Deliver an inclusive activity
Think about how you are meeting participants’ accessibility needs throughout your activity. Begin with inclusive introductions, set clear expectations, remind participants of the activity, check-in with people to see if you are meeting their accessibility needs, and thank and pay people with disability for their time. End with information about how to give feedback and what happens next.
Throughout your activity, think about how you are meeting accessibility needs so that all people can participate fully. Make sure to check-in directly with all participants to see their requirements are being met.
Make sure your activities will account for, reflect, and engage people with disability with diverse characteristics and life experiences. Even if your activity is for a specific cohort, a diverse group of people with disability within that cohort will support you to gather valuable information.
Inclusive activities share three features:
- They engage a diverse group of people.
- They provide a safe and supportive environment.
- Key information is made available to participants in advance.
You may need to consider people’s intersectional and/or life experiences. Some considerations are:
- age
- education
- ethnicity
- gender
- gender identity
- gender expression
- indigeneity
- language
- living arrangements
- location
- marital status
- race
- religion
- sexuality
- socioeconomic status.
At the start of your activity
Starting your activity well is a way to build trust. This is when you introduce the activity, clarify intent, set expectations, and provide additional information.
Follow this advice even if you included similar information in your recruitment communication, shared it when you prepared participants, or covered it in the materials you created.
Relevant pages
Plan: Give participants clear information in advance
Plan: Identify and attract participants
Plan: Create accessible materials
Tool: Housekeeping discussion guide
Guide: running inclusive meetings (Inclusion Australia)
Introductions
Introductions are essential for creating relationships and informing people about the activity.
Introducing your activity
Begin your activity by introducing and/or explaining:
- yourself, your team members, and/or your organisation
- the project and/or client (if applicable)
- the purpose and agenda for the activity
- how information will be used and stored
- any expectations for participation you may have
- how you will manage attribution, confidentiality, and retribution
- where participants may get additional information and help.
You should also:
- Provide similar information in advance.
- Give participants this information in accessible signage, presentations, and documentation during the activity.
Relevant pages
Plan: Give participants clear information in advance
Plan: Create accessible materials — print and digital documents
Plan: Create accessible materials — presentations
Tool: Expression of interest form template
How participants introduce themselves
You may need to collect information about the participants for several purposes, such as taking attendance, collecting relevant data, and contacting them in the future.
When asking for participant introductions, you should:
- Differentiate between required, optional, and excessive information. This varies depending on the project or activity type, its purpose, and the participants.
- Request this information in a way that respects participants’ rights, dignity, and agency.
- Ask participants how you and others can help them feel comfortable and work together well.
When asking participants for specific information in introductions, consider:
- What information is essential for this activity?
- How might you collect required and optional information in empowering ways from participants?
- Are you asking for information that is or could be seen as unnecessary?
- How will you save and store this information? Will it be de-identified?
- What will you do with this information at the end of the project? Where will you save it or how will you destroy it?
- How will you not cause harm to participants through this process?
- How are you creating trust with participants and encouraging them to build trust with each other?
- How are you ensuring safety throughout this activity?
Facilitated engagement example
To introduce yourselves in an online focus group, you and your team of organisers tell participants your names, your preferred pronouns, and the name of the First Nation or Country you are joining from. You then welcome participants to tell the group their names and any other information they are comfortable sharing.
You then run an ice-breaker, where participants describe themselves as their favourite animal or the animal they feel like today.
Unfacilitated engagement example
To obtain feedback from a participant group, you conduct a feedback survey, as if often requires less information than a research survey or census. You focus questions in the feedback survey on participants’ experiences, highlights, and any areas they identify for improvement. You ask, “is there anything we could do next time to better support you to participate?” You do not ask for gender identifiers, sex, pronouns, or medical information in the feedback survey.
After participants have introduced themselves, you should:
- Ensure you are prioritising participants’ rights and safety.
- Follow your organisation’s consent and privacy protocols.
- Decide what to do with this information – for example, whether to de-identify participants from their information for submissions, publications, and reporting.
Relevant pages
Design: Identify activity characteristics
Design: Follow ethical standards
Plan: Create accessible materials — forms and surveys
Follow up: Quote participants accurately
Follow up: Promote effective follow up
Provide the agreed compensation
You should aim to pay people with disability for their time, insight, and expertise.
- Provide participants with accessible information about when and how they can expect to be paid before and during the activity. Let participants know well in advance if you need any documents or information from them to support their payment.
- Once the activity is complete, pay participants promptly.
- If the activity is in person, provide the payment, compensation, or gift at the beginning of the activity.
- If you are unable to keep to the promised schedule, notify participants and follow through with payment as soon as possible.
