Accessibility is an incredibly important topic that is finally being taken more seriously by event organizers thanks to the increase in virtual events during the pandemic. Including a virtual component inherently makes events more accessible to people who may not be able to travel to an event in person, but there is still a lot of work to be done to improve accessibility standards across the industry, and event technology companies are playing an important role in this effort.
Stephen Cutchins, Senior Manager for Accessibility at Cvent, emphasizes how much the circumstances of the past few years have helped bring accessibility to the forefront in the events industry: “It’s been great from an accessibility perspective,” he says. “Our software has always enabled people, but now it’s the venues and event organizers that stop and think about the people who are remote.”
Cvent’s Senior Director of Product Management, Carl Aldrich, adds that the pandemic has pushed “a lot of technology providers to think about how to move software and the tools that we use every day forward in a world where people are doing more things remotely,” which also benefits people with disabilities, even if that isn’t necessarily the original intent of all these developments.
“Everything [in a virtual environment] has to be accessible in a way that that people can navigate it on their own, and that really pushes us to build generally more usable products,” he says. “We need to make sure that people can get where they need to go no matter what, but especially considering the different ways that people might interact with technology when we build.”
When it comes to making the virtual event experience more accessible, some of the features that Cvent has incorporated into their platform include live captions and secondary audio tracks that allow for separate audio descriptions of any videos that are being shown, as well as integrations with other tools that enable additional functionalities like simultaneous interpretation.
Another initiative that Cvent is working towards is providing more education and training, and potentially certifications, for event organizers around accessibility. “A big thing for us is trying to reduce the complexity in that landscape for people, because frankly, a lot of times people don't really know where to start if it's not something that they've been familiar with in the past,” shares Aldrich.
The Cvent product team also strives to build features that help eventprofs create a more accessible experience by default, such as warning organizers if they select a combination of brand colors that don’t meet the contrast guidelines set forth by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
“I think it's a combination of making sure that people can plug in the tools that they're used to and familiar with, and also being a little bit more proactive with our own technology in making those kinds of suggestions and recommendations,” says Aldrich.
Of course, organizers can always choose not to accept suggestions, which is what Cvent is aiming to avoid in the future. “We can have a great product that can create a completely accessible event, but sometimes users just aren’t aware of the accessibility considerations and their importance,” says Cutchins. “So, our goal down the line is to offer an accessibility certification to help event planners and organizers get the most out of our tools, while keeping accessibility at the forefront.”
In-person and hybrid events also present their own accessibility considerations, and it’s also essential for planners to be proactive in the way that they approach accessibility and work with venues, AV companies, and event tech providers to get everyone on board.
For example, events might offer live captioning for the in-person audience, but they need to make sure the captions are visible to everyone in the room. If a sign language interpreter is present on stage, “that’s awesome for the people who are there in the audience,” notes Aldrich, “but then it's also a consideration if it is being streamed to a remote audience to think about how we manage our production to make sure that this person is actually on the screen all the time so that people can see them.”
Cutchins elaborates, “It’s pretty common at hybrid events for the camera to pan and show the audience. When that happens, you have to keep a separate camera on the sign language interpreter. You don't really think about it, but when it goes away to the audience, the deaf viewers don't know if anybody is saying anything. They don't want to see a bunch of people with no sound. These are the types of things that we have to train event planners on to let them know that this is important.”
As technology continues to improve, Cutchins predicts that virtual reality will present a huge opportunity for organizations to make their events more accessible. Remote attendees, including people with disabilities that prevent them from traveling to an event, will be able to go beyond simply watching a screen and will be able to experience other parts of the event and talk to people from the comfort of their homes.
Aldrich concurs: “Metaverse is a big buzzword, and I think people can sometimes be a little too dismissive of the opportunities that it creates for much better experiences for people,” he says. “The opportunity to make experiences accessible to people who otherwise can't have them in the physical world is going to be amazing. There's so much potential there.”
The industry has undoubtedly already made a lot of progress on the accessibility front, some of the biggest challenges that remain, according to Aldrich and Cutchins, are lack of awareness and cost. “In a lot of ways, all the tools are out there,” says Aldrich. “It's a matter of helping people understand how best to take advantage of them, and then for us as a technology company, really making that process easier for people and improving the accessibility of accessibility.”
When it comes to cost, he notes that hybrid is the most complicated since it involves a physical space as well as adequate tech to make the event content accessible to a remote audience, and tech companies will need to look at how they can make these tools as cost-effective as possible.
Moving forward, it will be key for organizations that hold influence in the events industry, including Cvent, to continue to educate and raise awareness about best practices around accessibility. Cutchins explains, for example, that the Cvent sales team is trained on the basics of accessibility so that they can broach the topic with clients who may have never given it any thought.
“Clients might think they don't have any attendees who have disabilities — yet. Maybe they don't have them because they haven't been enabled them, and that could be a massive missed opportunity,” he says. “It’s the absolute right thing to be inclusive, but outside of that, it’s also easy for a salesperson to talk to their client about potential lost revenue.”
Building accessibility into event tech products from the get-go is also key, as opposed to solely relying of feedback mechanisms to retroactively fix issues as they come up.
“When we first start thinking about building a new feature, people are asking the question, how is this workflow going to feel for somebody who navigates with a screen reader, for example, and actually thinking about creating an experience that works well for people who use technology in different ways,” explains Aldrich. “It certainly makes our products better, it's going to make everybody better at their jobs, and it creates a big group of people who have really powerful, helpful knowledge that will ultimately disseminate across more areas of the technology industry in a really positive way.”
“We don't just say, let's create content and make it accessible,” concludes Cutchins. “It really is thinking about the experience for people with disabilities from the beginning. It makes the product better for the users, and it’s the right thing to do.”