A collaborative blog in partnership with Calgary Telus Convention Center and Leor Rotchild- Sustainability expert.
In today's diverse and inclusive society, ensuring accessibility in events is more crucial than ever. This collaborative blog, co-written with Leor Rotchild, a sustainability expert and author of "How We Gather Matters," and by Josephine from the Pedesting team. This blog explores the significance of accessibility in event planning, highlighting how sustainable practices enhance accessibility.
We'll delve into how innovative solutions like Pedesting revolutionize navigation for individuals with disabilities and spotlight the Calgary TELUS Convention Centre's commitment to accessibility as they celebrate their 50th Anniversary. Additionally, we will explore practical tips for event organizers and discuss the future of accessible events.
Understanding Accessibility in Events
What Accessibility in Events Refers To
Accessibility in events refers to the design and implementation of event environments, programs, and communications to ensure that all individuals, including those with disabilities, can fully participate and engage. This includes addressing physical, sensory, cognitive, and communication barriers.
What Accessibility Looks Like
Physical Accessibility: Ensuring venues have ramps, elevators, wide aisles, and accessible restrooms.
Communication Accessibility: Providing sign language interpreters, captioning services, and accessible digital content.
Information Accessibility: Ensuring all event materials are available in multiple formats (e.g., Braille, large print, audio).
Inclusive Services: Offering reserved parking, clear signage, and designated seating areas for individuals with disabilities.
Challenges in Accessibility
Many temporary events still face significant accessibility challenges, ranging from physical barriers (e.g., lack of ramps, inadequate elevators) to communication barriers (e.g., lack of sign language interpreters, inadequate captioning). Events that do not consider accessibility are likely to exclude a significant portion of potential attendees. For instance, inadequate planning for wheelchair access, visual and auditory aids, and clear navigation can deter people with disabilities from attending. (Source: ADA National Network).
The Role of Event Sustainability in Accessibility
Events can be the world’s most powerful vehicle to reach large numbers of people and inspire profound change. Events also celebrate, protect, and advance culture in our society. We often think of weddings, births, coming-of-age celebrations, holidays, and memorials as cultural events. However, sporting events, festivals, and even conferences are also types of cultural gatherings full of etiquette and traditions.
Including diverse communities in our events is not just the right thing to do, it's an important way to grow the audience, make people feel welcome, and enhance the experience for everyone.
But inclusion is not inevitable.
It requires a focused effort because there are usually significant barriers that prevent certain demographics from fully participating or recommending the event to others in their community. Understanding those barriers and finding creative solutions is really the key to scaling events, growing into diverse communities, deepening our potential impact, and building loyalty among participants.
When it comes to accessibility, typically, we think of those in a wheelchair, but there is a wide range of abilities to consider, including those with vision or hearing loss, seniors with hip and knee joint problems, and even young families trying to maneuver through your event with baby carriages.
The more scenarios you test and design for ahead of time, the more barriers you can uncover and overcome.
Eliminating barriers for a wide range of people enables them to not only physically participate, but also be able to show up in a way that makes them feel at their best and ready to meaningfully contribute to the success of your event.
How Pedesting Revolutionizes Accessible Navigation and Helps in Accessing Events
Pedesting is a cutting-edge navigation app that provides accessible routes for both indoor and outdoor environments, ensuring that individuals with disabilities can navigate spaces easily. Here’s how Pedesting enhances accessibility at events:
Detailed Mapping: Pedesting offers comprehensive maps highlighting accessible routes, pick up and drop off points, entrances, elevators, and restrooms, allowing users to plan their journey effectively.
Indoor and Outdoor Guidance: Pedesting excels in providing detailed turn-by-turn directions inside large venues, which is essential during complex events.
Voice Guidance: The app supports audio instructions for people with vision loss.
Community Contributions: Users can share their own accessibility experiences, helping to improve the accuracy and detail of the maps.
