Facilitation,

Communication & Access

We seek to have a neurodivergence- and disability-welcoming way of communication, and actively seek to accommodate and balance access requirements of participants and facilitators/hosts. We continue to experiment with these, specifically by (collectively) learning more about and improving digital accessibility, so the guidelines change en route. We share updated guidelines at the start of each meeting and try to keep the list below updated too.

Find here some guidelines that will help intersectional neurodivergence & disability-welcoming meetings:

Guidelines for the use of Zoom

Download Zoom (https://zoom.us/) and make sure you update this regularly
Add your name and pronouns to your screen
Ideally log on with a headset (ear buds for a phone can work)
It's completely fine to keep your camera off. If you want to, turn on your camera.
Avoid background noise as this can impact others' ability to participate
If you can comfortably control the mute button, please keep yourself muted, until unmuted by the host or requested to be unmuted
If it is uncomfortable or not possible to control the mute button, please keep yourself unmuted, but be aware of background noise (and noise of the microphone)
There is no public chat function, but you can send messages to the facilitator (see below)

Modes of communication

The reading group uses two modes of communication for participants to contribute to the conversation:

Voice communication:
- The 'raise hands' method: on the bottom of your screen, select the 'Participants' tab and select 'Raise hand' . At times other methods will be used, see below. If you have difficulty participating this way, please get in touch so we can think together of other ways of participation that work for you.
- At the start of your contribution, please start with: "This is [insert name]". And when you're done, please end with: "End of thought." (See also below for alternatives.)
Written communication:

The public 'chat' function is disabled, as this makes the conversation inaccessible for those using screen readers and for some neurodivergent folk
You can still write your contributions. On the bottom of your screen, select the 'Chat' tab: here you can comment on the reading, comment on the conversation, ask a question etc. Then send this to the facilitator (i.e. 'host'). She will read the message aloud - something along the lines of: "This is Dyi for [insert name contributor]. '[Message]' End of writing."

Accessibility developments & communication guidelines

Over the years, we have had various voice and written conversations with people attending and wanting to attend about their access needs. Here are the things that we tried, abolished and incorporated:

There is automated captioning available. If this is not turned on when you arrive, please remind the facilitator to do so!

Contributing is not compulsory: if you don't want to contribute (write or speak), that's fine. If the facilitator calls your name, just say or write 'pass' - no judgment!

Introduction: You are very welcome to stay silent and not contribute throughout the meeting. At the start, though, we want to make sure everyone in the room also knows who is in the room. Specifically, as not all participants can see all other participants and/or their names. At the start, then, there is an introduction round. Thus, the only moment of required contribution (both speech and writing are fine!) is the introduction, so that everyone in the room knows who else is in the room. If the facilitator does not recognise your name/does not know yet who you are, she might ask you to identify yourself at the start only.

Listening-only list aka LOL: If you want to attend but do not want to be called on (and perhaps do not want to contribute through speech/writing either), then let the facilitator know when you arrive and you'll be added to the list. Of course, you can still contribute if you want to!

Some folks are not very comfortable participating in groups, reading groups, and might feel anxious or shy to contribute. To give space for more spontaneous and more structured communication, we now roughly use the following methods of verbal communication:
1. Raised hand method: use the 'raised hand' button (on Zoom) so that the facilitator knows you want to contribute. If you cannot navigate the 'raised hand' button, you can raise your actual hand.
2. Popcorn method: whoever feels the need to contribute, considering all the other guidelines, contributes (speaks or writes)
3. Cold call method: the facilitator asks someone (who is not on the listening-only list) whether they want to contribute
4. Queue method: the facilitator looks at the list of participants and, on their screen, calls out participants' names sequentially. The participant whose name is called...
  - ...speaks
  - ...says 'pass' if they don't want to speak
  - ...writes or has written something already to the host and the host will read their written contribution out loud
5. Other methods: we are developing new approaches to facilitate through online reading groups and events, so hopefully we can develop 'other methods' and add them here!

About talking & turn-taking: at times it is difficult or impossible to know who is talking, when someone finished talking, and when someone else can start talking. For this reason, we introduced the "This is [insert name]" and the "End of thought" communication indicators. It takes some practice, but we're getting used to it.

Contributing through writing: The chat-to-all function is disabled, because screen readers read out the public chat on Zoom while others are talking - so this did not work. An external chat document (Google Docs) was too 'multitasky', confusing, and the meeting became a bit scattered (as if there were two separate meetings). Now we have settled on the private chat function to the host. If you want to contribute through writing, which is a great way of communicating, you can send a message with your contribution to the facilitator ('host') through the chat (see also above on 'written communication'). She will then read it out loud for you.

We love incomplete thoughts! Many folks are concerned that their contributions are not 'complete thoughts', and inclusively that they cannot stop talking until the 'thought is complete' (whatever that means). We emphasise that it is completely fine to stop talking half sentence, to forgot what you wanted to say, to contribute non-linearly and associatively, and to be unsure what you say or think 'makes sense' and say it anyway. (Take note of the other guidelines, though.)
- A great development in the reading groups has been to not end with 'End of thought', but with, for example, 'End of ramble', 'End of half-thought', 'End of incomplete thought', ' End of speech/talk/writing', 'End of unfinished thought', or simply 'End of whatever that was'.

Forgot what you wanted to say / forgot your train of thought? All fine - happens to the facilitator all the time. Just say what comes up / what is alive there and then, or end with 'End of forgotten thought' - or something along these lines. Perhaps it bubbles up later!

If you rely on lip reading, the facilitator can summarise points in case someone's mouth is not visible on screen. Please let the facilitator know on the day so she can remember to do so!

If you have access needs that are not covered by the points above, then we'd be happy to have a chat with you to see how we can improve our facilitation and make other adjustments. We have no finances available, so these are unfortunately our restrictions.

Social justice considerations: accessibility is intersectional!

We find it very important that the meetings, which foreground neurodivergence and disability, are welcoming to neurodivergent and disabled folks. While there is a focus to all meetings the reading groups organise - in the RGs and spin-off events - we do not support a 'hierarchy of oppression' or 'Oppression Olympics' (see Dr Ange-Marie Hancock talk about what this means). What does this mean practically?

We actively invest in making the meetings welcoming to disabled and neurodivergent folks, and seek to support disabled and neurodivergent folks with accessing and contributing to the conversations
Equally, we invest in other social justices and actively invest in making meetings welcoming to otherwise marginalised folks - whether this is in the realm of e.g. race, gender, trans experiences, sexuality - and seek to support marginalised folks with accessing and contributing to the conversations (read more here about the ground rules).
We actively facilitate towards this

What can you do to support this?

If you are privileged (e.g. neurotypical, abled, white, male, cis), even when marginalised otherwise, check in with yourself regularly so that you do not inadvertently take up disproportionate time and space and, in doing so, reproduce inequalities.
You can educate yourself about privilege and learn from others how they manage and change how they act and interact.
You can make sure that you attend to the facilitator so that you pick up facilitation cues (see also below if this is difficult for you).

What can we do to support you to do this?

We recognise that not everyone knows how to change their own participation, for a variety of reasons. This is what we can offer:

If you have difficulty picking up facilitation or other cues, we can have a chat to agree on specific communication to enable you to do this.
We can have a conversation with you and provide suggestions how to do this. Do not hesitate to get in touch, if this is something that might help you.

What do we not do?

We do not support group dynamics unaligned with the ground rules.
We do not support folk refusing to take explicit facilitation messages or learn about them (see above), and/or do not want to (learn to) consider how their (relative) privilege impacts their and others' participation and group dynamics.