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CDA HOW TO DELIVER AN ACCESSIBLE AND INCLUSIVE PRESENTATION NOVEMBER 19, 2019 7:30 P.M. ET
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FEN SLATTERY: All right we're going to try this microphone. We'll flop back and forth between two microphones. It will be fun it will an adventure for all of us I hope you're all very excited. Okay. Cool. Hello this one sounds better. Keeping me on my toes so this is "How to Deliver an Accessible and Inclusive Presentation" with me, Fen, wow if this is what you're here for welcome if this isn't what you're here for well sit down and eat some food and pretend you are here to listen to this talk I do have my slides available for you the link is Bitly/2xwkeEN on the slide right now so follow along as you would like my name is Fen Slattery my pronouns are they/them that means when you're talking about me I went though this talk tonight the speaker was really cool they had some nice things to say and I really liked them.
That's how you do that my Twitter handle is sublimemarch if you're live tweeting this use that #A11yChi you're also my new best friend and I will personally give you a high 5 if you live tweet. So hi new best friend and a little bit more about Clique I'm not here on behalf of them but we are hiring. For lack of a better — this microphone keeps cutting out. Anybody have microphone tips keeps cutting out. So I don't want to have you deal with this microphone cutting in and out as I'm giving a presentation about accessible presentations.
Okay. We'll see if this one sticks around better. I think it's about the same volume. I'm not walking too far away from that so I'm not sure. All right we're just going to stick with this and I'm going to keep this from cutting out. What I was saying I was talking about Clique blah blah blah we're cool whatever something like that essentially as I mentioned in my — we're a firm that works with a huge variety of clients on the accessibility over there and the one thing I can say unifies the institutions that we work with, places you may have heard like Northwestern or the Lincoln Park Zoo or some company named McDonald's.
For the most part they are all organizations that aren't evil I think is one of my favorite things to say I'm looking at my co-workers I can usually feel pretty confident I'm working with companies who want to do good things and help people we're a 50 person company and we have a dedicated accessibility professional which is me which is cool. And we have a meetup called the digital accessibility design meetup in Chicago yes if you want to know who they are that's me.
So why am I the person giving this talk well I speak at roughly one event per month on average over the last couple of years. Either privately at companies I'm invited in or workshops, meetups like this, big conferences all around the U.S. whatever I speak a lot of times. I also mentor people who speak at tech industry events. I have a cute little quote here. From Carly Ho who is an engineer here in Chicago who does a lot of awesome work in — well just a lot of awesome work in the work tech space as well as inclusion of autistic people and inclusion of Asian Americans. She says Fen has been an exceptional person to have on my side in developing talks mostly because they will literally drive to my house and tell me my talks are good and I believe it.
More importantly though because I give a lot of talks at events I attended a lot of tech industry events I've seen a lot of talks and I've seen a lot of talks that do a pretty good job of accessibility and I've seen a ton that do a bad job some egregiously bad but a lot people haven't thought about it the other important thing to know is I'm a person due to identities I have invisible disabilities that it's personally impacted by inaccessible and uninclusive talks.
So I can relate in a lot of different ways but I also want to know a little bit about who is here so we're going to go around the room you're going to introduce yourself you don't have to do that I mostly want to have you raise your hand or give a shout or indicate in some way if you have given a talk at a meetup or conference or something like that raise your hand. Okay. A smattering of folks maybe 8 or so.
Maybe raise your hand for me if you want to give a talk.
You haven't yet and you're interested. Maybe half the roomish. That's okay.
And can you raise your hand for me if you have been to a talk in some way that has made you feel crappy or unsafe or like they forgot you exist or that just wasn't accessible to you in some way raise your hand.
So about half the room maybe two-thirds well I'm very happy for those of you who haven't had that experience or maybe just don't want to raise your hand but that's okay, too. But there are a lot of us that experience things like that maybe we should all raise our hands because this microphone keeps cutting out. Well, we're all in this together I guess now but that's fine.
Some assumptions I am making about you and of course this does also include my lovely folks in the livestream right now I'm not forgetting about you.
The assumptions I'm making about all of you is you've been a to — been to a meetup or conference or something like that before you're at a meetup right now so I think that's safe to assume.
Also a going to assume because you're here at this Inclusive Design MeetUp you care about people and that you already feel that inclusion and accessibility is important.
There are a lot of talks that do awesome work in explaining why inclusion and accessibility matter and why we should value it this isn't one of those talks we're going to assume we're all on board with caring about people. Yay.
I'm also going to assume that you want to do better either in your talk or you want to see other people do a better job. So what are we going to talk about? I have an agenda of 7 little things. We're going to talk about why you might present a talk of some kind.
Things to think about before you commit and agree to give a talk. 3 is preparing the talk. 4 slide design. 5, the day of your talk. 6, during your talk. And then 7 will be taking care of yourself that's nice it's a nice note to end on.
Some notes for you to know.
First off I'm going to be using the concept of conferences and meetups like this as examples. Going to be using conferences and meetups as examples throughout this but all of this advice I'm going to be giving in thoughts and opinions they could apply to giving a toast at a wedding or a presentation at work for your boss or speaking at a protest or anything like that where you're addressing a group of people in some way.
So just as a note.
Other notes. I'm not perfect. I'm sorry if you were expecting a perfect person to do this talk.
