Meet­ings are tak­en for grant­ed. Yes, you read that cor­rect­ly. The av­er­age per­son may groan at hav­ing to give up 45 min­utes of their life for a meet­ing that could have been an email, but they don’t re­alise that be­ing able to par­tic­i­pate in a meet­ing in the first place with no bar­ri­ers is a priv­i­lege, one that per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties of­ten do not have.

While peo­ple are able to fo­cus on brain­storm­ing ideas, gath­er­ing feed­back and strength­en­ing em­ploy­ee en­gage­ment, some­one with a wheel­chair has to won­der if the build­ing is phys­i­cal­ly ac­ces­si­ble. Some­one who is blind/vi­su­al­ly im­paired has to hope that the meet­ing doc­u­ments are in an ac­ces­si­ble for­mat so that their screen read­er can ef­fi­cient­ly read the ma­te­ri­als to them.

On­line meet­ings and events are typ­i­cal­ly viewed as favourable be­cause they re­quire less ef­fort, but for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, an in­ac­ces­si­ble meet­ing or event, whether on­line or in per­son, can re­quire a great deal of ef­fort.

The post-pan­dem­ic world birthed an age of vir­tu­al meet­ings un­like any­thing pri­or to 2020. Bern­stein Re­search re­ports that vir­tu­al meet­ing soft­ware, like Zoom, gained more new users in the first four months of 2020 than the en­tire­ty of 2019. Vir­tu­al meet­ing plat­forms in 2025 con­tin­ue to fa­cil­i­tate much-need­ed face time for those who still work re­mote­ly. Con­se­quent­ly, it is im­per­a­tive now more than ever for busi­ness­es to en­sure all em­ploy­ees have equal ac­cess to the vir­tu­al work­place.

Per­sons who are blind/vi­su­al­ly im­paired in­ter­act with tech­nol­o­gy dif­fer­ent­ly. As such, the first step to en­sur­ing equal ac­cess to video con­fer­enc­ing is to choose a vir­tu­al meet­ing plat­form with ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty fea­tures. A key ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty fea­ture would be mak­ing your plat­form nav­i­ga­ble by key­board, be­cause for ob­vi­ous rea­sons, a mouse is in­ac­ces­si­ble for those with se­vere vi­sion loss. Screen read­er com­pat­i­bil­i­ty is an­oth­er im­por­tant as­pect of vir­tu­al meet­ings, since a large num­ber of per­sons with­in the blind com­mu­ni­ty re­ly on this.

Aside from the soft­ware be­ing ac­ces­si­ble, the hosts/mod­er­a­tors of re­mote meet­ings are vi­tal in main­tain­ing the flow and en­gage­ment. They do this in part by prepar­ing to ac­com­mo­date every­one in ad­vance. How­ev­er, there are in­stances where spon­tane­ity is nec­es­sary. For in­stance, de­scrib­ing a chart dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion so that blind/vi­su­al­ly im­paired par­tic­i­pants can en­gage ful­ly with the pre­sen­ta­tion can make or break the in­clu­siv­i­ty of the meet­ing. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the host should be able to im­ple­ment fea­tures like cap­tion­ing and oth­er ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty fea­tures ad hoc, so that di­ver­si­ty, eq­ui­ty and in­clu­sion are pri­ori­tised.

Now, the host is not the on­ly per­son re­spon­si­ble for en­sur­ing that the meet­ing is in­clu­sive. Every sin­gle in­di­vid­ual, es­pe­cial­ly the per­son with the dis­abil­i­ty, is im­por­tant in this process.

Each par­tic­i­pant can speak clear­ly and in­tro­duce them­selves when speak­ing, so that per­sons who are blind/vi­su­al­ly im­paired can be aware of who is mak­ing a con­tri­bu­tion. If an as­pect of the meet­ing is not ac­ces­si­ble, then the per­son who is dis­abled can ad­vo­cate for them­selves and in­di­cate what their needs are. Self-ad­vo­ca­cy in this in­stance should not be dis­count­ed.

Al­though on­line meet­ings are com­mon, in-per­son ones, along with events, are nev­er go­ing out of style. There­fore, from the get-go, your event should be made ac­ces­si­ble to the widest pos­si­ble de­mo­graph­ic. This means be­ing proac­tive in mak­ing sure that con­tent, ma­te­ri­als and phys­i­cal spaces are ac­ces­si­ble to the widest ar­ray of peo­ple, in­clud­ing, of course, per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties. An event should have ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty em­bed­ded in­to its core so that every­one can ben­e­fit.

Take, for in­stance, scan­ning a QR code in or­der to ac­cess an event’s pro­gramme/agen­da pri­mar­i­ly ben­e­fits the blind/vi­su­al­ly im­paired, as they can have it read by their screen read­ers. But it al­so stands to ben­e­fit the av­er­age per­son who may not want to car­ry around a piece of pa­per for the en­tire event. In­di­vid­u­alised ac­com­mo­da­tions are al­so use­ful.

Blind­ness is a spec­trum, which means each vi­su­al­ly im­paired per­son may have dif­fer­ent needs. For ex­am­ple, whip­ping out a braille doc­u­ment to some­one who is blind but not pro­fi­cient in braille would not be very prac­ti­cal.

All things con­sid­ered, the path for­ward is clear, from Zoom to con­fer­ence rooms, ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty with­out bar­ri­ers mat­ter. On­line meet­ings can be con­fig­ured with a few soft­ware ad­just­ments to fa­cil­i­tate per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties.

The in­di­vid­u­als be­hind the screen al­so make a dif­fer­ence in the ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of a re­mote meet­ing. In-per­son events can al­so be con­fig­ured to ac­com­mo­date per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties and the won­der­ful thing about mak­ing things ac­ces­si­ble to a wide de­mo­graph­ic, is that it ben­e­fits per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties as well as the av­er­age per­son.

So, the next time you are in a meet­ing, take note of how things can be made more ac­ces­si­ble and when plan­ning events, in­clu­siv­i­ty should be as im­por­tant as the food and drinks.

This col­umn is sup­plied in con­junc­tion with the T&T Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion.

Head­quar­ters: 118 Duke Street, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. Email: ttb­wa1914@gmail.com; Phone:

(868) 624-4675; What­sApp: (868) 395-3086.