EP 61: Making Fundraising Events Accessible for Everyone

Positioning review: Minimal adjustments made. Reframed one prescriptive statement about captioning videos to descriptive framing. Handbid references are naturally experiential, describing Jeff's firsthand experience with screen reader testing and accessibility improvements. No advisory or prescriptive selling language present.

Jeff: Welcome to Elevate Your Event, your favorite podcast for transforming fundraising events. Join us weekly for expert tips and creative ideas to make your next event a standout success. On today's episode, we're diving into the critical topic that's often overlooked in fundraising events -- accessibility. Join us as we sit down with Jeff Porter, the CEO and founder of Handbid, Stephanie Mason, our Director of Operations, and our special guest, Emma Ord, an esteemed Accessibility Specialist with Event Operations.

Jeff: All right, well, welcome back to the Elevate Your Event podcast. We talk about all the various ways you can make your next fundraising event better. And we have got a special guest today. We're excited to bring Emma on from Event Operations. So, Emma, tell us a little bit about your organization. And also tell us a little bit about how you got into event fundraising in the first place.

Emma: Yeah, so I set up Event Operations back at the end of 2022 after finishing with Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, and I've been working in the events industry for just over 16 years working in a variation of roles for different organizations, majority of music and sport. I've had dedicated accessibility roles but also worked in marketing, ticketing, production -- all those kind of roles. So with that knowledge, I can then better inform about accessibility best practice.

Jeff: Okay, so you talk about accessibility. Let's define accessibility for our audience. When you say, "Hey, I do accessibility," what specifically are you helping your clients with?

Emma: People get very confused. The amount of LinkedIn requests I get about security cameras and access passes is ridiculous, and that's what every training session I do always starts with, because people get a little bit confused about it. In its purest form, it's disabled access -- so that's visible and non-visible disabilities, providing facilities, services, process, and procedure to make events more accessible and inclusive.

Jeff: So you're saying you can't get me backstage to the Elton John concert?

Emma: I wish! That's not the accessibility we're talking about.

Jeff: You're talking about people with disabilities of various types being able to access your event or whatever interface you're putting in front of them, right?

Emma: Yeah. That's correct.

Jeff: Well, fantastic. So how did you get started in that?

Emma: It's a bit of a weird one, really. I used to work for Live Nation, one of their venues. I was a production assistant -- that was part of my work experience at university -- and they were recruiting for their summer roles for their greenfield events. And I think I was the only person that applied for the overnight accessible campsite manager role. And I'm not surprised. It's not the most rock and roll, is it? When you look at all the other ones where it's like artist liaison, or stage, and all that kind of stuff. So they gave me a call and they're like, "Would you like to come and be part of the team?" And I was like, "Yes, I would love to." And I had a ball. I absolutely loved it. And it became a more permanent role that I could apply for a couple of years later after doing a few years of volunteering. And yeah, I fell in love with it, really. I didn't really know much about accessibility to that point, but I love live events and I love helping people, and it was great to see what you could achieve and how everybody worked together. It became a real passion from there.

Jeff: Yeah, I think it's something that's always there and I guess you just need to be made aware of it, right? And then once you're kind of aware of it, it's like, wow, now I see issues everywhere that should be fixed.

Emma: And still for me, working in this field day in and day out, especially my role at Commonwealth Games -- it was so broad. Every day there were different things where I was like, "I'm in charge of that too? Oh, goodness me, I do need to think about that." Because we had your traditional venues, but we also had athlete villages. We had training venues. There were so many areas that included me as well. And even I was surprised at some points how broad accessibility is. Of course it is. It's included in absolutely everything we do -- our transport, our marketing, our policy and procedure, our accommodations. It's everything. You're like, wow, we need to wake up a little bit more and make sure that we are properly doing this.

