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Best practices for accessible virtual events

This guide is all about planning events, covering a broad range of activities like conferences, meetings, and presentations. It suggests a timeline for organizing your event but doesn't insist on a strict approach. Before diving into the guide, there's an invitation to consider common issues faced by people with disabilities at events. The goal is to work together to tackle these challenges and create more inclusive and accessible experiences.

On this page

Introduction

For the purposes of this content, the term “event” includes activities such as: events, conferences, meetings, kiosks, training, presentations, and more.

This guide provides a suggested timeline for planning your event, but it is not prescriptive.

Common Issues Reported by People with Disabilities

Before exploring this guide, we invite you to review common complaints about events that we collected from persons with disabilities. Please collaborate with us to address the following challenges head-on.

Audio

Visual

Mobility

Cognitive

In Canada, the Accessible Canada Act, along with the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Directive on the duty to accommodate, urges us to create accessible events. This legal framework protects the rights of persons with disabilities to ensure their full participation in society.

Here is a short summary of their relationship with handling events:

Accessible Canada Act

Aims for a barrier-free Canada by January 1, 2040, requiring the identification, removal and prevention of barriers in areas which include:

Human Rights Legislation

Prohibits disability-based discrimination.

Directive on the Duty to Accommodate

Ensures the full participation of persons with disabilities by designing all systems, processes and facilities to be accessible from the start. When a barrier cannot be removed, the individual must be accommodated.

Facts to Keep in Mind

About accommodations

About disabilities

About careful planning

Virtual Events

Roadmap

First, you will be planning your event. Multiple decisions will have to be made, notably:

Second you will get ready to run your event. We recommend:

Third, you will run your event. Please ensure:

Finally, after the event, you will want to:

Plan the event: 1 to 2 months before the event (approximately)

Decide if the event is bilingual or two unilingual sessions

One Session in French, One Session in English (Best Choice for Accessibility)

When possible scheduled two separate sessions, one in French and one in English. This is especially good for mandatory and statutory training.

Bilingual (Best Choice for Official Languages)

Bilingual events are an option, especially for conferences and all-staff / weekly events.

When organizing a bilingual event, you will want to ensure:

Resources for Bilingual Events

Decide which virtual platform to host your event

Please choose a platform who’s user interface that conforms to level AA of the WCAG 2.1 standard. Additionally, we recommend reaching out to users with disabilities to test the usability of your platform and the way you’ve implemented your event. Refer to Selecting an accessible remote meeting platform from the Accessibility of Remote Meetings W3C Group Note (w3.org) for detailed guidance.

Assign roles and responsibilities to your event staff

Forewarning:

Smaller events may have some staff with multiple roles. Bigger events will present more challenges and will necessitate a greater distribution of tasks. Keep in mind that third parties, like audio-visual production companies, can be used to handle some of these tasks.

In general, we usually see the following roles, this guidance is not prescriptive:

Host / Leader of the event

Note: It is recommended to have one host / leader of the event as attendees feel more comfortable hearing a familiar voice.

Moderator(s)
Presenter(s)
Administrator / Support
Notetaker

Note: The distribution of notes after the event is important, especially for attendees who have difficulties listening and writing at the same time.

Book accommodation services once the date is confirmed

Accommodations may be necessary to fulfill the obligations outlines in the Directive on the Duty to Accommodate.

Note: Please provide the presentation material (such as PowerPoint, Word, email, pre-recorded videos) to service providers in advance. Due to high demand, we suggest submitting your requests at least 4 weeks before the event.

Sign Language Interpretation Services (ASL, LSQ)

People who are deaf, hard of hearing, or sign language-fluent may struggle with written captions as it's their second language. Sign language interpretation also enhances the experience by conveying intonation, emotion, and meaningful audio information.

Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART)

Captions enables people who are deaf, have a hearing loss and people who have cognitive disabilities like auditory processing difficulties, and even people for who French and English might not be their first language, to be able to fully participate in live events.

Note: Booking must be for a minimum of 2 hours, afterwards the requestor is billed in 30-minute increments

Warning: Some virtual events platforms offer automated live captions, like Microsoft Teams Live Captions. Unfortunately, these technologies often make errors which disadvantages users that rely on captions. Automated captions should be used as a last resort only or for events of lower importance. Use Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) instead.

Simultaneous Translation Interpretation Services

Bilingual events can be a barrier for unilingual individuals with disabilities. To ensure full accessibility, simultaneous voiced translations are necessary. Translated captions or on-screen content alone cannot be accessed by non-visual users. As a result, they must wait for language switches without any stimuli and rely solely on summaries of the talking points in their language.

Note: This requires a virtual platform that offers multiple voice channels, one for each language. When the presenter is no longer speaking the voice channel’s language, the interpreter assigned to the voice channel must speak the translation.