I'm going — and the talk will also not be perfect. Chances are I'm going to mess up something at some point or my microphone is going to drop or something like that and that's okay.
This isn't also meant to be an exhaustive list where if you do everything I say you're going to be 100% perfect and no one will ever be mad at you. No, sorry.
I am helping to get you about 90% of the way there, though. For giving an inclusive accessible talk and 90% is like an A minus so that's pretty good I think we're fine with that my other note is we should breathe, it's going to be okay. Ah, that's for me and that's for you.
I often find that when I give a talk that's a lot of advice about like don't be jerks to people it can be easy to be tense as an audience member hearing that and thinking defensively like I don't do that I'm amazing I don't mess it up or you think I'm awful I'm awful I'm mean to people I screw this up all the time I see people nodding their heads it's easy to feel like that so we're here today it's going to be okay. I believe in you.
Can I get a half hearted yay?
ATTENDEES: Yeah.
FEN SLATTERY: That was not half hearted that was too genuine. Oh, that's fine. We're going to be working on being more half hearted together as we go.
First thing, why present, during a — give a presentation. Well because you have to, someone told you, you have to do it for a grade or work, I don't know. Because it makes you feel good about yourself. That's pretty nice. That's good. I don't want to say you flippantly like to hear yourself talk but you would like to see yourself being up here that's cool. Maybe you want to educator entertain people and all of these are perfectly fine reasons.
But I want you to think about who your talk is really actually for. I'm sorry that your talk isn't for you you're not doing it for you maybe — you're going to get some stuff out of this don't get me wrong you'll still feel good and get a grade or whatever but it's not for you. It's also not for the people you work for. It's also not for the event hosting you. I'm sorry this is a lovely meetup but this talk is not for us the co-organizers the talk is for your audience it's not about you or for the people who are paying you or people who invited you but your audience.
Who is that audience? Now first obvious part of the audience is the people — are the people physically in the room observing you, listening to you, seeing you. People physically here go in the room people. It's also people watching a livestream if there's a livestream. How do you do people I think the camera is over there maybe. Yeah, okay.
It's also people who are watching a recording. Later on. I know this is going to be up on YouTube later so hello future people, oh, wow.
Also people reading a transcript.
Either you know it might be live captioning but maybe reading a written out transcript of your talk afterwards and also people who are reading your slides.
Maybe you've put them up on a Speaker Deck or Google Slides or whatever. Mystery future people reading through your slides are also your audience.
So if your talk isn't tailored to your audience, and all of the parts of your audience, what's the point of giving your talk? It's not for you. It's not for the people paying you. It's for that audience.
So if you don't care about them, why are you doing it?
This is a part of the talk that's a little bit more opinion. But it's my philosophy about giving talks. And you don't have to agree with it. That's fine. We'll just fight about it later on Twitter or something.
I believe that a talk particularly ones like this right now like at a meetup or a conference, in the tech industry, your duty as a speaker as a presentation is to inspire emotion first. And to educate your audience second.
The reason I think this is that people need to care about what you're saying either like they think it's funny or they are mad about something with you or they are scared or some emotion that is inspired in them.
If they don't care about what you're saying, they are not going to retain it or take notes as you're talking.
Or go home and tell somebody or research about it later. There's so many talks I have been to in my years in the tech industry that were really informative and very educational. And I didn't do anything with it. Because the person sitting up there was just trying to read a book to me essentially. That can be okay there are times and places for those talks. But my — my belief it's more important to get you all to care about things that way you'll go home or go to work or wherever you're going to go and learn more about it research more about it and try to get better at it and that's my philosophy and that will be interwoven through this talk.
So related to that, if your audience doesn't trust you or care about what you're saying or you know they are not empathizing with you about the emotion you're trying to convey, what's the point of giving that talk.
If they don't care, why are you doing it.
I — inclusive talks, that is talks that are caring about the audience, thinking about the audience, what they need from you and what they want from you, inclusive talks will help an audience trust you and will help that audience care about what you're communicating. Neat.
I also said I wanted to explain why we should care so I hope we're still on board with caring. So this is going to be a part of the talk that's a lot more just specific advice so I hope you're ready we're going to have time for questions at the end.
The second part, before you commit to giving a talk.
First. The main question I need you to think about is, should I be the person to give this talk to this audience?
There's three parts to that question, you, the audience and the talk.
You need to remember that you have the power to enact change as a speaker. What do I mean by that maybe you've been invited to speak at a meetup like this. Or you propose a talk to a conference.
Or I don't know your friend is getting married and you're giving a toast, whatever. Somebody wants you to be giving that talk. Doesn't mean they are paying you for do it. Sometimes they are. You have power in that relationship and I know that can sound scary especially those folks who aren't necessarily used to having power but they want you there most of the time a lot of the time I would say the folks who are willing to give you a talk are willing to make changes to changes based on things you suggest or you talk about. Here are some questions you should be asking to help ensure your talk is inclusive. These are questions you should be asking of the organizers of the event or if there's no formal organizers asking the people who are putting it on. Questions, will there be a microphone.
And sometimes the answer so no. And so the answer is okay maybe it's three people sitting there you don't need a microphone. But there should be a microphone.
You should ask will there be live captioning. Not everybody always has the resources for it but boy I'm aware of some that are relatively inexpensive that I think we're even trying out right now. Live captioning. You can do it cheaper. You should also be asking what's being done to make a physical space accessible.
