Communication Access Toolkit for Online Meetings

About the toolkit

The Communication Access Toolkit for Online Meetings is a community-designed open-source toolkit for sharing knowledge about how to design, organize, and facilitate accessible and inclusive online sessions that accommodate persons with complex communication access needs (CCAN), before, during and after the meeting. This is the first version of the toolkit, and more content will be added in the future.

Table of contents

Making the kit

The development of this Online Communication Access Toolkit stems from the insights and experiences of co-designers who actively participated in our research. Through collaborative sessions, co-designers explored and prototyped tools aimed at enhancing the accessibility of online meetings for individuals with complex communication access needs (CCAN). The toolkit, a result of their collective expertise and lived experiences, offers a centralized resource featuring guidelines, protocols, and design suggestions for organizing inclusive online sessions.

It highlights the significance of understanding diverse communication needs and barriers, emphasizing the right of all participants, especially those using augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), to engage in online meetings with dignity. Future versions of the toolkit will incorporate community feedback, ensuring continuous improvement and responsiveness to the evolving landscape of communication accessibility in online meeting spaces.

Goals of the kit

The goals of this kit are to:

  1. Provide an open, online toolkit for sharing knowledge about how to improve access to online meetings for persons with disabilities.
  2. Educate the public on how AAC users and people who have speech, language, and communication disabilities (SLCDs) communicate and access information communication technology.

What's in the kit

The toolkit contains the following resources for supporting complex communication access needs throughout the process of meeting online:

  1. Guides: This includes considerations and suggested practices for supporting CCAN and inclusion when organizing and hosting online meetings. The guidelines provide both a checklist to help meeting organizers and general education and awareness about the lived experiences of persons with CCAN when accessing online meetings.

  2. Accessibility features and plugins: These include new exploratory accessibility design features that could make meeting platforms more accessible to users with communication communication access needs.

  3. Tools and templates: These are reusable tools and templates to support communication access and participation for online meetings.

Want to contribute?

We welcome anyone to use and contribute to this toolkit, or give us feedback on how to make this website more valuable, usable, or accessible. Email us directly at nneka.nnagbo@gmail.com.