Making the Washington State Nonprofit Conference More Accessible
Nonprofit Association of Washington is committed to making our learning spaces welcoming and inclusive to people of all abilities. If you require accommodations or support, please let us know during the registration process or email [email protected]. We will do our best to create a supportive learning space for everyone. Please read on to learn more about the steps we are taking.
Captioning
Captioning supports everyone including people with hearing loss or deafness, people for whom English is not their first language, and neurodiverse participants who may need captions to help focus. Captions also assist people with normal hearing who may be participating from a noisy space.
- Online: The Conference will have live captioning during the virtual keynote sessions and automated captioning in the workshops.
- In-Person: Automated captions will be available through Wordly for all in-person sessions. Captions will be displayed on a screen, and you also have the option of accessing captions on a personal smart device.
You may access captioning through the Zoom toolbar at the bottom of your screen. Click the 3 dots to see More options, then Captions to show or hide the automated captioning during each session. To see the full transcript, click “view full transcript.”
Interpretation
The virtual keynote sessions will have live simultaneous Spanish interpretation available. For online workshops and in-person sessions, automated translation services will be available upon request through Wordly. When registering for the Conference, please indicate any language requests so our team can follow-up with you directly and ensure everything is set up to support your Conference experience.
Wordly is available in over 60 languages. While at the Conference, you can access Wordly by QR code or by going directly to the Wordly website in a browser. You can read or listen to the transcript in the language of your
Visual Descriptions
As part of their introductions, we request that Conference speakers share a visual description of themselves and their surroundings. This helps give a person who is low vision, blind, or even someone calling into a virtual session without a video a little more information about the speaker and a sense of space and place.
Regional WSNC Locations
- ADA Compliant Venues: The Spokane and Tacoma venues are ADA compliant including accessible parking, accessible restrooms, and accessible elevators. If you have specific venue questions, please contact our team at [email protected].
- Safety and Health Information: To ensure the health and safety of attendees at our in-person events, NAWA will follow guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health authorities regarding infectious diseases such as COVID-19. Please do not attend an in-person event if you feel sick or are showing symptoms known to be associated with COVID-19 or another infectious disease. NAWA will provide masks at all in-person events and anyone attending should feel comfortable requesting or wearing one.
Sharing Your Pronouns
Sharing your pronouns is not required, but it is encouraged. If this is not something you are accustomed to, consider whether you might try it during the conference. By sharing your pronouns even if you feel your gender identification is obvious, you are showing solidarity with others and communicating that you care about getting everyone’s pronouns correct.
Asking and correctly using someone’s pronouns shows respect. When someone is referred to with the wrong pronouns, it can make them feel invalidated, dismissed or alienated.
What if I make a mistake?
Everyone slips sometimes. The best thing to do is to say something right away, “Sorry, I meant she.” It can be tempting to go on about how bad you feel. Don’t. It can make the person who was misgendered feel responsible for comforting you, which is not their job.
Other Things To Know
- Avoid using “preferred pronouns” as it suggests that gender is a preference, and “masculine/feminine pronouns” because pronouns are not associated with gender expression.
- Although it may feel strange at first, they/them pronouns are used in the singular: “Xena ate their food because they were hungry.”
- Some persons may prefer to use their name instead of pronouns: Xena ate Xena’s food because Xena was hungry.”
- If you hear a colleague refer to another person using the wrong pronouns, in most cases, it is appropriate to gently correct them, “Actually, Luis uses the pronoun they.”
- It may be appropriate to approach the person who was misgendered and say, “I notice that you were referred to with the wrong pronoun earlier. Do you want me to take them aside and remind them about your pronouns?” Follow up if necessary but take cues from the individual who has been misgendered.
Limited Internet
Use the following tips for connecting with limited internet.
Proximity to Signal
- Hardwire if you can. Get closer to the source if that’s not possible.
Adjust Your Features
- Speaker Versus Gallery View: Switch to the speaker view: gallery view uses a lot more data.
- Mute Yourself: Even if you are sitting silently, it can still help to mute.
- Turn Off HD and “Touch Up My Appearance”: In your video settings, make sure that “Enable HD” and “Touch up my appearance” are turned off.
- Dial In for Audio: Use the dial in for audio instead of using your computer audio. If you lose your video feed, you can still listen. And it might be just enough of a data savings that you don’t get the frozen screen. If you have a land line, this is even more solid.
- Turn Off Your Video: If doing all the above steps aren’t enough, you can turn off your video as a final effort. Turning off your video may help with your connectivity issues, but the lack of video is challenging for people with disabilities as well as for presenters and attendees trying to engage with one another.
Avoid Network Congestion
- Download content early: In the Whova platform, you can go in early and download the presentation materials ahead of time.
- Ask housemates to accommodate: Ask if they can limit internet (especially streaming video and gaming) use while you are attending the Conference.
- Avoid Peak Hours: Weekday evenings are peak hours for most internet users. That’s when most people spend the bulk of their time streaming videos, downloading files, and playing online games—and your internet can slow down at night as a result (even if it’s not in your house).
- Note: our Conference live sessions are not during typical network congestion time.
Contact Us for Support
Please reach out to us if you need support to access the Conference content at [email protected].