Jeff: It's funny because we had a child who was born with a disorder. And in the very beginning, obviously when they're an infant, they're not necessarily telling you what all their issues are. But she definitely had some sensory issues. And so we started thinking about the people coming to our fundraisers who are either hearing impaired, visually impaired, colorblind at some level, or just have general sensory issues. Maybe they don't like loud noises. How can you set up your event in a way that can accommodate them to the best of your ability? Obviously, I mean, you're not going to make it to the point where you're saying, "Hey, we're not going to have any live, loud music just because we have people that might have sensory issues." We're just going to provide things to protect them. Maybe that's an indoor facility or headphones or something else that you can put on. But it started to really become evident to us as we started having people that were also coming with their children with a disorder -- like, oh wow, we've got to really think about this in terms of how we're going to make our event, I would think "safe" is the right word, but at least a comfortable place for people to interact.

Emma: And I think there's been such a focus on physical disability. People, when they think about accessibility, tend to go to the stereotypical wheelchair user and ramp, assistance dog. But actually, people are now beginning to wake up to conditions that are non-visible and how we can help people more. Especially in the UK, the increase in quiet rooms and such. And as you say, the headsets and what else can we do and how can technology be implemented. It's not just those old-school stereotypical things that people are thinking of anymore. They're really thinking outside the box, which is brilliant.

Jeff: I think it's awesome. And it starts prior to the event. So now most people are asking their customers or their guests or whatever you call them to register in advance on some sort of technology platform. So we do this at Handbid, right? You're asking people to buy tickets online and then you're trying to figure out how to communicate with these people and how to arrive. And have you thought about -- not just the physically disabled -- like, are there handicapped parking spaces? Because at most of these venues there are. But then are there easy signage for if somebody is blind? How do they know how to get from the parking lot to the front door of your venue? A lot of those things I think people kind of gloss over. But let's back up and talk about the technology for a second, because that has become something that obviously we as a technology company at Handbid have had to really focus on and prioritize. And not just -- I mean, definitely after COVID, when everybody moved online, it became front and center. But even prior to that, we would go to these events or we'd be doing events for a blind organization or a deaf organization and they're asking us these questions like, "How does your software help with this?" And actually, we went to one event and this one really opened my eyes -- their MC was blind, and he got up on stage and he wanted to demo to everybody how to bid and donate in the Handbid app. And he went through there with the screen reader scrolling through stuff. And I'm hearing things, I'm thinking, "Oh, we can make that better. Oh, we can make that better. Oh, we can make that sound clearer." Because you don't realize when you build these types of technology apps that people can visually see where they need to click. But if you've labeled that button wrong or something, the screen reader is reading to this person what the button says, and they're like, "Oh yeah, the button probably shouldn't say that."

Emma: Yeah.

Jeff: So a lot of those things really did become front and center for us. And obviously, we felt really good when he scrolled all the way over to the donation items and made a donation and showed everybody how easy it was. And we were not prepared for that, I'll be honest. But obviously pleasantly surprised that it worked well. We went back internally and said, we want this to be easy. And I don't know how many technology companies do that. And I'll also say, I don't know how many charities and organizations ask about that. Are you making them aware of that, Emma?

Emma: Yeah, absolutely. So when you're working with clients, it's very much auditing what they do already and suggesting these things. Like, kudos to you guys. That's fantastic that you saw what was happening and said, "Okay, we weren't aware of all this, but how can we then make it better?" That's so important because this keeps on evolving and changing and we can't stand still. So that's brilliant that Handbid have done that, because you could have gone like, "Brilliant, great, it works, it works, it works." That's fantastic to review it. But yeah, it's about talking to people all the time, making them aware that technology exists. And there's fantastic new technology being launched all the time. I don't necessarily know everything that's out there because it keeps on changing. And how exciting is that, because the possibilities are kind of endless, aren't they? If we can keep on developing it, it's so exciting.

Jeff: It really is. And so obviously with COVID, this became front and center for a lot of our clients, especially our larger university organizations who were like, from a legal standpoint, we have a lot of liability here. And so we want to make sure that the tools that we're using are compliant. I remember we had just brought on a brand new developer who was working on our front-end website. And her first project, she said, "Okay, what's my first project?" I said, "You need to make our front-facing bidder website fully screen reader compliant. We've hired a consulting company. They've come through. They've given me the list of things you've got to go fix. Some of these are visual -- it's size of fonts or contrast ratios and all that other kind of stuff." We'll come back to design in a second. "But the rest of it, honestly, is I want you to put a screen reader on this thing, and I want you to use a keyboard, and I want you to navigate our entire site with a keyboard and a screen reader." And it was a little bit of a challenge at first. I remember the first couple of weeks we were working with her on it, and finally she got it. Something clicked where she said, "I'm going to be able to navigate and do everything I possibly can with a keyboard." And I was like, perfect, that's awesome, that's exactly what we want. And it is a challenge, though. I will say, it's one of those things where if you haven't designed your technology with some of those things in mind, retrofitting them back in is not always the easiest thing to do.

