Lessons Learned: EDIS Inclusive Communications Workshop

Part of EDIS’ method when organising events is to have a reflective practice. This means we continually reflect on our actions from a critical stance to understand what works well and what doesn’t, as well as how we can improve. These are five lessons learned from organising the EDIS Inclusive Communications Workshop.

What was the EDIS Inclusive Communications Workshop?

EDIS organised an Inclusive Communications Workshop on the 17th August 2022. The event organising and Chairing was led by me, Robin, as the EDIS Communications and Administration Officer with support from EDIS Lead Lilian Hunt. The event also featured the Wellcome Brand team Hannah Skilton, Aishwarya Viswamitra and Kim Zhang, with BSL interpretation provided by Michelle Wood and Sula Gleeson.

The event was a space to workshop what inclusive communications look like and how organisations can begin developing their own inclusive communications goals. It was attended by 47 people from EDIS member organisations and invited community groups, with attendance split between online via Teams and in-person at a meeting room at Wellcome.

The Brand team presented on their 7 Principles for Inclusive Communications that they have co-developed with consultants Sulaiman R. Khan from ThisAbility and Collette Philip from Brand By Me. Attendees then split into breakout groups to discuss barriers to inclusive communications they experience in their own organisations. After feeding back some points of discussion, the breakout groups then drafted between one and three inclusive communications goals to take back to their organisations.

Learnings from running the event

Learning 1. We will continue with BSL interpretation as standard for public-facing events.

During this event we piloted providing BSL interpretation as standard, which means that the workshop was BSL interpreted without anybody requesting it in advance. This was valuable as it meant anyone attending the workshop who wanted to use the interpreters had the same experience who those who did not need interpretation. This resulted in a more equitable experience as nobody had to spend extra energy or time making an access request if they needed BSL interpretation – BSL was embedded in the event, rather than added-on if requested.

It also means that the recording of the event that will be shared among attendees and EDIS members is BSL interpreted in addition to the auto-generated captions.

A learning we will be taking forwards is ensuring we book interpreters well in advance of events. For this event, we booked one interpreter a month in advance and struggled to book a second. We secured a second interpreter, but interpreters are in high demand and therefore booking them needs to be done as soon as the event date and time has been decided. We will develop a list of BSL interpreters we can draw from and ensure that it is diverse using directories such as Interpreters of Colour.

Learning 2. Going forward, we will have separate online and in-person sessions for events.

There were 27 attendees who attended online and 20 who attended in person, but the functionality of the meeting room software and some tech issues meant we had minimal engagement with online attendees. One challenge was ensuring the BSL interpreters were visible on the meeting room screen and therefore the event recording. The interpreters attended online to ensure all attendees could see them – if they had attended in person, they would not have been visible to online attendees through the fixed webcam in the meeting room. However, when they attended online, the meeting room software did not allow us to pin their videos to keep the interpreters visible on the large screen in the meeting room.

Our solution for this problem was to ask all online attendees to keep their microphones and cameras turned off unless they were speaking to the group or in a breakout room. This worked in keeping the interpreters on screen as they weren’t “bumped off” by other attendee videos, but it also contributed to a sense of disconnect as we could not see online attendees.

There was also a tech issue after the breakout groups that resulted in online attendees not being able to be heard in the room. This further contributed to a sense of disconnect between the online attendees and in-person attendees, as the in-person attendees fed back from their groups but the online attendees did not.

Going forward, we will have separate online and in-person sessions for events – this is a change from our previous stance of hybrid format as default for events. We previously had hybrid as default as it provided the most accessibility in allowing people to choose how they attend. In light of the Inclusive Communications Workshop however, we have reflected that the functionality of events would be improved by separate online and in-person sessions without jeopardising accessibility, particularly when using interpreters.

Having separate sessions will mean that any tech issues in an online session can be given our full attention and content can be tailored to separate online and in-person audiences. Having an online-only session will also mean we don’t have to use hybrid meeting room software and we can therefore pin the interpreter videos to the screen without asking attendees to turn their videos off.

Learning 3. Working with the Wellcome Brand team facilitated knowledge-sharing and collaboration.

Hannah Skilton, Aishwarya Viswamitra and Kim Zhang from the Wellcome Brand team presented on the 7 Principles for Inclusive Communications for the first half of the workshop, which was then followed by a brief Q&A. The process of collaborating with the Brand team was fruitful for the EDIS staff in engaging in shared learning around inclusive events and communications. The Brand team were also generous in sharing their resources with the workshop attendees, including a template action plan, the full principles document and communications audit, as well as offering a drop-in session for attendees three weeks after the workshop.

Attendees were very engaged with Brand’s presentation and were keen to discuss how the principles were developed. We ran out of time to answer all the questions asked and we have been reflecting on how we can keep the conversation going, including through the Brand drop-in session and creating a community of learning on our members’ Slack channel for inclusive communications.

Learning 4. It’s important to build time into the agenda for people to have discussions, process information, and reflect on their practice.

The event was 1.5 hours long, which was scheduled to include a 20-minute presentation and 10-minute Q&A from the Wellcome Brand team, a 10-minute break, followed by two breakout group sessions with feedback. We found that this was quite ambitious! Some technical issues with the interpreters resulted in the start time being pushed back by 5 minutes and the Q&A with Brand ran slightly over time, which resulted in the second half of the workshop being delayed and the time for group work shortened.

This resulted in less time for group discussion or thinking, processing, and reflecting – all things that are crucial to reflective practice and learning. A major learning is to include more flexible time when planning workshops to give space for discussions both in and out of breakout groups. A personal reflection in my role as Chair is to be stricter on speakers keeping to time.

The pace of events is an accessibility issue, too – the quick pace of the workshop meant it would be challenging for attendees who need to process information at a slower pace. There is therefore a risk that attendees with different cognitive experiences who might need more processing time will be left behind. Going forward, we will endeavour build flexible and reflective time into events as well as send presentation materials to attendees in advance.

Learning 5. Be conscious of the slang we use during events and who might be excluded by it.

During the event, a slang term was used that an attendee had not heard before and they requested clarification. This has prompted us to reflect on how slang is used in events and the potential for a generational divide in how language is understood.

Divides in how language is understood can result in individuals feeling excluded and not everyone will be confident in requesting clarifications of terms they’re unfamiliar with. Slang can also skew the “norm” of the event as younger or older depending on the slang being used, which can result in individuals outside of the established norm being unintentionally excluded. We have more thinking to do on the use of slang in our events (including what counts as slang), but we will be mindful of the slang used and provide definitions pre-emptively where possible.

You can read a previous lessons learned piece on organising the 2021 EDIS Symposium here.

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