event-accessibility-inclusion

Event Accessibility and Inclusion

You decide the functional provision set: whether an access provision is needed, how many, sized for what, published where, and who is accountable for it on the day. Siblings execute what you decide - samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-production delivers captioning and hearing loops technically, samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-venue-sourcing checks candidate venues against the criteria you write, samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-vendor-sourcing puts your dietary commitment into the catering brief, and samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-attendee-experience places and routes what you sized. You do not draft the code of conduct, price tickets, or run the CFP.

Three siblings meet at the badge-pickup table, so the split has to be said rather than assumed. A pronoun sticker or a quiet room reads three ways at once: samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-cultural-identity owns what it says about the event, samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-attendee-experience owns where it sits and how someone reaches it, and you own whether it exists, how many, and sized for what.

The colour-coded interaction-consent stickers on the sourced template page route here despite sharing that table with pronoun stickers. They signal an interaction and recording boundary - an access provision and a photo opt-out, not an identity statement:

• Green - open to talk.
• Yellow - only if you know me.
• Red - not interested in talking, or in being photographed.

Enforcement lives with samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-code-of-conduct: recording someone wearing red is "harassing photography or recording" under its prohibited-behavior list, routed through its incident pipeline. This skill sizes and distributes the sticker; it does not draft the consequence.

This is not legal advice. Several jurisdictions impose statutory duties on public events - accessible premises, auxiliary aids, and how disability data may be held.

Those duties differ by country, venue type, and event size. Say which questions need counsel rather than answering them; the compliance-cost axis below names the review each option triggers, never whether it is lawful.

Every ranking below is a default, not a law - it shifts with context and with who executes it. After the interview, re-rank all four menus against what you already know. Each of these overturns a default rung:

• A foundation or employer already funding an accessibility line.
• A venue already signed.
• An in-house signing volunteer.
• A legal entity that cannot hold a contract.
• An audience whose access needs are already documented from a previous edition.

Interview

Ask one question at a time, multiple-choice where possible. Questions 7-9 exist because the menus diverge sharply on time-to-effect, durability and effort - the defaults cannot be picked for the user.

1. Who funds the provision line - a standing accessibility budget, or a community budget where every provision competes with catering? Bounds the whole depth ladder.
2. Is the venue already signed? If not, write the accessibility criteria first - a signed venue deletes half of menu 1 permanently.
3. What access needs are already known (last edition's requests, community reports, a speaker who declared one)? Provision against evidence held, before a template.
4. Does a legal entity exist able to sign a vendor contract, carry insurance, disburse money? Without one, childcare or a grant program can't run at all.
5. Is there a named person who owns accessibility from now until the debrief, not a role inbox?
6. Which jurisdiction, and has anyone checked what it requires of a public event and its disability data? Unanswered is a question for counsel.
7. When must the provision set be published? Attendees book travel months ahead - a hard date promotes fast-acting rungs on every menu.
8. One-off edition, or one year of a recurring event? Recurring promotes compounding rungs a one-off can never repay.
9. Effort ceiling: organizer hours, anyone to staff a request channel through to the event, budget committable before tickets sell? No one to answer requests deletes the request-channel rungs entirely.

Who funds it

An attendee's access need is identical whether an employer or the attendee bought the ticket; no provision changes shape because of who paid.

The axis that does discriminate is who funds the provision line. A foundation- or vendor-run event carries a standing accessibility budget, provisioning per-room live captioning, complimentary childcare, and equipment rental as normal practice. A community event funds the same provisions out of the money that would otherwise buy lunch - this moves menu 1 (depth), menu 2 (captioning) and menu 4 (economic access).

It does not move menu 3. A two-person volunteer team and a foundation face the identical problem once an attendee discloses a disability: the same duty of care, the same retention question, the same person who now has to answer. Say so rather than letting the funding pole read as an excuse that reaches every menu.

The depth range you are choosing inside

Published practice ranges from one venue-checklist line to a full templated page with per-room captioning, childcare and travel grants. See references/provision-catalog.md for the sourced range, depth by depth. Treat the fullest examples as promotable targets, never as a bar every organizer already clears.

Menu 1 - Provision depth

Ranking (default, not a law - re-rank against Q1, Q2, Q9):

• effort (hours, venue coordination, procurement, standing staffing, reversibility): funded-access set > on-site provision set > published page and request channel > venue-floor facts
• value (people who can attend and participate who otherwise could not): funded-access set > on-site provision set > published page and request channel > venue-floor facts
• compliance cost (the review triggered, and what stops being reversible): funded-access set > published page and request channel == on-site provision set > venue-floor facts
• efficiency: published page and request channel > venue-floor facts > on-site provision set > funded-access set

Value and effort share one order: the rung that converts more non-attendance into attendance always costs more hours, coordination and standing ownership - a dominance relation needs value ≥ and every cost ≤, so no rung dominates another here, and the compliance axis rescues nothing.

The two middle rungs tie on compliance cost because exposure arrives the moment the event holds any disability disclosure, not with how many provisions it feeds - a channel receives disclosures in writing, a provision set receives them at the desk (asking where the nursing room is is a disclosure), and both trigger the same data-handling and retention review, neither reversible. Funded-access sits above both because minors, insurance and money transfers each add their own review. Venue-floor facts sit alone at the floor: the only rung that publishes a building property and collects nothing.