Emma: And that's so important. That's why accessibility needs to be embedded from the very beginning, because otherwise it's such a pain to add it back in. It's really hard work. And if we can develop it from the first thing and it's always part of our thinking, it makes it easier. It's still a challenge. It's still hard. But everybody's on that journey with you then. So it's not one web developer battling through trying to make changes. Everybody's thinking every page, every link, every button -- how do we do this? How do we make this work together?

Jeff: Yeah, for sure. And that goes back to the design element, because a lot of times when you're in a technology world, you start with maybe wireframes or a design of how you want your app or your site to look. And the designers don't always have contrast ratios and all those things in mind. So they're like, "We're going to take your brand and we're just going to literally make this site look amazing." And then you're looking at light gray text on a white background and you're like, okay, my eyes are still good enough I can see that, but if I put my mother-in-law in front of this screen, her eyes aren't that great anymore, this font is too small, she can't read it. I mean, you should see the size of the font in her texting app on her iPhone. That's the stuff we're talking about. And so I remember we would constantly be going back to our designer and saying, you've got to fix these things. And it's harder when you don't start with that, because you're constantly going back. And it can still look good. That's the thing.

Emma: If we can design it in from the beginning, it can still look really, really great. It can still be really impactful, and that's what we want. We don't want to spoil or wreck everybody's fun. We want it to be really good, but it has to be functional, because if it's not, what's the point? Nobody can use our site. No one can donate. Nobody can interact. They can't find out the information they need. So what a pointless exercise, building the website or whatever we're doing in the first place, because no one can use it. So the functionality is so key. And I mean, I use the contrast checker quite a lot to check what I've done, because sometimes you're like, "That should work," and it absolutely doesn't work.

Jeff: Right. I agree. We have plugins now, and it's funny -- we work directly with a third party who's a constant consultant to us on accessibility, and they have a really cool plugin that goes into the browser that our developers use that's constantly giving them feedback on what the plugin finds compliant and what it doesn't, so they can make those adjustments on the fly and you're not waiting until the end. I think a lot of companies do that. They design a site, they build it, they publish it, then they hire some third party to come back and check if it's compliant. And they come back and say, "All of these things are not compliant," which you could have fixed in the beginning had you kind of taken some of these principles in mind. And there are lots of principles, right? There are lots of things out there -- these best practices we talk about in terms of design or even in terms of implementation that I think every technology company should be focused on. Stuff like size of fonts or what's a contrast ratio. Everybody in our audience is probably thinking right now what a contrast ratio is. It's the ratio of the color of the font against the background, and when there's not a big difference in those, people that are visually impaired have a hard time seeing them. I like to talk about the green font on a red background example.

Emma: Yeah.

Jeff: I know, we have custom theming, Emma, and it's funny because part of the question is like, "Why did it take so long at Handbid to allow your clients to completely customize the look and feel of the landing page?" Largely because of this -- because they're going to make choices that compromise accessibility. Not all of them -- some of our clients out there have done great work.

Emma: And actually, I was like, this is fantastic, because obviously the web developer has a job to do. I'm not clever enough to know all the ins and outs of that behind the scenes. But how brilliant that somebody can go on and say, "This is what I need. This is what I want. This is how I build it." You can save it. So when you go back to the site, it's like that. I'd not really seen much like that before, but the breadth of what you could do with it was brilliant. Because everybody's requirements are individual and they may change slightly from day to day, where actually that colorway doesn't work today, or actually today I need it to read aloud to me, or the font size needs to be a little bit bigger because it's the end of the day and I find a larger font size better. It's really cool to be able to do that.