There are a ton of things underneath that and unfortunately I don't have a lot of time. But that's a great broad question to ask you should be giving answers that are thoughtful around mobility devices seating for mobility devices you shouldn't require stairs to enter the space things like that there's a lot but basically just thinking about it.
Other questions to ask, is there a Code of Conduct at this event? And can I see it? Are your staff trained on that Code of Conduct I'm using CoC as an abbreviation I didn't feel like typing it I don't know I guess. Get your staff trained on the Code of Conduct do they know what it is and how to enforce it, it doesn't help protect people at the event if the staff doesn't know it either.
You should also ask if you and the other speakers will be given guidance on inclusion maybe after this talk you'll be an expert you'll be what's all about giving an inclusive talk but not everybody else speaking at this event has seen this talk.
You want to make sure that the other speakers at the event if there are other speakers are also giving inclusive talks. For their audiences.
And then generally you should ask what's being done to make the space inclusive and safe for people. This would include things like gender neutral restrooms and diverse staff running the event there's a ton of stuff under this umbrella and a lot of really good resources online we can talk about that in another talk but in general you should ask you should know. The environment you're about to walk into when you're considering giving this talk, is it inclusive?
So next. Research your audience.
Just ask the organizers if there are any, what should I know about the audience? Simple. They will tell you things about oh they have certain experience or things like that.
Don't walk in to your talk assuming things about your audience. We'll talk about that more in a minute.
Other ways you can research the audience are looking up previous talks for example if you were invited to speak at this meetup you might look at previous topics that this meetup has had other previous talks it might give you a clue about the sort of audience for the event and find photos of previous events last year's conference last week's meetup whatever. Another one is to read through the event's hashtag on Twitter. And look at what people have said about the event in the past. It will give you an idea of who is there and also what they are looking and not liking about it. There's a lot of information to decipher. I said though you shouldn't assume things about your audience members. Things to not assume.
Don't assume that your audience members can see you or see you well. Don't assume that your audience members can hear you. Or hear you well.
Don't assume that they can communicate back to you in some way either verbally or non-verbally and don't understand your audience can understand your meaning all the time either because — for a wide variety of reasons we'll leave it at that don't assume the particular ability of your audience members also this isn't an exhaustive list but these are things that I often see people mess up like in the tech industry particularly at events like this.
Don't assume that all of your audience members have a job. Don't assume that everybody is working as a programmer or something like that.
Don't assume your audience members are all of a similar certain age. I'll often see at events people assume oh yeah we're all Millennials or we're all older folks. No. I know the tech industry is very — don't assume.
Also weird things I see people give talks assume especially ones of diversity and inclusion don't assume your audience members all do or don't have kids. Or all are or aren't married.
I know it's kind of weird maybe you're sitting there and you haven't — sitting here you've never seen that you're like what I couldn't even count the amount of time I've seen stuff — when they say oh you know what your wife does blah blah blah or like doesn't it suck when your kids blah blah blah. Or like oh now none of us here yet know what it's like to have kids but believe me some day you'll have kids it's weird I don't know people like to use these things as examples but you feel like shit when you're not part of that assumed group.
The other thing to not assume that is often assumed is specifically in diversity and inclusion events don't assume that your audience is entirely white or entirely straight or cisgender or able bodied or all men I think it's weird in this group that people might assume that but specifically I'll see it coming up a lot when people are giving a talk about allyship somebody is going to an event about disability. The speaker will speak to the audience assuming everyone in the audience is abled and helping the poor disabled people none of us here know what it's like.
Or people assuming that everyone in the audience has no idea what their experience is like when often that's not the case. So yes don't make an assumption like this about your audience.
The other thing that's important to remember is consider your own identities especially if your talk is about diversity and inclusion. What do I mean by that? Well if you're speaking about the experience of other people, consider don't do that. Ah-ha. Make space for other people.
I just — I was recently at an event. Not in Chicago.
It was a tech industry conference. And the final keynote of the event was about diversity and inclusion.
And the person who was up there when — after he introduced himself said, now I know what the white — what's a white guy doing up here talking about diversity and inclusion and then he proceeded to tell just stories from his own life that he was discriminated against because he's from a European country that isn't the United States. As an example of diversity and inclusion.
Instead of him being the one to give that talk about the problems a lot of us face in the industry, consider stopping, either sharing a story and allowing time for others or ideally taking a step back and letting other people speak.
However, there are talks that are about allyship which is entirely valid and I would argue that this is — I'm speaking as a person who like I said is impacted by these problems, I mean there are lots of different identities I don't have. This is kind of an allyship talk. Do your research and be humble.
You don't know everything. Don't assume the experiences of or people. And speak from what other people have told you. Don't make assumptions.
So if you consider all of that, if you are a good person to give this talk, like if you're a good fit either you're speaking about something you have experience with or you're going to choose the work of being an ally it matches with your audience, the audience fits that and who you are and fits the talk then go ahead and do it. Then you have the chance of giving an inclusively accessible talk.
Okay. So preparing your talk.
You have decided I am going to commit I'm going to give this talk.
