Our goal is to make the conference as accessible as possible for both those who attend in-person and those who attend remotely. We hope that this information provides those participating with adequate information to help them plan their time with us at the conference.
The work of the RSECon26 committee is guided by our EDIA Chair (Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility) Chair and the Society’s extensive guidance and policies.
If you have any questions or notice anything missing, please contact us at [email protected].
Remote Attendance
All talks and workshops will be streamed on Zoom and will include AI subtitling. Recordings will be available to playback during and after the conference. We will work to manually review and update the subtitles after the conference.
Q&A in each session will be facilitated by an online platform and questions will be read out by the session chair.
If you need any additional help during the conference, please do ask one of the conference team via email [email protected] or the Slack channel (which will be created nearer the time and shared by email).
Physical Accessibility
The Wave, University of Sheffield (2 Whitham Road, Sheffield, S10 2AH) is fully accessible for wheelchair users and provides step-free access throughout the venue.
Detailed accessibility information can be found on the AccessAble website.
Facilities
| Facility | Details |
|---|---|
| Lifts | Three lifts, one near each entrance and a third near the rear of the building |
| Toilets | Accessible toilets on ground and first floor. Gender neutral bathrooms on both floors |
| Drinking water | Available on the ground floor |
| Baby changing | Located next to the accessible toilets near reception on the ground floor |
| Breastfeeding | Baby changing room on the ground floor, or changing rooms near Lecture Hall #3 |
Quiet and Prayer Space
There will be a dedicated space for use by all conference delegates for:
- Anyone who needs a rest or quietness when feeling overwhelmed
- Those needing a prayer room
- Anyone struggling with menstruation or menopause symptoms
Please be respectful and considerate to all users. Please note that this space will not be for taking phone/video calls. We will update this webpage with the location.
There are also a pair of dedicated prayer rooms located on the ground floor behind reception.
Parking
There is limited street parking near the venue. There are several public parking garages that are a 5-10 minute walk from the building.
There is a small car park at the rear of the building reserved for Blue Badge holders and others with accessibility needs. In order to arrange parking here, please email [email protected].
During the Conference
Please feel welcome to wear or use any accessibility aids including headphones, tinted glasses, ear plugs or other aids. We hope to help you feel like you can participate at your best throughout the conference.
If you need any additional help during the conference, please do ask one of the conference team (wearing identifiable RSE t-shirts) who will do their best to help you.
Social events
Details will be added once the event locations have been confirmed.
Guidelines for Presenters
Our guiding principle is to make materials related to the conference such as any presentations, documents, posters, code, tools (hereafter simply called conference-related material) accessible to as broad an audience as possible, while respecting the rights to ownership and to privacy. Since, at times, the two requirements can be difficult to reconcile with the limited resources that we have, we expect the stakeholders to strive towards increasing accessibility for all by following the guidelines below while maintaining an optimal level of privacy as covered by our Code of Conduct.
Here are some tips to help those putting together presentations
- Colour and Font Choices. Using suitably large and legible fonts and checking for colour choices so that the figures are understandable for people who have dyslexia or colour deficient vision is a great way to start your design process. Need a place to start? Try this Microsoft template.
- Annotation. It would be excellent if all figures in the conference-related material, especially documents and presentations, could be annotated before being publicly released. Most modern office suites and document layout engines can help with that, however, if you need some further guidance these links can help you get started:
- Annotating slides in PowerPoint (Oxford Mathematics IT guide)
- Annotating Google Slides (YouTube video)
- How to write alt text and image descriptions (Perkins eLearning)
- Documentation. Having a proper layout and structure makes it easier for all to read and understand papers and presentation documentation. This guide to creating accessible documents from AbilityNet is an excellent place to start.
- Creative Commons License. Whenever possible we make our conference-related material publicly available under a CC-BY licence. Visit the Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 licence page to learn more.
- Contact Details. For this event we request the presenter(s) of any conference-related material to leave appropriate contact details within the material so that they may be sent queries by members of the audience.