What are you doing to accommodate members with disabilities at your training events?
According to the World Bank, about 1 billion people, or 15% of the world’s population, experience some form of disability. So it’s quite likely that there are members in your district who have one. What can you do to make your next training event accessible? Try these five tips:
- Add captions to videos and turn them on during online training. This helps people who have hearing impairments know what the speaker is saying, and you can do it easily on YouTube and Zoom. Members who have cognitive issues may also be able to process the information more easily.
- Make sure to have video transcripts available on request. That way, people with hearing or cognitive impairments can read the script and refer to it later if they need to. This can also help non-native speakers and anyone else who needs more time to process the content.
- Use contrasting colors in your presentations or other visual content. Some people have difficulties distinguishing between certain colors. Make sure there’s sufficient contrast between the font and the background colors you’re using in presentations and other materials. You can review it at contrastchecker.com.
- Choose your fonts carefully. For people who have cognitive issues like dyslexia, certain font types and colors may be distracting. Avoid using red, orange, and yellow, and use simple fonts, such as Arial, Calibri, Helvetica, Tahoma, Times New Roman, and Verdana.
- Use short paragraphs. This also helps people with cognitive issues process information.
Find more resources and learn more about training via the Rotary Learning Center