There's a lot of stuff you have to do to prepare a lot of these you'll find are things that I did in preparing this we'll use that as an example. First off look at your talk description as a basis for organizing your talk. That's what your audience read to decide do I want to come to this maybe some of you said oh accessibility Chicago is putting on this I don't care I'll go to anything but probably a lot of you read the talk description and decided you wanted to go same thing as a meeting you're inviting somebody to at work for an event or something. Follow that description that you previously wrote and make sure that what you actually create matches that you don't want to surprise your audience with a talk that isn't actually what you said you were going to give.
Next use clear structure in your talk. I encourage you to think about in the sections of your talk what question each section answers. It will help you think of what the purpose of what you're saying is.
This will make your structure the organizational talk a — make a bit more sense and think about how each section connects to one another maybe you're telling a story throughout. Maybe there's an order. Maybe — whatever it is. Make sure that there's some organizational structure to the talk.
And share that structure. I really suggest share your structure explicitly via some kind of agenda in your calendar invite to the meeting or as a slide in your talk or some sort of descriptive outline of talk it doesn't have to be necessarily cut and dry here are the seven things we'll talk about but share that agenda give people an idea of what's going to happen.
I also suggest if it's necessary include content warnings these are important for lots of us who have PTSD or other health issues, different disabilities things like that include content warnings. You don't have to warn for every possible thing but think about is there some really strong emotional content in your talk. Like are you going to be telling a story from your own life that's really, really sad?
Or maybe you're going to get really, really angry. Maybe you're going to yell. And that's fine. Just let people know. Maybe you're going to have some sort of unexpected activity or movement or something that will happen during your talk let people know. Sorry it might ruin some of your drama. Also content warn for any kind of different things you might be talking about I'm hoping none of you will get up and give a sex ed talk but if you're mentioning as a woman tech I deal with blah blah blah problems maybe make a note at the top of the talk you're going to go over some sexist ideas in the talk or just any really difficult topic. I can imagine what some of those things might be bigotry and difficult topics put content warnings it helps us all next when structuring your talk use multiple visual communication methods if you're going to have images maybe consider charts other visualizations have written words on your slides different people process information in different ways and it can help to emphasize that with different things remember I said the talk isn't perfect. These slides are mostly words. I'm sorry. Use multiple visual communications if you can also if you're going to have an activity of some kind like oh I don't know something about we're all going to write our resumes maybe you're running a workshop or we're going to visualize our ideal vacation or you have some activity for your audience make sure it's inclusive of a wide variety of people and also make sure people can adapt that to their own abilities and needs and preferences.
So to that end, if you were to say everybody we're going to count off in threes then you're going to be in a group together and do something or find the person nearest you and do a thing together make sure the work optional. For a lot of us doing activities with strangers especially if they can be emotionally fraught ones can be very difficult and get in the way of learning don't pressure to have to be in a group or some activity also make sure movement is optional if it's everybody who I counted off if you're a one stand up and go to the kitchen if you're a two stand up and go over there. Also don't shame people who aren't participating.
I've definitely been at events that have workshop components where if somebody is for their own reason maybe having a hard time with the activity or you know they are sitting out or doing something else for a bit I've seen leaders of these workshops saying hey what are you doing come on let's get to work or oh no come join this group obviously you're not doing anything here join a group. Let people be. Unless maybe you're running an event for kids but that's a whole other thing.
If you're running an event for adults, assume that adults know how to deal with themselves and know what they want don't change people — don't shame people into participating if they don't want to in addition if there's some activity or maybe you're passing something out for everyone to read or take home and do something with afterwards make sure the handouts are accessible. Make sure they have sufficiently large print don't make them tiny because you want them to be a single page also make an electronic option available for folks, either an accessible PDF or accessible webpage of some kind and share that link. Sometimes I know that Braille copies can often be very expensive so if you are being sponsored or paid in some way for this event consider that have Braille copies available also don't require sharing copies between people you're trying to save money I'm going to print a few and people can share with their neighbor not everybody is comfortable interacting with a stranger at an event but people might need to use their own copies for some other reason so make sure you have a copy for everyone. You have prepared your talk well mostly now you have some slides to work on.
If you have slides.
This is the meat of this talk I would say. The thing I get the most questions about. People are saying, wow, you're pretty all right about giving an inclusive talk how do you make your slides so helpful to people? This is that. Slide design. First choose easy-to-read fonts. There are a lot of people who have opinions about are serif fonts easier or Sans Serif fonts easier to read on a screen news flash different people have very different preferences about them so unless someone from your audience or something you know about who you're speaking to has a really strong preference don't worry about it it's okay just pick easy to read don't pick something cursive or weird don't pick mono spaced font like somebody would write code with, don't pick fonts with that letter spacing try to have usually the default letter spacing for your font it can be — it can be cool to make slides cool but 9 point is make them readable so prioritize that. Also my biggest thing if I had to say that you should read only one slide in the whole thing it would be this one about good contrast. Make sure your slides have sufficient contrast for your audience. There are different tools you can use to input your colors into for your text and your background it will tell you oh yeah it will tell you how it looks against different rules for color and if it has enough contrast.
I recommend, though, that you be a bit stricter on yourself as contrast can have control beyond you that's because usually you are thinking of a person looking at a screen.
But also when you're presenting you'll be in a weird environment there will be a projector or a weird tiny TV screen or a bright room with a projector that's too dim.
Things are weirder in physical spaces so when you're presenting so be very strict with yourself on your contrast.
