Jasmine Khandhar Doshi, MD1, Andrea Dompieri Furlan, MD, PhD1,2, Luiz Carlos Lopes3, Joel DeLisa, MD, MS4 and Linamara Rizzo Battistella, MD, PhD5

From the 1Toronto Rehabilitation Institute – UHN, 2Institute for Work & Health, Division of Physiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, 3Secretaria de Estado dos Direitos da Pessoa com Deficiência, São Paulo, Brazil, 4Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, UMDNJ, New Jersey Medical School, Newark and 5Institute of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, University of São Paulo School of Medicine, São Paulo, Brazil

OBJECTIVE: The purposes of this manuscript are to create awareness of problems of accessibility at meetings and conferences for people with disabilities, and to provide a checklist for organizers of conferences to make the event more accessible to people with disabilities.

METHODS: We conducted a search of the grey literature for conference centres and venues that had recommendations for making the event more accessible. The types of disability included in this manuscript are those as a consequence of visual, hearing and mobility impairments.

RESULTS: We provide a checklist to make meetings accessible to people with disabilities. The checklist is divided into sections related to event planning, venue accessibility, venue staff, invitations/registrations, greeting people with a disability, actions during the event, and suggestions for effective presenters.

CONCLUSIONS: The checklist can be used by prospective organizers of conferences to plan an event and to ensure inclusion and participation of people with disabilities.

Key words: architectural accessibility; disabled persons; congresses; conference accessibility; checklist for conference organizers; barriers; convention centers; disability.

J Rehabil Med 2014; 46: 616–619

Correspondence address: Andrea Dompieri Furlan, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute – UHN, 550 University Avenue, room 7-141-1, Toronto ON, Canada M5G 2A2

Accepted March 28, 2014; Epub ahead of print Jun 11, 2014

Introduction

Education and entertainment provided through various events at convention centers are important part of our lives. Various types of disability including physical, visual, hearing and speech can make it difficult to access these events. It is therefore important to identify ways to make the venues and events more accessible for the person with disability.

In Canada, between 2001 and 2006 the number of people with disability rose by three quarters of a million to 4.4 million, and 40% of the increased disability was due to aging (1). There were 74.6 million adults (32.9% of the population) in The US with one basic action difficulty or complex activity limitation in 2011 (2). In 2010, globally it was estimated that 15% of population is disabled, which is around 1 billion people (3).

There is need for information to help the host of seminars, conferences, conventions or congresses to reduce the barriers for disabled audience. This paper is intended to aid these hosts to help them identify the features that a particular venue offers and lack thereof. This checklist might also help the convention centers that are not accessible yet, guiding their management in ways to meet needs of their specific audience. This especially is important to physiatry conferences given that the specialty plays a major role in rehabilitating people with various disabilities.

Method

A grey literature search method was applied. A systematic way of search was done which included referencing from websites that included Google.ca and Wikipedia. One author (JKD) performed the searches, and a second author (AF) double-checked the data.

The initial search on Google was made with the phrase ‘how to make an event accessible’, to gather data on various features and services required to decrease the barriers for people with disabilities. The first 8 pages (including approximately 80 hits) were screened for relevant data.

We then searched Wikipedia with the search phrase “list of convention centers” (4). Given the data on prevalence of disability, 15% of global population is disabled, therefore we limited our screening to convention centers in the cities with population over 100,000, as that would amount to significant population with disabilities in these cities. We further limited our search to convention centers in such cities in Canada, the US, Australia, UK and Ireland; given the ease of availability of literature on these countries. We confirmed the population of individual cities by searching for its demographic data on Google.ca.

Through the list of convention centers that was gathered by searching Google.ca and Wikipedia, each individual convention centers websites’s was reviewed to obtain accessibility information for that particular venue. The information that was sought in each website is listed in Table I.

Information on these convention websites regarding accessibility was in point form format in no particular order or categories. Based on the above features identified in these websites, we compiled Appendix SI1, categorizing the accessibility features under

• Event planning

• Inviting disabled people to an event

• Venue accessibility

• Venue staff

• At the event

• Suggestions for the effective presenter

Then we further sub categorized into features for specific disabilities such as visual impairment and hearing impairment. Using other guidelines (5), checklists (6) including American Disability Act guidelines (7), we compiled an integrated checklist to guide host to make their event accessible.

We also attempted to gather data on the cost effectiveness of the investments to make venue and event accessible, surveys or studies showing the satisfaction of disabled participants using Google.ca and PubMed.

Results

We found 74 websites, of these 26 were websites for people with disabilities, 36 were for requirements for venue and 4 were regarding appropriate training of staff at the venues. Based on the information collected, we then compiled the integrated checklist to guide hosts (Appendix I).

We found 36 convention centers that met our criteria (see Appendix SI, colum 1). Out of the 36 distinct convention centers listed 16 are in Canada, 7 are in US, 5 are in Australia, 7 are in UK and 1 is in Ireland.

We were unable to find cost effectiveness of these investments, surveys or studies showing the satisfaction of disabled participants.

Discussion

It is important to include people with disabilities at educational and entertainment events. As the population of disabled people rises it is important for the hosts of seminars, conferences, conventions and congresses to be able to reduce barriers for their targeted audience. Through search of various guidelines including American Disability Act guidelines, we compiled a checklist that can help hosts of events evaluate a particular venue. We also noted lack of accessibility information on websites of many convention centers.

A common criticism of grey literature search is that it may be incomplete or inaccurate, however, our team took the steps to ensure that the minimum relevant information is included in the checklist to make it applicable to real world circumstances. We have compiled a checklist to help the hosts of various events evaluate venues in regards to their accessibility services. It is important to note that we have not included other disabilities such as obesity, learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities, etc. as the checklist to evaluate venues will be more demanding. Further we would like to conduct tests if this is a viable, feasible, practical or an effective tool.

1http://www.medicaljournals.se/jrm/content/?doi=10.2340/16501977-1841

References