Relevant pages
Design: Ensure participant payment
Set clear expectations
When you set expectations, people will know what to do and what happens next. Describe what will happen and how you will support people during your activity. You also need to clarify people’s different roles and keep the activity focused.
Explain how information in the activity will be used and be clear about the opportunities for people with disability to:
- contribute to the activity
- engage with each other if relevant.
Some questions for you to answer:
- What should participants keep in mind when they contribute?
- How many ways are you accepting contributions? How can you ensure they know their contributions are accepted?
- Are people allowed to share information from this activity afterwards? If there are restrictions, clarify when, how and why. For example, be clear about what type of information will stay confidential.
- How and when will you accept questions?
- Is there any language that you need to explain to participants?
For collaborative activities or those where there is more than one participant, consider explaining:
- when participants can let you know about any changes to their needs
- if there is anything participants can do to ensure the activity is accessible to others
- what simple words participants can use throughout the activity
- what abbreviations and terms participants should be made aware of and can use throughout the activity.
Clearly communicate any changes
If you have had any updates or changes in the project or activity that may impact participants, make them clear. State how you are managing or rectifying the changes. Give participants the choice and clear pathways to decide whether to continue with the activity after receiving this new information.
Communicate any changes in the activity:
- as part of your introduction
- by updating your participants’ pre-engagement communication.
Relevant pages
Plan: Give participants clear information in advance
Deliver: Manage changing responsibility between team members
Throughout your activity
Ensure participant safety
Good engagement will aim to do no harm. You should:
- Inform participants of the ways in which you will make them safe throughout the activity.
- Remind people of the multiple formats of support they can access as often as reasonable.
- Treat people with respect and dignity.
- Follow your organisation’s advice on how to prioritise people’s safety.
Some questions for you to answer:
- How will you be clear about any potential harm?
- How will you make people’s choices clear to them so they can do what is right for them?
- How will you address or minimise potential harm?
- When do you anticipate sensitive or troubling topics to come up? When and in what accessible way might you add content or trigger warnings?
- How are you building trust with participants?
- How are you ensuring safety throughout this activity?
- How are you communicating this to participants?
If possible, ask participants what they need from you to be, feel, and stay safe. To get some ideas from the participants, some questions for you to ask are:
- Will they be comfortable to do [this]?
- How can you help the participant do this safely?
- What can you do to help the participant to be safe?
- How can you make sure the participant feels safe?
Relevant pages
Design: Make participant experiences positive
Duty of care and dignity of risk – what does it mean? (Interchange WA)
Be flexible
You should adapt your activities if and as required and offer other ways for people with disability to contribute and participate fully. You should:
- Tell people you are open and willing to make changes to meet their accessibility requirements, then follow through.
- Give people with disability opportunities to discuss if their accessibility requirements change or if they feel you have met them well.
- Check-in on people throughout the activity to see if there is anything you can change to better suit their accessibility requirements.
- Consider any barriers people with disability may experience during your activity and any mitigations you can put in place.
Relevant pages
Design: Start by thinking about accessible design
Considerations for collaborative activities
When participants, including people with disability, must work together, you should:
- Respect participant privacy by not disclosing the participant’s personal information or detailing their accessibility needs. Focus on how participants can support one another.
- Let each participant choose to self-identify as a person with disability.
- Ask participants to be respectful and understanding of one another.
- Outline how participants may support and accommodate one another while respecting individual privacy.
- Discuss and work out ways to meet any competing accessibility needs.
Example
A city planner is holding a focus group about how to improve local parks. In their housekeeping and after breaks, they make three requests as reminders. First, that participants say their name before they make a point. Second, to speak slowly and clearly. Finally, they ask every participant to be mindful that other participants may use different actions to manage their behaviour and self-soothe. These may be voluntary or involuntary movements and sounds, such as tics and stimming. As such, everyone should remember to be kind and focus on the activities.
If there are competing access needs in a group, mention the access needs and ask participants to be understanding. This can be challenging.
Example
You are running an activity with a translator who is speaking at the same time as the main presenter. Participants who need a quiet room to hear may be distracted or disturbed by the translation. If they do not know why there are people speaking at the same time as the presenter, they may think the translator is a participant who is being disrespectful to the presenter or is disturbing their ability to participate in the session. This may cause the participants who require a translator to feel judged and unwelcome in the session.
By ensuring the whole group is aware of each other’s access needs, all the participants can be more understanding of each other. All the participants are now working together to support everyone.
Remind participants of the activity
To minimise mental strain and to support participants to stay focused on the activity:
- Give clear instructions and reminders.
- Allow participants to ask questions.
