36C3 Workshop

Accessibility and Inclusion

Hacking everyday communication practices to change the world

In this workshop, we aim to take a look at our own communication practices and how we can hack them to become more inclusive. There is a lot of potential to grow, both individually and collectively. We want to explore these possibilities.

Asking questions is at the core of the workshop! Why? Because if you want to help others, asking the right questions is much harder than finding good answers. Asking the right questions can make all the small, doable tasks and actions visible in whatever we do. So when the question arises: “Accessibility sounds great, but where do I start?” the answer in this workshop is: We start with ourselves!

There are many ways to approach accessibility and inclusion, and they are often framed as technical problems both in tech/hacker communities and beyond. We want to get away from finding technical solutions for social problems and look at inclusion and accessibility as part of everyday communication. Creating accessible spaces then is not about solving problems, but rather about optimizing planning processes in a way that allows to deal constructively with a wide range of potential problems.

Definitions

Accessiblity

Access is about physical needs. An accessible space or situation means the particularities of someone’s body (and mind) will be accommodated.

Inclusion

Being inclusive here means dealing responsibly and respectfully with all structural disadvantages a person or community might experience.

Diversity

Ideally a state where people of many different backgrounds can exist as equals. It is a circular idea in that diversity itself creates diversity.

What‘s the Goal?

SocialTech is an ongoing project to build resources and advocate for an integrated way to approach accessibility and inclusion.

The materials we are currently compiling are intended for workshops, trainings, and distribution in (h)activist and academic communities. We chose the workshop format because it provides a safe space to share our experiences, communicate difficulties and inspire each other with new ideas. We hope to incorporate as much of the input as possible and welcome any other comments, suggestions or thoughts.

The question document, currently called “Finding Useful Questions”, is free for everyone to use and is available on the project website.

The document is (and will be) published under a CC-BY licence.

What are your questions?

We are currently building a question-based toolkit for events, work and community organisation and inclusive communication.

Embracing as many viewpoints as possible, we invite you to share your experiences and would love to hear your questions!

In the following you will find 3 prompts, you can write as many responses as you want. If you klick the link below the prompt, it will open a new email that you can send to us. The prompt will be copied to the email for easier reference. Alternatively, this link will open an email with all of the prompts.