Lessons Learned: Designing and running an inclusive conference with the EDIS 2021 Symposium

When EDIS Lead Dr Lilian Hunt and I began planning EDIS symposium 2021, we reflected on some critical questions:

• How can we ensure that equity, diversity and inclusion principles are embedded in every part of the conference and not a series of tick-boxing exercises?  
• How can we make an event like this disruptive and experimental but also encourage engagement from the wider sector?  
• How can we juggle the sometimes-conflicting inclusion measures, so that as many as people as possible feel included and represented?  

We may not have the answers for these open-ended questions – and the ever-changing nature of this sector means we probably never will – but we can share some lessons learned.

Background

The Equality, Diversity, Inclusion in Science and Health (EDIS) symposium 2021 is our third event of its kind. The conference is an opportunity to connect our member community and the wider sector together and to share progress of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) practices. As EDIS events are designed to demonstrate as examples of inclusive and accessible conferences, weaving the foundational principles of EDI into the very structures of the event was paramount.

Designing an inclusive agenda

The main aim of the symposium is to challenge attendees, so that those of us within the sector can really step back and look to redesign our approach to science and health research. We therefore wanted the agenda of the EDIS symposium 2021 to foreground new voices and perspectives. As we know, there are so many under-represented voices in this sector, so it can feel like a bit of a minefield narrowing in on specific themes. To help with this, we set up a brainstorming session early in the event development to legitimately reflect on topics from previous symposium, and ask:

Where do topics need to evolve? Where do we need to bring in new voices and discuss different themes? 

It also felt crucial that the speakers themselves were able to inform the content of the agenda. Rather than pre-deciding set topics, we wanted to lend our platform to speakers and listen to what they felt was important to discuss. So, we organised one-on-one meetings with each speaker, which gave us an opportunity to build equitable relationships with each individual and develop the content together.

Some highlights from the agenda

We were thrilled to platform a new collective who had not yet had an opportunity to present their work, the Inclusive Research Collective (IRC), University of Bristol. The IRC educates researchers about biased and exclusionary practices in life sciences research and encourages inclusive academic research practices. Founding member Amber Roguski gave her first public talk on behalf of the collective and shared the IRC’s journey of promoting and applying reflexivity in research.

We also wanted to spotlight more global perspectives, reflecting the sector’s own trajectory. We hosted Dr Iruka Okeke from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, who outlined the need to prioritise the deconstruction of power inequalities in collaborative global research practices. We also reached out to Transgender Professional Association for Transgender Health (TPATH) to share their experiences of organising an international conference ‘Converging Crises: Transgender Health, Rights, and Activism in 2021.’  Other talks included discussions of mitigations to exclusionary research practices, such as the Babraham Institute’s ‘Roving Researcher scheme’ and the Sanger Excellence Post-doctoral fellowship scheme. We also hosted panel on Race Equity Networks with anti-racism working group members and D&I professionals from Society for Applied Microbiology and The Francis Crick Institute. The panel discussed networks’ on-going efforts to tackle race inequity, as well as network responsibility and mitigations for avoiding ‘racial burnout’.

You can read the full agenda here.

Learning 1: The sessions which platformed new voices being introduced to the sector received a huge amount of traction. Attendees were really engaged with hearing novel and interdisciplinary content and the speakers then went onto connect with various different attendees. I would reflect that the impact of new voices and ideas is often underestimated compared to ‘established’ or ‘well-known’ leaders. This was somewhat unexpected as generally the concept of prestige is pervasive in research. It can sometimes feel difficult to know what will be well received, but if anything, we could have stretched ourselves even further when identifying speakers and topics, especially knowing the opportunities speaking at events like the symposium can open up for people.

Creating inclusive and accessible presentations and content

Dr Lilian Hunt created a very in-depth guide to making presentations accessible in their design, which we used as guidance. We collated key points from the guide and sent to the speakers a month or so before the event. Key tips on presenting data accessibly in presentations include:

• Avoiding using colour as an indicator of information.
• Increasing text size and line thickness.
• Using colour wheels to improve colour contrast for those with colour vision deficiencies.
• Avoiding using complex transitions and animations.
• Cutting down the length of the content and creating simple slides.
• Ensuring every image used was also described audibly by the speaker.