- Use various formats to communicate tasks and key instructions.
- Clarify your message by varying how you share instructions and reminders.
This may include presenting information in the following formats:
- Text:
- displayed in an accessible presentation
- on a handout or in a participant packet.
- Images, such as pictures or icons:
- next to text in an accessible presentation
- next to text on a handout or in a participant packet.
- Spoken:
- key instructions repeated at a regular intervals for everyone
- key instructions repeated to people or small teams during the activity.
Facilitated example
At a conference on invasive pest surveillance, a presenter completed a brief activity with the group. The instructions for the activity were part of the presenter’s speech, displayed on the projector, and were represented with icons on an information pack that participants had received 3 days prior. The presenter brought printed packs for those who preferred but did not bring a hard copy. The instructions remained displayed on the projector until the end of the activity.
When the presenter ran a similar activity the next year for a different cohort, they did not want to use digital tools at all. Instead of a full page of instructions, they had the information displayed on image cards on each table and on large posters across the room.
Unfacilitated example
In a survey, you provide instructions upfront to guide participants’ submission process, again at the start of different sections, and you include specific guidance information before key questions.
These reminders and guiding information are available through the online portal as well as in exported formats, such as Word and Excel.
Check in with participants
Help participants to communicate their needs, questions, and concerns as they emerge by regularly checking in with them. Be open and non-judgmental in your approach while supporting participants to identify and share any challenges honestly.
When to check in
From the beginning of the activity and throughout, ensure participants are aware of:
- the fact that support or help is available
- the type of support or help that is available
- from where or whom to get help or support.
How to offer support
If you notice a participant experiencing challenges, you may feel compelled to help. Be aware of how you offer support that continues respecting participants’ rights and experiences and does not introduce biased thinking.
Ask participants if they need your support before helping them. Find different ways to offer support. Always respect a participant’s choice to accept or decline your offer of help.
Only once a participant says yes should you ask them how you can help. Follow through and communicate the support you can provide. Only provide the help they have requested.
This may include asking outright or asking about their experience. There are some suggested phrases below.
Asking outright
- “Is there anything I can do to help you?”
- “May I offer you help?”
Asking about their experience
- “How is [this activity] going for you?”
- “How can I help you with [this activity]?"
- “How could [this activity] be better for you?”
You may also want to consider non-verbal methods for participants to ask for support. These could include raising hands or cards, moving to a designated space, using a bell or buzzer, or having a designated support facilitator they can approach.
In unfacilitated engagements, provide participants with methods to access support before and during the activity, such as in pre-engagement information or help boxes on the website.
Relevant pages
Plan: Give participants clear information in advance
Offering support in different ways
Inform participants of other support that they can access. It may also be helpful to have information readily available that participants can access without informing you or other project team members.
Some questions for you:
- Are there other people, teams, or professionals who can support them?
- Are there any relevant helplines, phone lines, links, or other resources that can support them?
- Are there ways for participants to let you know they need support privately?
Relevant pages
Tool: Quick guide for facilitating with people with disability example
At the end of the activity
Communicate the results of the activity or project and the way participants contributed. Always thank people, remind them of any remuneration you may be providing, and explain what to expect next.
Provide closing remarks
Depending on the activity, it may be appropriate for you to:
- Summarise the discussion.
- Give people a chance to share their reflections in a way that works for them.
- Tell people what you will do with this information.
- Share any other helpful information.
If possible, offer opportunities to contribute out of session. This may be through a mailbox, interviews, via email, and more.
Thank participants
Take the time to thank participants.
- Clarify the value you received from participants’ contributions.
- Show appreciation for the time, effort, energy, and resources participants invested in the activity. You may do this verbally, through text, using Auslan, and more.
- Share how participants may expect compensation or remuneration. This may include telling them what other information you may need from them to complete payment.
- Give participants a clear method and timeframe for when you will provide payment.
For unfacilitated activities, providing advice on forms and surveys page may help.
Relevant pages
Any more information
Provide detail on related activities and how participants can stay engaged, if relevant. You may consider:
- Providing opportunities for people to give feedback on the engagement process, including accessibility and inclusion.
- Creating public communication, such as a social media pages and posts or hosting in-person or virtual town halls or information sessions.
- Creating targeted communication, such as a mailing list. Ensure you have participants’ permission to be part of any mailing or communication lists.
- Inviting people with disability to analyse the information with you.
- Inviting people with disability to provide feedback through a variety of different channels.
If people with disability are not a part of future activities, clarifying the next steps shows how their contribution and work contributes to the broader project. Be prepared to receive feedback or additional considerations about future activities. This transparency may help you build trust.