By providing these features, Pedesting ensures that individuals with disabilities can fully participate in events, enhancing overall inclusivity and accessibility.
Spotlight: Calgary TELUS Convention Centre
The Calgary TELUS Convention Centre, celebrating its 50th anniversary, is a prime example of commitment to accessibility. As the first convention centre to become a Pedesting Zone, it showcases how venues can leverage technology to ensure all visitors can navigate the space effortlessly. Hosting over 160 events annually, the TELUS Convention Centre ensures no barriers for attendees to explore and enjoy the events, demonstrating a long-standing dedication to inclusivity and community service.
This example underscores how venues can leverage Pedesting to create an inclusive environment, making it easier for individuals with disabilities to access and enjoy events.
Practical Tips for Organizers
To build effective diversity and inclusion programs, Leor recommends taking the following steps:
Establish or Revisit Your Purpose - If your purpose aims to improve your community then leveraging your platform to amplify typically under-represented and under-engaged communities is an important way for you to achieve that purpose. If you don’t already have a purpose statement in place, this may be a good opportunity to engage your team and stakeholders to develop an inspiring one.
Assess - Perform a realistic assessment of your capacities and existing diversity scenario. Collect data and set a baseline. It’s important to take stock of existing realities and before you can set targets for continued growth.
Set goals - The goals you set for diversity and inclusions should be measurable indicators of the change you are trying to effect. Without targeted key performance indicators, you can’t learn whether your program achieved its intended purpose.
Outreach - Working with trusted advisors and attracting team and board members deeply engaged in the communities you seek to build relationships with, are essential to overcoming unconscious biases, managing risk, and growing your audience.
Train - After you’ve identified your gaps and once you have established targets and policies, it is time to increase the capacity of your team to identify unconscious bias, speak knowledgeably about accessibility and inequality, and act with empathy toward unlocking growth and inclusion for those that may have felt excluded, ignored, or subjugated in the past.
Communicate - Important to effectively communicate the level of priority accessibility, diversity and inclusion sits within your organization and at your event. You should aim to inspire your team, and suppliers to make sustained commitments, and pilot and support diversity and inclusion efforts to help you achieve your goals and live your values.
Measure Progress and Adapt as Needed - Having specific targets, measuring results for accessibility, diversity and inclusion initiatives, and effectively communicating your progress, makes the difference between theory and action, ideology versus results.
Future of Accessible Events:
The future of events is going to look different than it does today. To entertain people, make memorable experiences, or drive tourism spending - these objectives are not unworthy by themselves, but they fail to answer much bigger, more important questions such as:
Why does your event exist in the first place and how can it be leveraged to drive the positive change we need to see in our community and our world?
Access at Your Finger Tips:
Ensuring accessibility in event planning is not only a moral and social imperative but also a crucial factor in creating inclusive and successful events. Incorporating technology, such as the Pedesting app, into event planning enhances accessibility by providing detailed maps, indoor and outdoor guidance, and voice instructions.
The Calgary TELUS Convention Centre exemplifies how leveraging such technology can ensure inclusivity and accessibility for all attendees. As we move towards the future, let’s continue to prioritize accessibility in all our events to create a more inclusive and equitable world.
Download the Pedesting app today to make your events accessible for everyone. If you are an event space owner, reach out to us at hello@pedesting.com to find out how to make your venue accessible for all.
About the Guest Author:
Leor Rotchild is an author, speaker, and consultant with more than 20 year of sustainable business experience. As Sr. Director at the consulting firm Upswing Solutions, Leor helps his clients decarbonize their supply chains, address human rights risks, and deeply integrate purpose and sustainability into their business strategies.
Leor’s recently published a book entitled, called How We Gather Matters: Sustainable Event Planning for Purpose and Impact is an inspiring call to action and practical roadmap to create more purposeful, sustainable, and inclusive events.
Additional Resources:
How We Gather Matters: Sustainable Event Planning for Purpose and Impact is available at your local bookstore and online through Amazon.