As we ensured that the event had BSL interpretation and live captioning (more on that below) we also asked all speakers to send us the presentations beforehand so that we could collate a list of key acronyms and scientific words for the interpreters to read through prior to the event. This also was an opportunity for us to offer some alterations for data visualisation, such as colour choices and font sizing.

Learning 2: Asking speakers to send their presentations a few weeks before the event is not usual practice in the sector. As a new starter, I learned that as most speakers are usually juggling 101 different tasks (at least), they often finish their presentations minutes/hours before giving the presentation. Although at EDIS we want to go against ‘the grain’ and encourage new ways of working, this might have felt like a lot for some speakers.

Running the event inclusively

Throughout the event, we referenced our EDIS Safer Space Policy 2021 which aims to ensure attendees’ safety above all else. We added it to our event summary, Dr Lilian Hunt read through it at the beginning of the event, and moderators dropped it in the chat log throughout. As EDIS does not accept harassment or intimidation of EDIS participants in any form, there were limited opportunities for participants to discuss together.

Learning 3: In feedback, attendees flagged a need for more discussion time and collaboration with other attendees. I would reflect that adhering to our safer space policy might feel like it’s conflicting with our desire to expand audience participation and engagement activities. In the future, we would like to use interactive platforms like GatherTown or include more activities like polling, or even Menti. We could have also provided the option of contributing questions in advance or by voice. There are also some updates we can make to our safer space policy in light of feedback.

We also hired two live typists and three different BSL interpreters who swapped out during the day. To prepare for this, we sent the accessible presentations to each interpreter and typist 5 days before the event. We then sent out to live transcript and recording of the event afterwards.

Learning 4: Both interpreters and typists reflected that some speakers spoke very quickly, which they found difficult to translate. For future events, we should alert presenters beforehand to note their speed and clarity.

We also offered some guidelines on speaker practice such as:

• Introducing themselves with their pronouns.
• Giving a visual description of themselves, for example: “I’m Sophie and I’m a white and blonde woman wearing glasses. I’m sat in my living room with a messy bookshelf and orange walls”.

Learning 5: We documented the event on social media and several of our attendees were live tweeting the event. A few speakers did not feel comfortable being platformed on social media accounts, so next time, we should be more explicit when asking for social media consent to set boundaries.

Final reflections

Throughout the organisation of this event, Lilian and I tried to be mindful of the impact on accessibility and inclusivity for each decision we made. We are not perfect, so this period of reflection after the event has been really valuable in providing us with tangible lessons learned which we can apply when considering future events.

The evaluation survey provided some helpful feedback. As responses indicated that there was a difference in how easily different people could participate in the event, we now want to focus on addressing barriers to participation for future events. This has given us food for thought for our online events: do we need to reconstruct our idea of how events are run? What is the benefit of live vs pre-recorded events? Could we share webinars and then have a period of time for people to send in questions then record a second webinar for the Q&A?

Ultimately, we are thrilled to see our efforts reflected in the responses to our evaluation survey, where 97% either agreed or strongly agreed that our event was inclusive. The survey also provided some encouragement and hope for future events in the sector. When responding to the statement “I felt that this was a more inclusive event than other virtual events I have attended (that were not run by EDIS)”, 78.8% of respondents in 2021 either strongly agreed or agreed, in comparison to 85% of respondents in 2019. Although appears to be a dip in agreement, this data is actually incredibly encouraging as it indicates that accessible conferences in the sector are not as rare as they used to be. Many inclusive practices, such as hiring BSL interpreters and live captioning services, have become (almost!) common practice. I’m not sure Lilian would have imagined this to be the case when at EDIS’s first symposium in 2017. Although this certainly does not mean our work here is done, it demonstrates that the sector is increasingly prioritising accessibility and inclusivity.

If you would like to be kept up to date with EDIS events and symposiums, you can follow us on LinkedIn or subscribe to our monthly EDI roundup newsletter. If you have any questions about EDIS, email Robin Craig at r.craig@wellcome.org.