Ensure all event materials are accessible (such as email, PowerPoints, Word…)

All content distributed must be accessible and in both official languages. When possible, favor more accessible formats like HTML, Word, PowerPoint, ePub over less accessible formats like PDF.

Important: Always review the presenters’ material even when the presenter is external as you will be accountable for the accessibility of the content.

Training

Consider taking some training about accessibility. When content is made by people who have built their accessibility knowledge and they apply it from the beginning, it saves a lot of time and money by reducing the need for remediation and avoids potential complaints.

Please refer to the Digital Accessibility Toolkit to access more in-dept information through our guides. Additionally, we recommend watching the recorded CSPS workshop called “Making Documents Accessible (INC1-V46)”.

General Document Accessibility Advice (Applies to All)
Email Quick Tips
PowerPoint Quick Tips
Word Quick Tips
Pre-Recorded Video Quick Tips

Send invitations to attendees

Build an agenda
Include event information in invitation

Make sure to include the following information in your event invitation:

Get ready: 1-2 weeks before the event (approximately)

Prepare the scripts

A script for the host can be very useful to guide the event. Usually such a script contains the opening statements of the host, statements for during the Q&A sections and finally, closing remarks.

Below you will find an example of an opening statements script template that you can modify for your own purposes:

Welcome to our [name of event] about [add a quick description of the event]. My name is [say name] and I will be your Host today. [Host should take some time to acknowledge First Peoples and traditional territory (see guide).] I will first cover a few housekeeping points about today’s virtual event:

  • If you haven’t disconnected from the VPN yet, please do so for optimal experience.
  • Please keep your microphone muted and your video turned off throughout the event.
  • To ask questions, either type into the chat function or wait until we get a question period to use the “raise your hand” feature, the keyboard shortcut is [give the keyboard shortcut]. Once you are selected to ask your question, please unmute yourself and show your video if you would like. We will triage your questions asked in the Chat and answer them either in the Chat or during the question period. Alternatively, we may ask that you email your question to our event email so we can address your question after this event. I’m going to introduce our presenter today: [introduce presenter]

Preparing to present – Accessibility awareness for speakers

Host dry-runs (if needed)

The bigger or the more critical the event is, the better it is to host a dry-run.

If a dry-run is deemed beneficiary, we strongly recommend practice to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Run the Event: Day of the Event

Test your set up about 15 to 30 minutes before the event

Start the event!

Invite participants to:

Fix mistakes

Wrap up the event

After the Event

Send Recap Content

Make sure to distribute content in an accessible format, this is often done through a post-event “Thank you” email:

Respond to Post-Event Questions

Respond in a timely manner.

Gather Participants Feedback

Ask for participants feedback and offer multiple ways to receive it, like either through email or through a form. It is important to get feedback to keep improving the quality of the events.

Here are some examples of topics and questions that can be asked:

For Reference: What Will Affect Your Budget

For Reference: Virtual Platforms

Security Warning: Virtual Event “Bombing”

Terms like “Zoombombing”, “T-BOMB”, etc. have become popular terms to describe intrusion by strangers on the internet into virtual events. Usually, intruders try to disrupt the event by sharing their camera, making noise in their mic or using the “Share Screen” feature.

Here are a few tips to risk manage these attacks:

Information about Microsoft Teams

Accessibility Standards Compliance

Filled-in Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT)s for MS Teams can be found among Microsoft’s Accessibility Conformance Reports, use the Filter and choose “Teams” for the “Category”.

After setting up an event in MS Teams, it is possible to change the event options. To access the event options, activate the link at the bottom of the Teams generated event invite.

When possible, we recommend:

Additional Resources for the Organizer
Copy Paste Information You Can Include into Invitation for Attendees

Please visit the following links to learn more about Microsoft Teams:

Getting Started

Accessibility

Reduce Distractions

Event Features

Note: Participants who enter a Microsoft Teams meeting after 1000 individuals have already joined will have a restricted, view-only experience. For more information on the controls and actions available in this view-only meeting experience, please refer to the following resource: "View-only meeting experience - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn".

Information about WebEx

Accessibility Standards Compliance

Filled in VPATs for WebEx can be found among those for their other products on their Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates - Cisco page, under the section “WebEx App”.

Copy Paste Information You Can Include into Invitation for Attendees

Please visit the following links to learn more about WebEx:

Getting Started

Accessibility

Reduce Distractions

Event Features

Information about Zoom

Accessibility Standards Compliance

Zoom claims to comply with WCAG 2.1 level AA, Revised Section 508 and the EN 301 549. Filled in VPATs for Zoom can be found on their Accessibility page under the “Accessibility Documents” section.

To file an accessibility complaint, contact zoomphone-canada-access@zoom.us or call at (877) 662-1070.

Copy Paste Information You Can Include into Invitation for Attendees

Please visit the following links to learn more about Zoom:

Getting Started

Accessibility

Reduce Distractions

Event Features

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