This email is part of a larger series on Running effective accessibility workshops.
Last week, I talked about what it takes to run effective accessibility workshops by going through the three stages: Create, Evaluate and Develop. In each stage, you are going to adopt different mindsets. You're first going to come up with lots and lots of ideas, then narrow down the list to the best ones and then think through this shortlist to come up with a plan of attack.
For each of these stages, the exercises that you're going to facilitate are different. So I'd like to go through each of the mindsets, rules and guidelines for the three stages in the next emails. I'll give an example of an exercise for each stage as well at the end of each email.
Let's start with the Create stage.
When you're creating ideas, you're not going to focus on any of the implications. No critical thinking is allowed. Quantity beats quality at this stage. Therefore, the exercises you can run with the workshop participants will have to focus on generating ideas quickly.
Creative thinking is best done in a group setting, where everyone participates. Unfortunately, a lot of the times, that means that the loudest voices drown out everyone else. This is because of the nature of this type of collaboration. If you're going to allow everyone to talk, it's inevitable that people will go off on tangents, adopt critical thinking and, let's face it, talk too much.
So in an effective accessibility workshop, especially in the creative stage, most talking is forbidden. You'll be working together, alone. It's kind of an oxymoron, and it'll be uncomfortable the first few times you try it. But it works!
Most of the exercises you'll run through in this stage will involve post-it notes. You'll likely go through a few steps:
- Participants individually write down on post-it notes thoughts and ideas related to a question.
- The post-it notes are all stuck somewhere where everyone can see them
- They're sorted into themes or categories and any duplicates are eliminated
Why are these steps important?
When you write things down instead of speaking them aloud, it's kind of like you're emptying your brain. By putting one idea per note, it allows you to reset your brain after each idea. The truth is, our thinking is most of the times muddy and disorganised. We can rarely think linearly and we instead jump from thought to thought. This process of writing one idea per note down allows you to do just that - but in writing.
Once you've emptied your brain, it's time to bring some order to your collective thoughts. You're going to use theming to disrupt linear thinking and look for patterns in all the ideas before you. One added benefit which will become more apparent once you go into the Evaluate stage is that once you start grouping things visually, you'll quickly start to see which theme is more popular.
In most exercises I run in this Create stage, I have just three rules:
- No talking is allowed
- The exercise is time-bound
- Always write down one idea per post-it note
And here's a quick workshop exercise you can try. It's called Four Shades of Access.
Here's how you play it.
- Time needed: 30 minutes to 1 hour
- Participants: 4 to 20
- Materials: Sticky notes and markers
You'll need to divide the whiteboard into four quadrants and draw a figure head in the middle. Put a title on the whiteboard "Web accessibility" and label each of the quadrants with "Things I know I know," "Things I know I don't know," "Things I don't know I know" and "Things I don't know I don't know."
Next, you, or the facilitator, should introduce the game by saying:
We're going to play a game called Four shades of access. The purpose of the game is to map out all the things we know about accessibility and discover where the gaps might be. We're playing this game because we want to understand where we stand with what we know about web accessibility.
And then start explaining the steps of the game:
- Start with the "Things I know I know" section. Write down one thing per post it note that you know you know about web accessibility. You'll have 5 minutes to write down as many things as you can. Stick all the notes in the quadrant labeled "Things I know I know."
- Next, continue with the "Things I know I don't know." What are some things you wished you knew about accessibility? Again, 5 minutes and stick all the notes in the correct quadrant.
- Next up is the "Things I don't know I know." Because this might be confusing, try to think of skills you have that you could use in web accessibility, or stories from your daily life that you think could relate to accessibility. 5 minutes.
- The last one is ""Things I don't know I don't know." How could you find out what you don't know you don't know? It's okay to write down questions rather than things on the notes. 5 minutes.
At the end, reconvene as a group and discuss some of the ideas and challenges on the post it notes.
All in all, depending on the number of participants, you could get away with 30 minutes, but this exercise can take an hour or more.
Next time
The next stage is the Evaluate stage. That has a different vibe to it so I'll see you next week.