Jeff: I agree. And we actually have a plugin just like that on our website for the end users. And it's neat. Now we didn't decide to stop there. And I'll tell you why -- because if I'm coming to the site and I'm blind, I'm not finding that plugin anyway unless that site is inherently accessible to begin with for a screen reader. So we wanted to make sure that from a base level, everything was in place. And from there, people come to the site and it actually now tells them there is an accessibility tool here. And so it does everything you're describing. You want to inverse the contrast ratio? I think there's one in there for attention deficit disorder, and it darkens the entire page except for a little sliver of brightness on the spot where the person's looking. Really cool stuff.

Emma: I think that's an important point, though, that not just one tool, as amazing as it is, is your solution. You can't just not address accessibility because you think, "I'm just going to slap this tool on here and all my problems are solved." It really is coming at it from different angles.

Jeff: Yep. And I hate to say it, but it's not something you can be lazy about. You've got to think about it from all different angles and not just leave it out.

Emma: No shortcuts.

Jeff: No shortcuts. And here's the other thing, because this came up a lot over the years with Handbid -- like, why would you build an app? And we've had lots of podcasts describing the benefits of an app. But this is also one of them for our listeners to understand, because people will go onto their phone and they'll put in all of these accessibility adjustments on their phone. They can increase the contrast. They can increase the font size. Well, all of that spills into our app. Where it doesn't on the web -- if I open up a web page, if that web page is not accessibility compliant, that kind of stuff gets lost. Now, I would say sometimes you can really alter the user interface of an app when your font size is very large on an iPhone, but either way, it definitely gives people a more comfortable environment. And look, I have larger font on my phone. And for me, it's nice when I go into certain apps like Handbid where I'm not having to squint at the phone because they've chosen fonts that are so small inside of that app. So that's fine.

Stephanie: So, kind of moving beyond technology, how do you start when you're meeting with somebody who's doing an in-person event? How do you lead them through that process of thinking about accessibility?

Emma: It has to be from the very, very beginning. What is that first touchpoint? And usually that is information-driven. People come to the website. People are reading about an event on social media. It can be print as well -- let's not forget the non-digital versions. But people are having to get information about something first to find out about it. So how is that accessible? We start from that very first touchpoint, every single one, all the way through. Where possible, I'll go to an event prior to the one that we're going to make some changes to, to kind of test-run it and see how it actually works in practice. But it's from that very first touchpoint for an attendee.

Jeff: That makes sense. And from the point that they arrive, they walk in through the door, how do they know where to go? To your point about a program -- if I'm visually impaired, what is my option there? And then we were talking about the presentation itself. We've been to so many events where the presentation has no captions. This is your highly invested tearjerker, "you need to donate now" video. And the people who can't hear are in the audience and there's no captions on the video.

Stephanie: Yeah. And it's a significant number of people that are in the room that are hard of hearing. Statistically, it's way more than you would expect, especially depending on the demographic of your crowd.

Jeff: Well, since all of our clients like to tell us how old their bidders are -- "Our guests are so old. They're not going to use technology." Well, they're not hearing your video apparently either.

Stephanie: Yes.

Emma: Well, let's think even wider for captions. It might be that somebody is dyslexic. So actually, they prefer to follow along sometimes with captions, along with hearing, to make sure they've got it right, or "Is that the right word?" or "What are we actually on about?" Or you may have guests where that's not their native language in the audience, so they follow along. Because otherwise, what a shame -- we're going to miss people donating and bidding. You've lost them straight away because they're like, "You know what? They don't care about me, so I'm done now, thank you." And that's the point of the information to begin with, that first touchpoint. If we lose them there, they're gone. They don't care. They're like, "This isn't for me." But especially with those hard-hitting bits where we're trying to get people engaged -- that's the main crux of our events.

Jeff: You're right. And I didn't even think about that, but I 100% agree with you. It doesn't even have to be that they're massively hearing impaired. They could just be ADD or dyslexic or something else. I'll be super vulnerable here -- I like the subtitles on the TV when I'm watching stuff at home these days.

Emma: Me too. How many people do that though, right?

