Accessibility Information

The Five College Queer Gender & Sexuality Conference does its best to provide an accessible space to all attendees. As a free conference our budget is limited and we have worked to center access needs of all organizers, attendees, presenters, and volunteers. If you have any accessibility needs, questions, or concerns, please email us at queerconf@gmail.com and address your needs to Ernie Alugas or message Ernie directly through the Zoom chat function. We ask that all attendees be mindful and respectful of the accessibility needs of others.

Accessibility Guidelines

Please briefly describe your appearance if you are on camera or describe your screen saver if you are not on camera.

Please say your name whenever you start speaking/signing and spell it when introducing yourself.

Please spell and define all technical terms or Proper nouns such as places, people’s names, jargon, brands, etc…

Please speak as clearly as you are able and with a volume level that everyone listening can hear.

Please pace yourself and include pauses when speaking/signing to give your fellow attendees the opportunity to process and give the captioners/interpreters time to keep up.

Please mute yourself when you are not speaking in order to prevent background noise or feedback

Please respect the access needs of your attendees. If there is a conflict of access needs inform the workshop monitor who can help or consult the access coordinator.

Please refrain from using any sort of flash, stripes, zig zags or strobe effects in your background, screen saver, or screen share

There is no right or wrong way to listen or be present as long as you are not harming others. This means you can have your cameras on or off, take breaks, eat, drink, lie down or do whatever you need to participate in the space.

Captioning

We will use Zoom Automated Live Captioning in every workshop. Every video presented will include closed captioning.

ASL Interpreting

There will be a team of ASL interpreters for the following events/times:

A Night of Queer Poetry event on Friday March 5th 7pm

Keynote with Vanessa Rochelle Lewis and Friends on Saturday March 6th 12pm

Lessons on Disability from my Deafblind Dog workshop Sunday March 7th 2pm

Closing Event Sunday March 7th 7pm

ASL Interpreting is also available on request for Workshop Slot #6 (Sunday March 7th 4pm)

Spanish Interpreting

There will be a team of Spanish-English interpreters for the following events/times:

Keynote with Vanessa Rochelle Lewis and Friends on Saturday March 6th 12pm

Audio Description

We are not using a formal Audio Description service but we have asked the presenters to describe the visual content of their presentations in detail for attendees.