philoSOPHIA 2017 Contact Information for the Local Hosts and Accessibility Committee

Local Hosts: Lauren Guilmette (lguilmette@fau.edu) and Robert Leib (rleib@fau.edu)

Accessibility Committee: philosophia2017access@gmail.com

PhiloSOPHIA is committed to the principles of universal design. It is our explicit goal to make the conference as accessible and welcoming as possible from the ground up and also with an understanding that accessibility requires flexibility and ongoing communication with one’s particular community in a given context. Having said this, forms of accessibility are diffuse and can even come into conflict. To make an access request, please email philosophia2017access@gmail.com. This email will be received by all of those listed above. Any information you share is assumed to be confidential, except if you determine that information needs to be shared with others to facilitate the access in question [for example, shared with a particular moderator or set of moderators]. Should this be the case, you are welcome to speak directly with others, or the accessibility committee can share this information (anonymously or non-anonymously as preferred) on your behalf.

Accessibility guidelines benefit all participants. We are making these guidelines available now so that conference attendees can plan their papers and panels with them in mind. We intend philoSOPHIA’s 2017 conference to be a site of open and ongoing creative engagement with how we deliver talks, present ideas, and interact with each other. These guidelines ask you to (re)consider specific aspects of conference participation, perhaps in new or different ways. We are always looking for ways to increase accessibility at philoSOPHIA. Whether or not you attend, please consider writing us at philosophiaaccess@gmail.com (which will be read by the above hosts and accessibility committee). This email account will be checked during the conference as well, so please feel free to contact us in real time.

Moderators, along with presenters and participants, play an important role in facilitating the proceedings of the conference. Moderators will be asked to help facilitate and be mindful of general accessibility practices during sessions. If a moderator is given certain information relative to a particular speaker or audience member, this is something that we will work to address with respect to requests mentioned above.

These guidelines were originally adapted for philoSOPHIA in 2016 from those prepared by Amy Vidali (amy.vidali@ucdenver.edu), in turn partly adapted from the materials at http://composingaccess.net/. They were then significantly edited by the 2017 accessibility committee and local hosts.

Accessibility Guidelines for Presenters

PREPARING FOR THE CONFERENCE

Prepare to be flexible. Access needs are shifting and fluid, and it may be that even your well-prepared presentation will need to shift depending on who attends, moderates, or co-presents on your panel during your presentation.  

Unless your presentation absolutely requires PowerPoint (e.g., due to significant, content-specific analyses of images or videos that cannot reasonably be reproduced through print material or other reason), we are not allowing PowerPoint presentations or the use of any projectors at PhiloSOPHIA 2017. All PowerPoint presentation requests will be reviewed by the accessibility committee.

Instead, or alongside the use of PowerPoint (if PowerPoint need fulfills criteria above), create a script or detailed outline for your talk and bring printed copies to distribute. While projectors will be minimally used at the conference, there will be an online conference file where PowerPoint slides and other handout materials can be uploaded in advance. Please send any conference materials that you would like to be available online to philosophia2017access@gmail.com. For participants who opt to follow along during presentations using the online materials on personal technological devices, we ask that you sit towards the back of the presentation space.

Please also make some large-print copies (17-point font or larger and single-spaced). Lastly, please note on any handouts or other such materials if you do not want your work cited without your permission on your draft (and/or collect drafts at the end). If your presentation requires PowerPoint relative to the qualifications above, audibly describe any images or videos shown.

DURING YOUR PRESENTATION

Speak at a reasonable pace. Always use the microphone. Be responsive to your audience. Describe any images or videos displayed or utilized in print media.

People read much faster than they typically talk which is hard for everyone to follow. If present, the ASL interpreter or CART transcriptionist also needs to keep up. (CART is Communication Access Real-Time Transcription, which is live captioning for a computer or projected screen.) Before your talk begins, provide a script to the ASL interpreter or CART captioner with jargon (and, ideally, the text of the full talk), so they can create signs or short-cuts

GENERAL NOTES

Avoid wearing scents.

Trigger Warnings: A trigger is an embodied experience that causes someone to recall or associate some facet of a difficult lived experience (in the past, on-going, or potential) with the content being presented. Be mindful of whether your contributions to the conference (whether as presenter, questioner, or what have you) might contain triggering content and provide warning of such content.

Community <-> Accessibility: Accessibility practices are ongoing and fluid in response to the particularity of a given community. Our hope is that philoSOPHIA can be a model of practicing access collectively as a community together.

Accessibility Guidelines for Moderators

Thanks for serving as a moderator here in Florida! Please first carefully review the general Accessibility Guidelines above. If you need help while serving in your moderator role while at the conference, please head to the registration desk.

As a community, we are attentive to the ways in which accessibility is multi-dimensional. Thus we understand that the guidelines suggested below may conflict, may not be possible, or may happen differently, based on the accessibility needs of presenters, participants, and our moderators themselves.


BEFORE THE PANEL BEGINS

·       Arrive early. Please be early to allow time to execute needed changes or adaptations.

·       Check in with presenters: Ask presenters how they are comfortable being reminded of time, their preferred names and pronouns, etc.

·       Collect materials panel attendees wish to be shared. This includes handouts and website addresses.

·       Consider the space. Adjust for any obvious obstacles that may make the space inaccessible.

AT THE START OF THE PANEL

·       Distribute panelists’ materials. Distribute handouts or designate an audience volunteer. Announce website addresses and write them on the white board, if available.

·       Make question cards available: A stack of index cards will be available in each room. Make these available for audience members to ask questions on, if they prefer. Alternate between spoken and card questions during the Q&A.

·       Remind the audience of the Twitter hashtag for the conference (#philosophia2017). This provides a connection for those who can’t attend philoSOPHIA.

DURING THE PANEL AND Q&A

·       Monitor the pace and audibility of talks:  If a presenter is speaking quickly, tactfully ask them to slow down. Ensure that everyone speaks into the microphone. Moderators should repeat questions or comments made by conference participants.

·       Keep presenters to their allocated time. This allows necessary breaks between panels.

·       Encourage one speaker at a time. 

AFTER THE PANEL: If you are comfortable doing so, provide any feedback to the accessibility committee.

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