Stephanie: On Netflix, I always have the subtitles. It helps you follow along. It makes me make sure I'm watching. I'm not scrolling on my phone at the same time as well, I know.

Jeff: Especially when you watch certain types of shows where they talk so fast and you're trying to figure out what they just said. You either rewind or you put the subtitles up. And so I think those are things where sometimes we think, "Hey, I need to worry about the people that have some sort of major impairment." Sure, you do. But just think about the little accommodations you can give people. Like where you put your trash cans. I saw a guy at an event who was just walking with a cane, but he had to walk halfway across the room just to throw his drink away. A lot of times it's like, what are the traffic patterns, where do people walk, what types of little teeny adjustments can I make that will just make all of them a little bit more comfortable? Space between tables.

Stephanie: Yes.

Jeff: You know, just walking through the tables sometimes -- these venues are so packed. I mean, is that really accessible? If somebody has a cane or a wheelchair? Yeah, definitely not a wheelchair. You can't even get through there with a cane.

Emma: Can you actually get through the venue door sometimes, right? And that's where for a lot of the work I do as well, you start to that point. If we're doing a venue audit, because if we can't get through the front door, I'm not going to go and audit the rest of the venue. What's the point? Right?

Jeff: Where's Emma? Emma never showed up to our event. Oh, she came. She just never walked in the front door.

Emma: And often we'll get there and get a bit excited and ahead of ourselves and be like, "Let's get into the venue, let's look at the seating, let's look at this." It's like, if we can't get in, we've got a major problem.

Jeff: That's a great point. I did this event in Nashville and I remember -- I'm not going to name the charity -- but I show up at this thing and it's a really neat kind of old church venue. And you walk in the door and there's this little tiny foyer, and they had check-in there. And I said, "Okay, well, how do we get to the event?" And they're like, "Go that way." I look, and there's got to be 40 steps straight up. And I was like, what? I said, "Is there an elevator?" "Oh, there's an elevator around the corner. It's kind of a service-type elevator, but guests that don't want to walk the stairs can take that." Well, I'll tell you who was ready to be carried out in a wheelchair that night was me. I went up and down those stairs about 40 times that night, and I was like, oh my God, these poor guests. And it's not even like -- can my mother-in-law make it up 40 steps? Yes. Can she do it two or three times? I wouldn't want her to. So I think it's also just important to make sure that when you're thinking about these things, it's not the "Oh yeah, they can make it up there." It's like, can they really do this for an entire event? Whatever you're asking of them. Even just injured people.

Emma: One of my favorites -- we were reviewing some accommodation options, and I was told there were some accessible rooms in this building. So we went through, did the route. I said, "Right, how would you get through?" They said, "It's the lift access." "Yeah, yeah, there's a lift." There were five steps down to the lift. I don't know who designed that building. I was like, we're not going up there. We're crossing this off our list. This doesn't work. But it is baffling. They'll be going, "Yeah, yeah, it's accessible, it's fine." And you're like, no, it's not. So yeah, it's kind of taking a step back sometimes, literally going, "Okay, where are we coming from? Where are we going to?"

Jeff: I know. There's a place in Denver, and they wanted to do an event there. This one charity decided not to, but the place had this really cool elevator in the middle. And the elevator was really old-fashioned. And I was like, that is really neat, that's going to be really cool. Well, when you got in, you had to crank the door shut. And I was like, come on, you guys, unless you're going to have a volunteer sitting here doing this all night long, you cannot send your guests up and down this elevator. And they were like, "Oh yeah, you're probably right."

Jeff: So I have another question for you, Emma. Obviously you're guiding your clients to have their own awareness and start thinking about accessibility on their own. But do you also advise them to ask their guests, maybe as part of their ticketing process, "Are there any accommodations that you would need?" What is your take on that?

