The Symposium aims to meaningfully include those who often experience exclusion at conferences, including:
- Attendees with visual, hearing, oral, cognitive, or motor impairments that affect how they interface with computers, pre-conference content, digital conference platforms, and/or in-person activities
- Attendees with caregiving responsibilities
- Attendees in different time zones
- Attendees without institutional support (i.e., funding)
To this end, we offer the following accommodations:
- American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters will be provided, as well as a quiet room and auto-captioning for all Zoom Events. To request any additional accommodations, including Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART), be sure to register by October 6, 2023. All ASL and CART requests must be made by October 6 for the October 19-21 events held at the University of Rhode Island. Registrants can make specific requests via the registration form and/or by emailing Katharine McDuffie.
- All virtual events will include live auto-captioning. Zoom Events will be used for virtual Symposium sessions and the keynote talks will be livestreamed on YouTube.
- Learn about the University of Rhode Island’s policy about service animals here. If you plan to bring a service animal to the URI campus, please indicate this in your registration.
- A quiet room will be available during the in-person Symposium events for those who need some quiet time. Please respect this intention when using the quiet room.
- All presenters are expected to make their presentations as accessible as possible. This includes presenter-provided closed captioning for pre-recorded presentations, verbal descriptions of images during recorded and live presentations, and a high-contrast color scheme for slides. For more information on how to make your presentation accessible, see the excellent guidance provided by Composing Access. Contact mcduffie@uri.edu to request a 2023 ISCS Presenter Guidance PDF.
- All keynote lectures will be recorded and archived on the Metcalf Institute YouTube channel.
- We are keeping ticket prices to a minimum and well below the true per person cost. If and when full support is secured for the Symposium, we will offer no-questions-asked fee waivers. We are not able to offer these waivers at this time, but those who wish to apply for a limited number of lodging or registration scholarships should complete this form by September 18.
- Virtual sessions will take place between 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. U.S. Eastern to accommodate attendees from a wide range of time zones.
- We will provide regular program breaks to allow for rest.
If you require additional accommodations that are not listed above, please contact Katharine McDuffie at least 2 weeks prior to your participation and no later than October 6.
*We have gratefully borrowed much of the language above from the guidance written by Dr. Lauren Cagle for the ARSTM@NCA 2020 Virtual Pre-Conference on Social Justice.