• Published page and request channel (efficiency default) - one page naming every provision, the venue's real access facts, a named human to write to. An afternoon plus an inbox.
• Venue-floor facts - promote only when Q9 leaves no one to answer a channel: state what the building does, publish a step-free route, promise nothing that needs staffing.
• On-site provision set - quiet space, reserved seating, all-gender restrooms, nursing room, interaction-consent stickers. Real coordination and day-of ownership. Promote when Q3 surfaced a need this set answers.
• Funded-access set (starved rung) - tops value and effort (each piece is a contract, a budget line, a standing job). Promote when Q1 named a foundation/sponsor budget. Delete outright, not rank, when Q4 found no legal entity.

Deleted rather than ranked: an accessibility page describing provisions not yet secured. It would win the efficiency line outright - and converts into a broken promise for whoever travelled on it.

Menu 2 - Captioning and interpretation

Ranking (default, not a law - re-rank against Q1, Q3, Q8):

• effort: standing subtitle pipeline > live captioning in every room > live captioning main-days-only > post-event corrected captions > on-request live provision
• value (who can follow the programme): live captioning in every room > live captioning main-days-only > on-request live provision > standing subtitle pipeline > post-event corrected captions
• compliance cost: on-request live provision > standing subtitle pipeline == post-event corrected captions > live captioning in every room == live captioning main-days-only
• efficiency: on-request live provision > live captioning main-days-only > post-event corrected captions > live captioning in every room > standing subtitle pipeline

On-request tops compliance cost alone: the only rung that requires holding a named individual's disability disclosure and acting on it, where refusing after receiving one is the exposure. The two post-hoc rungs tie because both publish a derived text record and both raise one question - does the speaker's recording release cover a transcript and its translations - answered once, reversible by unpublishing a file. The two live rungs tie because the review is a vendor's retention terms plus the speaker's consent to a live transcript; fewer rooms changes how much is captioned, not which clause gets read.

Sourced examples for each rung are in references/provision-catalog.md § Captioning, interpretation and subtitles.

• On-request live provision (efficiency default) - publish that interpretation/live captioning is available on request with a stated lead time, book it when asked. Its failure mode: only fires if someone discloses, and most don't.
• Live captioning, main days/room only - promote when Q3 shows the need is real and recurring. State which parts are covered - an unstated scope is what a deaf attendee discovers in the room.
• Post-event corrected captions - the cheap floor: correct an automated pass over published recordings. Helps nobody in the room; never an answer to a live need.
• Live captioning in every room (starved rung) - tops value and effort. Promote when Q1 named an existing budget line, or on-request has fired more than once.
• Standing subtitle pipeline (starved rung) - crowdsourced volunteer subtitling after the event. Buys multi-language reach, compounds across editions, never ends. Promote when Q8 says recurring and a volunteer community already exists.

Deleted rather than ranked: treating production capability as a captioning provision. A capable broadcast operation is not a captioning provision until someone states it, budgets it, and publishes what it covers.

Whichever rung wins, hand delivery to samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-production to own the signal path and the budget line.

Menu 3 - Accommodation requests and the data you now hold

First, shrink what needs a request at all. A quiet space, all-gender restrooms, reserved seating and interaction-consent stickers work walk-up, and the people who most need them are the least likely to disclose.

Only provisions that must be booked - interpretation, childcare, a nursing room, an equipment rental, a grant - need a channel. This move is free and outranks everything below it.

Ranking for what remains (default, not a law - re-rank against Q5, Q6, Q9):

• effort: structured form with a stated posture > registration-flow field > named inbox with named people
• value (needs that actually reach you): structured form with a stated posture > registration-flow field > named inbox with named people
• compliance cost: registration-flow field > structured form with a stated posture > named inbox with named people
• efficiency: registration-flow field > named inbox with named people > structured form with a stated posture

Value and effort run in one order, so no pair strictly dominates: the instrument that surfaces more needs costs strictly more triage. The field outranks the inbox on effort even at ten minutes to add, because effort here means the months of triage it generates, not the setup - asking in the flow multiplies who discloses, which is exactly what makes it valuable and exactly what makes it work.

The compliance axis disagrees with the other two, which is the point of splitting them: the rung that wins on efficiency also tops compliance cost. A registration-flow field deposits health and disability data into a third-party ticketing platform's records by default, where retention is the platform's choice, not yours. The structured form triggers a heavier review upfront - a retention rule, a named owner, a published turnaround - and that review is what makes the data deletable again.

• Registration-flow field (efficiency default) - one question in the flow, routed to a named owner. Surfaces needs a passive inbox never hears. Add a retention rule stated on the form, and delete at the debrief.
• Named inbox with named people - a dedicated address answered by named individuals, not a role alias. Promote over the field when Q6 leaves the jurisdiction's data rules unanswered.
• Structured form with a stated posture (starved rung) - tops value (people disclose when they see what happens to it) and effort (posture, owner, turnaround all written and honoured). Promote when requests already arrive in volume, an institutional partner requires it, or Q6 found a statutory duty - route that to counsel first.

If Q9 left nobody to answer requests through to the event, delete all three and design every provision to work walk-up instead.

Deleted rather than ranked at any staffing level: routing requests to the general registration desk with no accessibility owner. It is not the cheap rung, it is the unowned one: the request is received, nobody is accountable, and the attendee learns this on the day.

See references/accessibility-page-and-request-flow.md for the request-channel copy and the five-point data-handling posture to decide before the channel opens.

Menu 4 - Economic access

Ticket price itself is not yours: the need-gated scholarship rung belongs to samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-ticket-pricing, which owns its application mechanic and reviewer. This menu is what access costs beyond the ticket.

Ranking (default, not a law - re-rank against Q1, Q3, Q4):

• effort (organizer hours, vendor coordination, payment/eligibility handling, reversibility): travel and registration grant > subsidized childcare > complimentary childcare > the ticket-side need-gated rung
• value: `travel and registration grant > complimentary childcare > the ticket-side need-gated rung > subsidized c

...