Emma: Yeah, absolutely. Some people cringe a bit and go, "We can't ask questions, we can't do this." But you absolutely can, provided you're asking the questions in the right way, in a respectful way, and the information you're asking for is for a purpose. That's absolutely fine. It's really important. I've used it on a lot of events and I advise it now, because we can get a better idea of what our attendees' requirements are and what we need to provide. It might be that we need to increase something. It may be that we did increase resources in some cases. It might be that somebody has a requirement where actually we need to think a little bit differently about their journey to us or the information we need to provide to them. It's usually for ticketed, seated events that I've done a lot of work for in the past. So if somebody has a vision impairment, it may be that we seat them closer to -- in a sporting arena -- the field of play. Or if they have a hearing impairment, is it where the sign language interpreter is positioned that we need to seat them? If they're bringing an assistance dog, typically I'd advise that they sit in the wheelchair bay because it's then more dignified and there's a bit more space for both the assistance dog owner and the assistance dog. Whilst easy-access seating -- seating that may be up or down a couple of steps -- that might be for hidden disabilities, maybe somebody that finds the crowd a little bit overwhelming that needs to be at the end of an aisle or separate, but they can still sit in the general seating area. So there's all those considerations. Even then, we can ask questions about accessible parking and things like that to get a more rounded view of what we need and then better equip ourselves for planning.

Stephanie: Thank you. Yeah, I've heard people have arguments for both sides. I think there's maybe a little bit of fear around asking or the right way to ask. So that's why I was curious.

Emma: Is there ever a time when you have to say no? It depends what it's for, really. I did a training session this morning, actually. That was one of the questions that was asked -- when can you say no? Again, it depends what that request is. There was an example this morning about an entrance that had been planned in an accessible way. There were accessible search lanes, but there had been a request for there to be a separate accessible entrance from an attendee. And they were like, "Can we say no?" I said, "You can, provided that you show your working out and go, 'We have done this. This is what we've planned. This is why. So actually, we won't be doing that for this reason.'" Providing we can show why we are saying no, that is okay within reason. Obviously, we're not going to just dismiss any accessible requests and go, "No, we're not making any adjustments." But if you've done planning and there's a reason why, that is okay as well.

Jeff: Because I see the airlines starting to do a little bit of that. I mean, there's a friend of mine -- she's a professor at a college and one of her students has a comfort snake and brings it to class. So, Emma, I have to ask, I'll put you on the spot. So if I want to bring my comfort snake to your event, am I going to be allowed to bring it?

Emma: Do you know what? For Commonwealth Games, obviously a lot of our staff were from different parts of the world, and I was working with an American guy that asked me that question. "What about if it's an assistance pony? What about this?" And I'm like, no way, in the UK, I'm not used to this! But it's going to be on my mind. And based on that, we then wrote policy and procedure around it. So usually we have assistance dogs in the UK, and there are certain accredited assistance dogs because it's a really difficult area sometimes. How do you say no to somebody? So we kind of worked with some of the major charities and organizations that do the accreditation to get guidance and then write policy. So people were more confident if somebody did appear with something, going, "I'm really sorry, we asked you to inform us beforehand so we could have that conversation not at the front gate, but also in advance." But yeah, I think that's going to become more prevalent. It's already not an issue, but there's confusion about when it's not a guide dog -- what are these animals and are they actually for a purpose? Because unfortunately, we do have people that take the Mickey.

Jeff: "Take the Mickey" -- I don't know. Is that an American phrase as well?

Emma: It translates. They're taking advantage of the situation.

Jeff: I'm going to start using that one. Take the Mickey. I've been to Disney and seen a lot of people take the Mickey. So I completely understand what you're saying. It's serious and kind of funny at the same time. But this can be tough for an organization. Because for us, like, if my daughter's at that event, she has a massive fear of snakes. So you've got to be careful about -- look, I'm going to accommodate one person and maybe create another issue for another. And so there's got to be a little bit of a line. And you're right, in most cases, service dogs are definitely very common compared to other types of accommodations that people want. So I think for all of our listeners to understand -- you don't have to say yes to everything. You've got to make your event accommodate the vast majority. And I think the outliers -- maybe it's best they do it online. That's what technology is for sometimes. Hey, look, if the event is not going to accommodate you, we're going to do our best, but if we can't get to some place that's going to be comfortable for you, then we'd love for you to join us online. We'll live-stream the event virtually for you and you can see it and participate and all of the great stuff.

