How will you know whether your event has been accessible and inclusive?
This is where you want to follow up with both guests and presenters, to find out how they enjoyed the event, and whether there were any barriers for them. You can use this data to inform your next event.
Getting Guest Feedback
It's important to reach out to the people at your event to find out how well you did creating an accessible and inclusive space. While you want to be available for feedback during the event if a guest encounters an issue, most of the time it's easiest to collect this type of feedback after the event.
Surveys
The easiest way to collect feedback on an event is by sending out a survey to your guests. You can use a digital survey tool such as SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics, or a manual survey, such as short lists of questions printed on paper that guests can pick up or be handed as they leave.
For both digital and manual surveys, you'll need to provide multiple ways for guests to give you feedback. Some disabilities make writing more difficult, or make it difficult or impossible to see the words on printed paper -- and some guests might simply prefer more of an interview-style feedback format.
Provide different options: have some printed surveys on hand for guests to pick up, or be handed, but also have a digital version that you can email to guests afterwards as a reminder. Print out some QR codes for the survey, and post them up around the event, or include them in the printed programs. And have a general email address attached to the organizer's name, where guests can follow up directly for interview-style feedback, whether via email or through arranging a face-to-face or videoconferencing interview.
The more feedback you collect, the better you'll be able to make your next event.
Getting Presenter Feedback
The other people you want to get feedback from are your presenters.
With roughly 1 in every 4 people in the United States having some kind of disability, the odds are good that some of your presenters are people with disabilities. There are two reasons it's important to get their feedback on your event.
One is that you want to be able to support people with disabilities in leading events in this way. You want to support them as presenters, so you must create events where there are no barriers preventing their success. This is part of dismantling ableism. And every time you get that feedback from presenters, you're learning more about how to create more accessible and inclusive events.
Two, is that having conversations like these with presenters make those presenters more likely to call out ableist events in the future. They're going to go on and present in other spaces, with other people, and they'll know more about accessible events themselves, and hopefully feel more comfortable advocating for accessible events. And this process -- having conversations about accessibility and empowering other people to ask questions about it, to talk about their expectations for an inclusive event -- also dismantle ableism.
You can develop a survey specifically for presenters, or you can just email them afterwards and invite open feedback.
Here are some good questions to include in surveying presenters:
- Did you encounter any barriers to presenting?
- Is there anything you would do different next time?
- Is there anything we should do differently next time?
Use Your Data
Most people wind up organizing or helping with multiple events in their lives, whether through work or school, or community and civic organizations. Knowing how to host an inclusive event is a great skill, but knowing how to get better at hosting inclusive events is invaluable.
After you've collected feedback on an event, look at the feedback and ask yourself and your team where you can do a better job at inclusion next time.