Always assume you are going to get a really crappy projector when you project your slides. Always assume that good way to test this take your laptop and what you're making slides on turn it down a bunch just always assume the projector will be weird and bad and not set correctly.
Really with contrast readable slides sufficient contrast are way more important than fun slides I'm sorry and there are still ways to make them beautiful and interesting and engaging but readable is more important than fun.
My other big tip for good contrast is if you know the environment you're going to be presenting in take that into account when presenting the slides I've been to the Nerdery before I'm familiar with Nerdery staff I knew the lights in this room would be on and I would have a projector that was projector my slides so I know that in a light environment I should be using dark text on a light background. But if I were presenting in say a room that's dark all the lights are off and the only light is a spotlight on me and my slides in a dark environment you should be using light text on a dark background.
There's a lot of science behind this around how the human eye works et cetera, et cetera but it also helps people to not be overstimulated by too bright of light you'll think about this this is your rule of thumb dark environment light text on dark background. Although if you don't know where you're going to be presenting I would recommend dark text on a light background. At worse it will just it will just be a little bit too bright for the room you're in but it will still be readable. We have the contrast what next. Avoid the edges of your slides another way in which these slides are not perfect.
Avoid the edges of your slides if you can.
Always assume that the view of your slides for your audience will be at least partially obstructed.
Most often this will happen where the projector screen or the TV you're presenting on will become — will be kind of low to the ground and audience members heads might cover up the bottom of the slides or what have you.
I recommend staying away from the bottom maybe fifth or sixth of your slides. That bottom edge is the one that's most common in a lot of — most commonly covered up. I knew nothing would really be obstructing these slides except this unfortunate pillar right here we keep missing each other there's an audience member right behind the pillar.
Anyway I knew the slides wouldn't be obstructed what can you do avoid the edges what else make your text as large as you can while maintaining readability you're thinking wait a minute if it's really big it will be readable, right not the case if you were to make your text so big actually one word on each line it will be harder for people to parse we're used to lines of text being at a certain character width if you have your text too big it will be harder to read for a lot of folks.
Yes make it big if you have space on your slide make it big white space is cool on the design I love white space but when the point is to be readable concentrate on that another tip don't communicate meaning solely through color this might be a case of where you're trying to show an example do this don't do this, maybe you're highlighting the photo of the thing to do in green and the thing not to do in red so communicate that with your colors in addition to color using a symbol of some kind using that. Or words.
Don't assume that your audience will be able to correctly perceive the colors you want them to.
The other important thing is even if your audience has a perfect color vision your projector might be really — I'll often find projectors aren't calibrated for color I'll turn around and see that my slides do not reflect the colors I thought they were supposed to look like so don't only use color to communicate things.
Here is another relatively easy one if you have a video embedded in your slides you're showing for some reason make sure it has captions, captions are important.
Another thing avoid overloading a slide with too much text. I'm sure a lot of us have seen a talk of some kind where there are paragraphs and paragraphs on slides which I know is the norm in some industry like in academia it can be important for reasons I don't understand but it can be the norm of some folks having a ton of text on a slide if your goal though is for your audience at your event to be able to read the slides consider don't do that. Don't overload it.
I also recommend not splitting up thoughts between multiple slides now a big overarching thought you're communicating over lots of slides that's fine but try to have one complete thought per slide. Try not to break it up a bunch.
Make sure if somebody is looking and paying attention to the one single slide that they can still understand what you're trying to get at. It's also helpful for folks later on who are experiencing your talk just like — just by looking through your slides who aren't hearing you talk and give this, yes, one complete thought per slide. Okay. Moving on to the next slide.
Now, the day of your talk. Usually by this I mean onsite you're at the venue or an hour before your meeting or what have you. You're close to the time of your talk, what do you do? My big tip observe the talk in the space you are speaking in if possible. This applies to more like a conference or something like that. But if you can be in the space you're going to talk in and watch the talk even it — even if it has nothing to do with you it's not relevant to you at all but even sew observe it you'll have a better understanding of how well someone in the back of the room could hear or understand how the audience is reacting or understanding of how the microphone works so many things you can learn by watching the talk.
Do it if you can.
Actually do an actual microphone test hopefully you're given a microphone if there's a person who is in charge of administering the microphones and stuff they will happily help you with this because it's their job but if there isn't one take a few minutes for yourself and it doesn't matter if the whole audience is there waiting for you, do a microphone test.
Don't just say, one, two, three, one, two, three. Start saying actual sentences those of you who were here early got to see me doing this.
Trying saying actual sentences and walk around in the space that you think you might walk around in as you give your talk. Walk across the stage or whatever, have somebody who can help you out by walking around the room as you do your microphone test to ensure that volume is good across the room oftentimes we're tempted to say all the way in the back if you can hear it all the way in the back you can hear it in the middle not always the case so test the microphone.
Also know where you can and can't walk on the stage or the front of the room or wherever you are presenting know where you can and can't walk for people to see. For microphones to pick you up things like that especially if you're being recorded, especially if you're being recorded have an idea of where the camera can or can't see you, important.
Really important with all of that is do not rely on that question of can everyone hear me? Also the thing events people make it up to the front they are excited they have been introduced they turn on their microphone they turn it on they say my name is Fen can everyone hear me okay? One, you probably should have already done a microphone test to make sure it works well but also the not fun thing about that is if somebody can't hear you, you're relying on them to yell, yeah I can't hear you because I have this thing going on with me that means I have a hard time hearing so you need to turn it up. You're relying on your audience members to like out themselves. As having a need.
