Awesome FGC Gathering workshop list--and an accessibility fit.

 RantWoman would really, really, really love just to say check out this awesome list of workshops at this year's FGC Virtual Gathering.

Workshop Schedule

RantWoman especially also encourages Friends to pay attention to the 3 session in one day workshop opportunities on either end of the 5-day workshop options. RantWoman, for instance is really interested in the session on Quakers in China with Patrick Lozada

Now we come to the part where a single standard of RantWoman is causing RantWoman with a mix of care, tenderness and exasperation to need, hopefully gently, to elder the whole entire Religious Society of Friends about accessibility issues. Please, please do not take RantWoman's need to be RantWoman personally. This world is big enough for all of us and if we are lucky, RantWoman will manage to cultivate joy about sharing.

There is an accessibility page somewhere on the Gathering Site. RantWoman cannot find it just now. It talks about automated captioning and the availability of Spanish interpretation. It invites people to make their access needs known.

Automated captioning is highly imperfect. RantWoman foresees some community night business meeting skits where the recording clerk attempts to assemble sense from the automated captioning. Zoom help also has instructions for working with a human captioner; RantWoman has thought about differing scenarios where volunteer captioners might be a great help.

Back to the Workshops page, RantWoman finds the following.

All workshops will be held on video via Zoom. Some workshops leaders require participants to be able to see the Zoom video, but some workshop leaders have said participation by phone is ok, for those who don't have the ability to use Zoom and need to call in on a phone line. This is indicated in the workshop descriptions under "Audio-only participation". 

Suppose RantWoman can't see at all. Does it matter whether RantWoman participates over Zoom or by calling in?

RantWoman realizes that faceless participants deprive the sight-dependent of participants' facial expressions. Blind people, even the ones who live in two worlds because of, at one point having sight, cope with this all the time.

Suppose RantWoman can see some but for any number of reasons cannot interact with or cannot deal with screen share. Will documents to be screen shared be available as links or to download from the chat? Are presenters who want to screen share interested in suggestions about how to provide more useful narrative than "this one here and that one there?"

Hint: RantWoman is on lots of Zoom events where hardly any blind people even turn on our cameras. And RantWoman in perpetual accessibility pest mode often reminds blind people to turn on cameras in mixed meetings of blind and sighted people. Lots of sighted people rely on lipreading more than they realize.

Hint: RantWoman actually can see some, but RantWoman really likes conference calls because everyone is on the same footing visually.

PS For people who don't like moving their hands back and forth between mouse and keyboard, RantWoman knows or can point people to keyboard equivalents for things many people do with a mouse.

There.

Oops, wait. Lots of accessibility pointers and other practices not listed will be needed for all kinds of other Gathering events. Imagine some physically uncoordinated Quaker cheerleader chanting "you can do it. Friends., we can do it."

And one more thing RantWoman will check out: ebooks. RantWoman ain't buying print. RantWoman wonders whether there might also be interest in audio books. RantWoman is in no position to make promises, but perhaps if the idea is on the table, way will open.

Oops. Still not done.

People have really diverse accessibility needs. On one hand, RantWoman would say be open to continuing revelation.

On the other hand, it's not always and not all only about accessibility. Community, a sense of spiritual accompaniment also matter!