21 - Connecting with Your Team by Designing Meetings to Be Inclusive for Those with Disabilities

Background: The purpose of this poster is to highlight best practices for designing meetings to be inclusive for those with disabilities with the goal of eliminating barriers that inhibit maximized participation and collaboration. This poster will describe a case study of the process a Library Director took to evaluate the core team meeting format taking into account various barriers caused by disabilities as well as brainstorming solutions for minimizing and eliminating barriers for more focused and productive meetings. This poster will describe the various types of disabilities and how traditionally designed meetings pose barriers with solutions for improving processes.

Description: In the United States, 1 in 4 Americans have some type of disability. Chances are members of a library team have some type of disability, and may experience barriers to collaboration and participation in meetings. Traditional meeting formats typically rely on physical proximity and spontaneous conversation and collaboration. The World Health Organization defines disability in three types of dimensions. These dimensions are impairment, activity limitation, and participation restrictions. In 2020 the Library Director assessed the core team meeting format asking the following questions: 1. What is the goal of the core meeting? 2. What is expected of the participants? 3. What barriers can exist to prevent participants from meeting that goal? After answering the first two questions, the Library Director examined the meeting format by identifying current barriers that could be related to impairment, activity limitation, and participation restrictions.

Conclusion: After identifying the barriers, the Library Director brainstormed methods for increasing participation by minimizing or eliminating barriers. Solutions included transitioning all meetings to a virtual format with captions/transcripts enabled in web conferencing. Chat was encouraged and camera use was optional. Agendas were set by individual team members entering their items prior to the meeting in a collaborative document. Priority for agenda items would be items that should be shared by all team members and not just direct supervisors. Direct supervisor contacts would be in one on one meetings. Social conversations were moved to an optional social hour at another time. Team members commented that meetings were more focused and felt more productive leading to better communication for the whole team.