Look, sometimes people don't feel comfortable doing that. Sometimes they do but a lot of the times people won't and at the same time don't say can everybody see my slides okay or things like that. Have people who you know will be able to walk around and test it for you don't make the audience do it for you. No good.
Oh I already said that don't require audio members to — audience members to ought themselves so important I said it on my slides twice. Cool.
Next, share your slides ahead of time. Like you all saw me demonstrate one way to do that is on Twitter. You can actually schedule a tweet and use the event hashtag and put the link and people can see your slides put them on Speaker Deck or Google Slides or something like that. More than anything I recommend doing what I did which is providing your link to the slides in your slides at the beginning.
So my audience members who for whatever reason they might need them can see the slides. It's so, so helpful to so many of us. All right.
So during your talk. Try to — can I get a half hearted oh that was way more half hearted than earlier thank you I appreciate it. You need an appropriate amount of enthusiasm for this time of night during your talk start by learning about your audience which you saw me do ask them questions have them raise their hand make a noise whatever they can do.
That are relevant to adapt to your talk. Not everybody is comfortable with adapting their talk on the fly and things like that but if you can try to adapt it.
There have been talks I've prepared at events where what I was told by the organizers was yeah you're all going to be backend web developers and they all know this language and that's who you're going to be speaking to so I wrote my talk about how is — come on microphone.
How is a — let's try — there we go microphone is back we've had pretty good luck haven't we? What was I say. I've written my whole talk assuming everybody here is a backend developer then when I check that assumption at the beginning of my talk there were not a lot of backend developers at my particular session.
So we adapt on the fly because if I were to give a talk to a roomful of designers with backend developers they are going to have a bad time and feel bad. And they are not going to get anything out of it and then I'm going to feel bad because I'm going to be up here with all of the confused looks on their faces and if I would have bothered to ask what their job was we would have had a better time. You know what I mean.
So adapt to your audience, check your assumptions. If you're making an assumption, check it. Also tell the audience that you're making an assumption about them just lay it out like I did.
Treat your audience with kindness and compassion.
Okay. I think actually maybe if there were two slides to pay attention to this should be the other one.
It's okay if your audience members walk out on you.
I promise you it rarely has anything to do with you.
They have a need 6 some kind that requires them — of some kind that requires them to leave the room maybe they are not getting anything out of your talk that's cool people are not — people leaving early isn't an insult to you unless they flip you off that's an insult but it's okay if people leave early it's not about you if people are looking at their phone or laptops as you are talking. That's fine, it's totally fine. It's totally fine. There we go.
They might be using some kind of assistive text maybe they are watching captions of what you are saying maybe they are furiously taking notes maybe they are using it to be able to deal with the emotions they are experiencing right now so they can pay attention to you.
A thing I'll often tell friends when I'm at an event with them is hey if when you're giving your talk I'm not making eye contact with you and I'm on my phone a lot it's because I'm live tweeting your talk because I loved your talk so much like preinside tip if you're ever at a conference with me and I'm ever just sitting there half looking at the speaker nodding I probably don't like the talk because I'm not tweeting about it. Yeah, right.
So if someone is using their phone that's fine don't worry about it. Also if somebody is fiddling around with something or fidgeting or squirming that's fine. It's not about you. That's them. Unless they are yelling at you and flipping you off then it's probably about you. I even put the word it's not about you on this slide whatever your audience members are doing, it's okay.
Now I am a person with a whole anxiety disorder. And I still have to remind myself about that. People in this room right now if they are looking at their phones or things like that it's okay. It's fine. It doesn't mean I'm doing anything wrong.
Another important tip, speak clearly and slowly. And don't cover your mouth.
Remember how my talk isn't perfect. I've probably spoken pretty quickly a few times. That's okay. Try to speak slowly. Don't cover your mouth. Simple.
Also use simple and clear language when you're talking. Define any terms or acronyms you're using. Even if — even if you think probably everyone in your audience knows what they are. At worst you've spent three seconds defining a term and at best you've made a key observation for someone in your observation. And it doesn't mean you can't tell a joke don't get me wrong like do it. Whatever.
But just make the important parts simple and clear to follow.
Another very important thing that very often I will see speakers trip on a lot I guess usually it's not people intentionally messing this up. But people not thinking about it. Avoiding harmful language. That might be accidentally directed at your audience members during your time.
I'm not going to necessarily say all the examples of this. But you can look them up.
Avoid gender essentialism in your talk. I was at a tech event also recently also not in Chicago. Where somebody was giving a diversity and inclusion talk. And I think their point was to be good about women in the tech industry and things like that. But through a lot of their talk it was like this is a man giving the talk to a little more context like they were talking things like men are like this. But women, women are all nice and kind. Women should be more in the tech. Kind of crap like that. Right? Things like that. Men are like this. Women are like this. Don't you hate it when women do this? Well, this is a whole separate talk and I've given that whole separate talk but there are those of us who are non-binary and essential making you're making generalizations about women that make people feel crappy try not to also avoid casual ableism when you're speaking there are lists of these sorts of words online.
