Inclusive and welcoming events

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WordCampWordCamp A WordCamp is a conference where the WordPress community come together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. https://central.wordcamp.org/about/. organizers are expected to prioritize inclusion and diversity by creating a 100% welcoming atmosphere at WordCamp and actively recruiting diverse organizers, speakers, and volunteers. For people who are not sure how to meet this expectations, here are a few articles that we think might be helpful:

Planning resources: Planning resources:

Planning inclusive events

Women-friendly events

Recruiting women

Accessibility

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What NOT to do: What NOT to do:

Exceptionalism and condescension

Sexualized environments

Harassment (Even if you know not to harass people, it’s good to read through some examples of harassment incidents to understand how they happened. Most people don’t wake up in the morning and think, “I’m going to harass someone today!”)

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Requests for special accommodations: Requests for special accommodations:

Occasionally, an attendee will require that special accommodations be made so they can fully participate in WordCamp. This is usually brought to the organizing team’s attention when the person registers for WordCamp.

In the case of deaf or hard of hearing attendees, the organizing team should email the attendee to find out what kind of assistance they require. Some event teams provide CART services, while some arrange for sign language interpreters to accompany the attendee during the event.

If the attendee has a friend or friends who is willing to interpret for them, the volunteer interpreters should be given free tickets to the event. Interpreters who are hired through a service should also be given free tickets to the event so they can stay with the deaf or hard of hearing attendee throughout the event. If your WordCamp includes any official parties, mixers, networking events, etc, find out which “side events” the attendee plans to attend and arrange for interpreters to accompany the attendee for those hours as well. Be sure to post the ending time of all parties so that it’s clear when the “WordCamp portion” of the gathering is complete.

The global community team can help WordCamps with an additional accessibilitya11y Accessibility (https://a11yproject.com/). A11y is an acronym for accessibility. The 11 represents the 11 letters that were removed between the a and y to make accessibility shorter to write particularly on social media. grant to cover the expenses related to special accommodation requests if necessary.

If you need help or have questions about responding to a request for special accommodations, email support@wordcamp.org — members of the global community team have lots of experience with these requests. 🙂