Episode 24- Accessibility and Timing
0-0:12 Orthotonics Accessible as Gravity plays and fades out
0:13 Hello and welcome to Accessagogy a podcast about accessibility and pedagogy. I’m your host Ann Gagné and this podcast is recorded on land covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and within land protected by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Agreement, which is the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples.
0:34 Welcome to episode twenty-four. In this episode, inspired by a message that I received from Rachael Lewitzky on a point that I made in Episode 22 about training opportunities, today I would like to focus on time. In particular I want to reflect on some time considerations that we need to put into our planning of events and workshops, also in terms of planning our day in an inclusive manner. How many of you have recently gotten to the end of your day and sort of thought to yourself, wow what happened?, that was ridiculous. Or how are you, how many of you are sort of like sitting in a meeting and there’s many folk that are physically present but you can tell they have nothing left to give to what is being discussed because this is their fifth meeting in a row. So this episode is about that and how we can conscientiously stop doing that to ourselves and our colleagues.
1:35 I will outline three things that will help support more inclusivity when we’re planning or timing our work. And I’m sure that there are many more things in relation to time that I could have considered here so please do feel free to engage with this and tell me what I have missed, because I’m sure we all have something to say about accessible time.
1:55 So, one, when planning an event, a workshop, a professional development opportunity, or even a meeting with a group of people in a working group think about when you are scheduling this meeting. I know a lot of people absolutely do not like 9 am on a Monday meetings because they need at least an hour or so to kinda get settled into their work week. Similarly 4 or 5pm on a Friday is probably almost guarantee that most folk will not be putting in the time that you would like into whatever is being discussed.
2:29 From an accessibility point of view what we see with these meetings and workshops and trainings being scheduled over the lunch hour as well, because everyone thinks that’s the best time and everybody should be available. But what happens is when we schedule things at lunch it is disrupts the time that folk already had planned for things like to unplug for example, or to eat, or nap even. Scheduling things at lunch can end up being a big accessibility issue for folk who need to take medications or support themselves in other ways, like maybe going outside for a bit.
3:07 Similarly scheduling things outside of traditional work hours can also cause issues with folk that have other responsibilities, so in particular care responsibilities of any kind. Often times pushing things towards an evening hour assumes a lived experience of the participants in a way that sort of self selects who’s going to be there.
3:31 Two, similarly there needs to be more of a conscientious effort to think about how each person’s schedule impacts their day and to have the leadership support of the kind of scheduling of meetings that allows for small breaks between those meetings so you don’t end up in the situations as I mentioned before, where you are in 9 am to 5 pm meetings back to back with no break. This is even worse if there’s a modality shift between the meetings where some are on campus and maybe some are online. And that transition time is so needed when you’re moving from one part of campus to another, or maybe setting up a device so folk can join online or in a hybrid format.
4:11 Many institutions or more often departments within institutions have tried to put in either a like “we start at 10 after the hour” rule for meetings or alternatively “meetings will always end at 10 to the hour.” That 10-minute break is needed for all the reasons that I mentioned above around the inaccessibility of scheduling things at lunch. Folk may need a bio break, they may need to get away from the screen for a bit, they may need to eat a snack or make a tea coffee grab a glass of water you know. Ultimately most institutions have some sort of 10 after or 10 to rule for class starting, mainly so that students can get from class to class, so what I’m saying here is like well why can that not be the same for meetings that we schedule in our institutions?
5:01 And finally three, let’s rethink what we mean about the assumptions that we make about how long it’ll take someone to do a particular task. I know that in most situations we’re really used to being paid or paying people by the hour and often letting learners know approximately how long we feel a task will take to get done. And yes it’s good to give some sort of proximity or even expectations around how long a particular thing could take. However, what I’ve started moving more towards is a task-based framing instead of time-based framing for the task. So what that looks like is for example charging per task as opposed to per hour for the task.
5:47 I say this because neurodivergent folk may have different ways of engaging in that task, whether it be an assignment for class, or an ask by someone in your department like I don’t know proofread or update a document, or even finding supporting resources for things. How long it takes someone to do this task is highly individualized and it will also be dependent on a ton of context. Is the person trying to balance other family or care responsibilities, did some kind of news just happen that may be preoccupying them and completely disrupted their flow with new asks?
6:21 Focusing on how long it should take something or someone to do something may lead to uncomfortable comparisons if it takes one person longer to complete a task than another. Each particular context of a time-based or task-based ask is of course going to be very different so you’ll probably going to need to adjust this conversation as necessary, but I’m mentioning this because I feel it is important that we start thinking about how we may be embedding neurotypical conceptualizations of productivity and time in our asks.
6:55 So that’s it, that’s episode 24 of Accessagogy, with a discussion of the time considerations that come into play when we are planning events, meetings, trainings, workshops or even asks.
7:07 Remember as well that I also want this to be a space where you can ask questions, like what Rachael did, and share concepts that you’d like me to discuss. So if there’s anything that I mentioned here, or other time considerations that I didn’t include in this list that you’d like me to talk about, please ask.
7:23 As always if you have any ideas or aspects of your pedagogy that you’d like me to address in this podcast, please feel free to send me an email at Accessagogy so that’s acc e ss a gogy at gmail dot com. I will try to include as many suggestions as possible in the podcast because ultimately, this podcast is for you. So that’s it, that’s episode 24 of Accessagogy, thanks so much for following along and asking how can I make my space more accessible today? Have a great week!