But generally if you find yourself using a word to refer to yourself or someone else or a concept that has anything to do with like intelligence or cognition, like idiot or dumb or words like this fun fact says our words that have their roots in ableist terms for people with disabilities even if you're saying I feel so stupid for blah blah blah avoid these words if you can. Come on microphone. There we go. Avoid these words if you can cool we're going to keep going sorry I keep getting tripped up on the microphone thank you for bearing with me avoid microaggressions about making assumptions to people I'm going to go a little bit quicker because of time another thing that I see specifically white people we do this a lot in a talk if someone's name is like some person you're attributing a quote to or a name or a place the phrase oh I don't know how to pronounce this but I'll give it a try. I don't know how that's supposed to be said but I think it's this.
Or blah blah blah I'm sorry I really butchered that name. Fun fact I'm assuming you are the one who prepared your talk. And you were the one who knew what names you were going to say. So like white people we have no excuse. Like look it up and do it right sorry not sorry you have time to prepare it's really easy.
Cool, okay. Moving right loaning.
Pause often — moving right alone. Pause often.
It's a joke that I paused. Pause often. Give people time to absorb, to think, to take notes. To breathe. It will also often help you as a speaker to like calm down if you're freaking out about your microphone not working. Pause.
It also your lovely live caption author time to catch up. Stuff like that. Pause.
Okay. Cover all displayed text on your slides it doesn't have to be exactly word for word.
But don't put sentences up on your slides and kind of never talk about them.
It's really confusing for your audience members. And makes folks worry that they missed something somehow. Cover everything that's on your slides.
To that end you need to describe your visuals. Images or videos or graphs or whatever it is you have to describe them. If you included it on your slides and it's not just decorative like a scribble, something like a cute clipart of a person waving, stuff like that, if it's just purely decorative you don't have to. Otherwise you need to describe it. Consider what's important. If it wasn't important enough for you to put it on your slide it's important enough for your audience members to understand what the heck you're talking about if it's important enough to put on your slides this includes all images this is includes all funny little gif even if it's a reaction gif of a person making a confused face to emphasize your emotion describe that you have to tell your audience what's going on.
Also, communicate emotional content this is important. In addition to saying, you know, telling your joke and then there's confused gif. Say what that gif is go through and include the fact that it's confused people may not necessarily understand the emotion you're trying to convey with the image.
Also, I said it kind of before if you don't think the image is worth describing then consider whether you actually need it. Images that are kind of up on a slide can often be really distracting for a lot of us. Especially if they are gifs I know a lot of speakers in the tech industry really enjoy putting funny gifs on our slide because they are funny they are fun we like gifs but every time there's a moving gif on a slide and a speaker stays on something for five minutes I can't pay attention and I end up staring at the frog gif unless your talk is about — anyways I digress consider if you need it. Images can be engaging but also super distracting.
Interpret any graphs and charts you have on your slides.
Not only for folks who can't see them but also for folks who are not reading it quickly or having a hard time understanding the point of it. Share the key information about it. Say things like, oh, and in this graph of the number of pirates in the 1800s. It increased over this period of time and then went down. I don't know, whatever. Whatever your example is. Narrate the thing. Get the key information.
Another important thing related to that is avoid saying spatial words I'm blanking on the name who came up with this concept but try to avoid this, that or here.
Referring to visuals. And for folks who cannot see my slides I'm about to say things that intentionally are not actually describing anything they are just examples. Don't say things like this is our agenda as you can see. Or you over there, did you — did you agree — over there did you agree with that? Or you can submit feedback there. Or this person in front, what do you think?
Those things do not make any sense to somebody who cannot see what you're pointing to or indicating. Also to somebody who is like not paying attention to you. Maybe somebody who also just isn't looking up. Maybe they are watching live captions. Maybe doing whatever.
Don't use spatial words. And at the end when you have Q&A and hopefully we'll have time for, you need to repeat audience — come on microphone. There we go. Repeat audience questions into your microphone. If they don't have a microphone of their own and I'll demonstrate that in a little bit we'll find out.
All right. We're in the homestretch. Part No. 7, taking care of yourself. Because you're a person, too. It's important to your talk of being inclusive and accessible talk to you.
Accept it when you make a mistake.
You are probably going to mess up somehow. Hopefully not in a big awful way. But you're probably going to mess up your talk somehow. And it's going to maybe accidentally not have enough contrast or you're going to forget to describe an image. Come on microphone.
There we go. You're going to forget to describe an image or something will go wrong and that's okay. Just accept it. You're not perfect. It's okay. Some of us need to hear that. Some people are in here taking photos they need to hear it so bad. I'm going to give them time. Because that's important. Some of us need that reminder. Okay. I think you all took a photo. Great, excellent. If you mess up in some way in your talk it's a learning experience, it's okay. If you hurt someone with what you did, maybe you accidentally used some language that was hurtful, maybe you — oh, I don't know, forgot to use a microphone I don't know whatever you did something that hurt somebody and they tell you that, you need to apologize.
Genuinely apologize. And listen to what they say it's a learning experience. Also really important to know that your audience members might have conflicting needs even within your audience. Here are some examples. Eye contact there might be some of us who have a hard time paying attention if the speaker isn't actively engaging with us and looking around the room and connecting there are those of us also who may be incredibly uncomfortable if the speaker makes eye contact with us it's okay people have conflicting needs you can't make it perfect for everyone in that case.
