Our goal is to allow as many people to participate in Skepticon goodness as safely and comfortably as we can manage. We will never be perfect, but we will keep learning and trying every year. We welcome your ideas on how to make Skepticon better. We challenge ourselves to improve with each event, so Skepticon 439 should be AMAZEBANANAS!
Here’s what we’ve got so far:
- Speaker guidelines for their presentations which will make them accessible to the greatest number of attendees.
- Conduct and harassment policies as guides to expected behavior from everyone at Skepticon.
- A live captioning service for all main stage presentations.
- Space at the conference is planned to minimize obstacles faced by people with mobility impairments.
- A quiet room for those in need of a break from the noise and the bustle.
- Communication preference badges for those who have a difficult time in maintaining their desired communication boundaries.
- All-gender restrooms with floor-to-ceiling stalls, off the main hallway.
- Red lanyards for those who do not feel safe having photos of them shared publicly.
For those where money is the biggest obstacle to attendance, we start by keeping Skepticon free. But beyond that, we maintain a food pantry stocked with donated food with the goal of ensuring that no one has to go hungry in order to attend.
And if travel to Skepticontown is impossible due to medical, physical, or money limitations, Skepticon can come to you! All main stage presentations are live-streamed, with captioning, and recordings of these presentations are made freely available online as soon as we are able after the event.
Lessons we’re working on for this year include:
- Improvements to signage to be clearer and more easily visible.
- A program which is more easily read, with greater information.
- A lighting scheme in Skeptiprom which is friendly to those with sensitivities to moving and flashing lights.
More detail is available on our policies page.
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