Inclusivity measures should be higher in importance in your tech conf budget than swag. For AlterConf, on practically no budget, I provided:
- sign language interpreters
- live captioning
- ADA accessible venues on public transit lines
- quiet rooms
- free childcare
- kosher/halal/vegan/gluten free/allergy-free meals by locally owned restaurants
- non-police security
- etc
while still paying speakers, bloggers, photographers, sketchnoters, and every other local who worked on the conference.
RE: https://social.joelle.us/@joelle/117527423586381628
For PyCon AU 2023, we paid a non-trivial amount extra (I can’t disclose how much) to have a ramp on our main stage, as compared to the standard setup that was steps only.
We didn’t have specific speakers that we knew about that absolutely needed that ramp, but it means that I can say with confidence that nobody looked at a stage with stairs and felt like they didn’t belong on that stage, and it also means that nobody had that particular barrier to access for lightning talks or other things where you might get on stage without having planned to in advance.
And I have no idea how many people that applies to, because stairs can be a challenge even for people with invisible disabilities that they haven’t disclosed to us as organisers and we obviously can’t ask.
Everything is a cost-benefit tradeoff, and there were other accessibility things we couldn’t afford, but it’s important to consider “sending a message about who belongs” among the benefits.
note1whp…l4fk