Also people have conflicts in the amount of info they like to have on slides some people for their own needs, need to have complete thought, complete concept on a slide. Lots of — maybe you're putting code on a slide or a programmer trying to communicate something about code and some people might need to have a whole big block of code on the slide to understand what you mean other people might need a small amount of information.
And that's okay. You can't do everything for everybody. Maybe find a happy medium.
Here is the other thing that a lot of folks don't necessarily — microphone. There we go. The other thing people might not necessarily think about is color contrast. There are folks who to give an example my wife has an anomalous form of colorblindness she has a lot of difficulty telling a lot of different colors apart so she needs things to have a pretty high contrast to understand what's going on her father has a light sensitivity issue and he cannot have too much contrast. Otherwise it will hurt and he will have a hard time reading it.
Right. You have to find a happy medium that has enough contrast but not too much.
And I say this all not to sound like overwhelming but it's rather to remind you that audience members will have conflicting needs. We just kind of have to do your best, help as many people as you can. And fundamentally because people have conflicting needs, you will not be able to make your talk perfect for every person. It's just a thing to assess.
You also have to give yourself the space and the time you need to succeed in giving your talk.
The idea of don't light yourself on fire to keep other people warm. If you are not able to for your own reasons and your own needs and your own abilities able to do something, maybe you for whatever reason can't do all of the color contrast things or you aren't able to describe all of your images fully or things like that, it's okay. You're a person, too. Give yourself what you need to succeed. Ask for help. Because making it a safe and accessible experience matters for you, too.
An important thing my last point is you need to solicit feedback in a healthy way.
There are some people where after they give a talk immediately walk into the audience like oh what did you think tell me everything I did wrong I want to know I want to know right now I know someone is making a face like what, shock, but some people like that and some people need to know right away and assess you okay that's fine it's not me. If you're a person who like feels appreciated to listen to feedback immediately so you know for your own well-being and your ability to improve you need a day and then you can ask for feedback that's okay, too.
I recommend an audience member therefore to keep that in mind after a talk and ask them hey are you open to feedback on the talk you just gave some people might not be. Some of us can't hear it right away. So here is my way of soliciting feedback in a healthy way. My goal with every talk I give is one, did one person laugh. Check mark. I heard somebody laughing. Somebody is laughing right now, perfect, excellent. Achieved. My second goal is did somebody learn something can you raise your hand if you learned something almost all of you learned something haha my goal is achieved my master plan. Well cool. I am Fen Slattery I will continue to be Fen Slattery. Yes, my wife is FenSlattery.com I have a — FenSlattery.com I have a bunch of stuff up there about diversity and inclusion and I have a talk also about — a talk I've been given how to get invited to give talks and get paid for it. I just used the word get a lot anyways I have a lot of cool things to look on my Website about how to give talks, things like that.
You can applause now. (Applause). (Chuckles).
FEN SLATTERY: Thank you. It's so much harder when you transition from a talk to Q&A it's that awkward moment. Okay. Cool. So we have not a ton of time but here is my note about questions.
Here is my note about questions, questions at an event like this are like Jeopardy.
Your question should be formed in the format of a question. — formed — oh come on microphone don't cut out on me now I'm trying so hard did it actually just die Ah . . . can I have the other microphone? Where did it go? Come on. Oh it's back. Okay. That ruined about — questions are like Jeopardy. Questions are like Jeopardy it should be formed as a question not as a statement also unlike Jeopardy I'm not Alex Trebek you shouldn't ask me a question to prove that you know something. You should instead ask me a question because you actually don't know the answer. I will take a few questions, also I'm on Twitter. I'm sorry we don't have much time. But I would be happy to talk to you afterwards, too, about questions. Does somebody have a really good juicy question that would be relevant to a lot of us? Yeah.
ATTENDEE So at the beginning you were talking a bit about kind of inspiring emotions first and making that a priority. And I can imagine going in and preparing for a talk and having content that's really dry or not know how to bring that level of energy into it. I was wondering if you could talk more about that.
FEN SLATTERY: I would be happy to talk more about that. The emotion — oh my God this microphone. I'm going to try the other one. Thank you I really appreciate — I really appreciate your patience with this microphone thing and you're wonderful I don't know your name. But you're wonderful very helpful.
Thank you. Okay.
Yeah so the emotion I might default to in that case if it's dry is curiosity. I want to give my audience a taste of this thing. But let them know that I didn't teach them everything about the thing. And make them go, oh, man, that person told me this and this and this and this but they said there's nor to know about this and I want to go home and look it up.
But that might be what I would default to. Yeah make people curious if your content is dry make them want to learn more you can do that by reminding them that you don't know everything but also including points in your talk like I did in which you say oh there's so much more so many other thoughts I have about that that I don't have time for. Yeah make them curious and want to learn more. That's my tip. Does that answer your question? Cool that answers your question.
What other questions do folks have? It's okay if you don't have questions. I accept that.
We're also low on time so it's probably good for all of us if you don't have questions.
Okay. Cool, well I appreciate you all coming. Again, feel free to talk to me more on Twitter and stuff like that. Thank you. (Applause).
MAYRA MARTINEZ Thank you all for coming. Fen, thank you for that very informative talk. I learned a lot. We'll apply a lot of that.
If you have any questions, please let us know. We also have Alex in the back. If you would like to be a volunteer for the access — yes. Of course.
MAYRA MARTINEZ Thanks so much.
This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.