Emma: In terms of assistance animals, I think that's where it's fantastic that we can ask questions beforehand, because we don't need to say no outright. We can get that information beforehand and have some of those delicate conversations and see if it's appropriate. And if it is, maybe you're right -- we're going to seat you here, or we're going to do this because we need to be considerate of our other guests. But yeah, absolutely, we can't be everything to everyone and we can't be scared of saying that sometimes. I see a lot of organizations where they try to do everything, but they do everything not 100% and not great. So everything's really mediocre across the board. You're like, just concentrate on doing one thing brilliantly and then let's go to the next project.

Jeff: So nail your accessible ticketing first, or your accessible marketing, and then we can look at the next step.

Stephanie: I like that -- kind of doing this in stages. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Make gradual progress over the years.

Emma: Yeah, and providing we're transparent, that's absolutely fine, because it is a journey. We have to keep on developing and evolving what we're doing anyway. So just be honest with people, so they can then, as you were saying, make an informed decision. "Actually, this event isn't appropriate for me right now. This is an alternative way I can be involved." Or it's giving disabled people that opportunity to make their own decision about an event.

Jeff: Right. You know, in my past life, I worked for a company where we had a technology product for deaf and hard of hearing people. And we were selling to all different kinds of organizations -- a lot of nonprofits, a lot of schools and universities, churches, things like that. And there was always a pushback about cost. And I think one of the things that I have noticed working in that space is -- if you're asking questions for your event and then you realize there's a specific tool or accommodation that has a cost associated with it, a lot of times if you let your sponsors know, like, "There's an opportunity to sponsor the sign language interpreter," people will jump on that.

Emma: That's a good point.

Jeff: Yeah. Your sponsors will jump on that. You've got to let them know that there's an opportunity. And especially corporate sponsors -- they really want to be associated with providing solutions for everybody.

Emma: That's great because not everybody's going to want to sponsor the alcohol or the food. But this is kind of a corporate-good thing.

Jeff: I agree. That's a great point. And so for anybody out there, if you're feeling like, hey, maybe we should explore some of these things -- because an ASL interpreter is not free -- that might be the way to do it. But there are some things that may not cost you anything extra. If you're already working with a video provider, it's worth exploring whether they can add captions. And in a lot of cases, it's not going to be considerably more money to do that. There are tools that do that anyway.

Emma: Yes.

Jeff: Anyway, well, this has been a great conversation. I think, for me at least, it's been super educational and just kind of thinking about all the different areas of the event from the beginning to the end -- getting people out the door at the end of the night and getting their auction items to the car and all the things you have to think about, especially for people who are impaired. Some of them are permanently impaired and some of them are probably temporarily impaired. But either way, help them to their cars for sure and just think about these things. And Emma, what parting advice do you have for any of our listeners who are planning their next event to think about as it relates to accessibility?

Emma: Don't forget your different client groups. That would be a key one. So think about your attendees, but don't forget your workforce, your volunteers. Everybody involved in that event -- their requirements are really important too, because without those people behind the scenes, your event's not going to happen. It's going to be a bit rubbish. So think about everybody. Provide as much information as you possibly can. It might feel silly to talk about the terrain. It might feel silly to say that it's an indoor venue and it's obvious it's an indoor venue, but these little bits of information can really build the picture for somebody to decide whether an event's for them. As we said, try not to accomplish too much in one go. Pick your little projects one at a time and nail them. Go for it. And don't be so worried to say no. Have confidence, do accessibility awareness training, build your knowledge, and you can't go wrong then.

Jeff: Awesome. Well, thank you again so much for imparting all of your wisdom with our audience here. It's been great. And so we wish all of you the best luck at your next event. We also encourage all of you to dig into how you can make your next event more accessible than it is today. And so until then, we're going to wrap this one up. Happy fundraising, everyone.

Jeff: Thank you for tuning in to this insightful episode, where we delved deep into the crucial topic of accessibility. A special thank you to Emma Ord, the esteemed Accessibility Specialist with Event Operations. If you enjoyed our show, please take a moment to leave us a review. You can find us on Apple, Google, and Spotify. Don't forget to subscribe for more great content. And if you're a fan of video, check us out on YouTube. Until next time, happy fundraising.