an accessible auditorium.

Free admission: Mississauga, like all cities, has a variety of socio-economic levels. We wanted to ensure that anyone who wanted to come was able to attend so the event was free - including all meals, snacks, and coffee breaks.

Accessibility training to prepare: We had a number of city staff volunteers to help out with the event. Many of them had not worked in events or had experience with accessibility and inclusion so we offered training to these staff members through our internal Accessibility team. This training provided staff an opportunity to ask questions and be prepared for a wide range of possible needs during the event. The staff spoke highly of the training and it really helped to create a safe and comfortable atmosphere for the attendees, judges and mentors.

Create a level(ish) playing field

Idea Jams, Hackathons and design thinking are very common in some communities and completely foreign in others. While the event timeline was very short - just one day - we wanted to provide opportunities for everyone to have shared tools and information throughout the day.

We started the day with a series of talks that were intended to give an inside look at the city government in terms of accessibility, inclusion and technology, as well as an overview of current technology in this field.

Our keynote speaker was Ricardo Wagner, Microsoft Accessibility Lead for Canada. During his talk he discussed the important role of technology and accessibility:

“With more than one billion people with disabilities in the world, we believe accessibility and inclusion are essential to delivering on our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. That doesn’t just begin and end with the products we create. To enable transformative change, accessibility needs to be a priority. It’s about ensuring that inclusion is woven into the fabric of what we design and build for every team, organization, classroom, and home.”

I can safely say, we all learned a lot during this incredible talk. It was a fantastic way to start the day off. Other talks included City of Mississauga staff: Shawn Slack, CIO and Director of IT; Jennifer Stirling, Manager Digital Library Services & Collections; Steve Czajka, Planning and Building /Data & Visualization Studio; Jen Cowan, Accessibility Specialist.

We worked with our event partners at Microsoft to ensure that we had the most up to date technologies during the day to ensure that the event would be able to be shared by everyone that attended. The most striking technology were the real-time, automatic captions that were used throughout the talks, presentations and judging of the event. This AI enabled tool was able to understand a wide range of accents and unusual speech patterns incredibly quickly. This was a great support to not just the people with hearing impairments, but also to the speakers who were able to share their ideas with a wider audience.

Along with this, we provided laptops to any attendee that required one and kept the technology requirements simple in terms of developing their ideas. Each team had at least one person that had enough technical proficiency to create a basic powerpoint slideshow for their presentation.

We also know that people would have varying skills in regards to ideation and presentations. We worked with two local groups to provide workshops. The RIC centre, who provide business services and incubator space for local start ups, provided information on giving a presentation, as this was the method of showing their work to the judges at the end of the day. We also worked with EDGE, a startup and innovation centre at a local college. This team showed the groups some basic design thinking skills to help them generate new ideas, and to work collaboratively. We provided each of these groups with information about ensuring their presentations were accessible and inclusive.

Identify your technology, strategic and community partners

This event was definitely a collaborative event with many hands on deck to make it possible. While this was the first Idea Jam we had put on, it was not the first event the IT Department had hosted for the public. In putting together a list of partners we started with organizations that had previously supported us, along with some of our main technology partners.

Through this process, we learned early on that accessibility was a key priority for Microsoft Canada and they became key partners in the event. Their partnership included bringing in the keynote speaker, providing staff as mentors, judging the winners, and providing technical advice and support to our staff in order to ensure accessibility features in our technology were used to support participants in the event.

Other technology vendors provided staff for mentoring, as well as cash sponsorship for prizes and food. Many of the larger technology companies had community and volunteer programs for their employees. This event was offered as an option to fulfill their requirements.

We also looked to local post secondary institutions, and associated organizations, for support. Through these connections we were able to work with two incubation hubs, Ric and EDGE, who provided professional workshops and mentorship throughout the day.

For this particular event, we looked for accessibility and inclusion experts to ensure we were following best practices, educate ourselves and create deeper relationships with the community. For this we worked with the city’s Accessibility Committee as well as the Canadian National Institute of the Blind (CNIB). The Accessibility Committee advised us throughout the process, served as mentors and judges. The CNIB provided expertise as a judge.

I have hosted many events and I can truly say that, although the partners provided expertise throughout the day, they learned as much as the participants did. They all found it a very rewarding experience and were eager to be involved in future events.

Key Takeaways

What we could have done better

Overall the event was a success. We did surveys with the attendees and followed up with all of our partners. Most of the responses were very positive from both groups. Some of the areas for improvement (based on feedback and our own observations):

• Find a way to integrate the winning ideas into city workplans and projects.
• Consider having the event over a few days. It was a *very* long day.
• Market the event earlier and to more community groups.
• Work with newly formed Indigenous Relations and Diversity & Inclusion teams.

Some successes

While there are always ways to improve, it is also important to recognize what went right.

The partners, attendees and staff loved the experience. We all walked away feeling like we had learned a lot, had met amazing people, heard incredible ideas, and were able to create meaningful engagement with the community.

Many of the staff from the IT department had never met the end users of their products before. They develop tools for other internal departments but rarely interact with the public that are the end users. It was transformational for a few of them to make the human to human connection.

The attendees were amazing. Their ideas, energy and willingness to spend a day with strangers to make their city better. All of the ideas were fantastic - and most even possible to some degree! The room was filled with people from high school to retirement, with a variety of abilities, many with english as a second language, and a variety of skills. They fed off each others’ energy and ideas and were fascinating to learn from. The winning project was a tool to help visually imparied people know when the bus was coming so that bus drivers would know to let them on. This team met at the event and consisted of a person with a visual impairment and two members of a family that had only arrived in Canada a few months before. It was a pretty special moment for everyone.

Creating events that are truly inclusive and accessible do require some extra leg work and thoughtfulness but, in the end, create opportunities for all voices in a community to be heard. They will be an ongoing work in progress but allow for cities to create deeper engagement and meaningful opportunities for staff, partners and the public to connect. This sentiment carries through to all service delivery as we collectively aim to better engage with our communities and to deliver services that are more digital and on-demand.

The City of Mississauga is larger than most local governments with a population over 800,000. But we must recognize that the needs of our communities don’t change if we decrease this population size. No matter the size of your community, there is increasing demand to provide more inclusive and accessible services. Whether this is through Town Hall meetings, city planning consultations or events like the one I spoke of today, this requires us to be mindful of accessibility. I urge you to look closely at our technology purchasing decisions when moving toward more digital services, to ensure you have a team in place that understands the importance of accessibility and inclusivity in service design and delivery and ultimately, that you consider our role as public servants as we work together to serve the entirety of our communities, no matter their size.

Anthea Foyer is a strategic leader, creative director, storyteller and artist with expertise in smart cities, digital culture & strategy, arts & culture, city building & government. She believes complex problems can be solved by using creative tools and collaborative processes to share knowledge, engage audiences, shift mindsets, and, ultimately, design a better future for us all. Anthea currently works as a Culture Planner for the City of Mississauga, Canada.