Schedule activities

Allow enough time to plan, schedule, and arrange your activity.

Allow time during and after your activity for questions and debriefing. Put participants into groups carefully – consider who is present so that people with disability are comfortable and can access their accommodations easily. If participants are unable to physically attend for any reason, offer alternative participation formats like phone calls, surveys, or focus groups, as well as alternative submission options like text, video, drawings, and audio recordings.

Allow time to schedule your activity

Schedule activities well in advance. Scheduling 2-6 weeks ahead usually allows adequate time for participants to plan to attend, and for you to arrange accessibility accommodations.

Consider that different stakeholders will have different needs.

For participants:

Ensure any scheduling tools used are accessible and useable by participants.
Give ample notice so you or people with disability can arrange their transport and supports.
Provide options, where possible, so participants can choose activities that best suit them. Try to offer participants a range of dates, times, and methods of activity.
Allocate enough time for breaks for all participants to eat and manage the physical, mental, and emotional effort to participate.

For team members:

Allow time for reflection and debrief for facilitators and participants. This will help everyone involved to consider the delivery of the activity and allow for change if required.

Example

When designing a schedule for usability testing of a new toilet map application, your project team has 4 sessions every day for 2 weeks. They offer participants one-hour to 2-hour sessions with a 10-minute break every hour.

Your project team includes people with disability, and you facilitate in pairs. The facilitators use the break time to stretch, remove their hearing aids, and self-soothe. They then spend 15 minutes after each session reflecting on how it went.

In the first week, your team receives comments about the language you are using being confusing. You make small changes to their instructions to clarify the language of the task. You then start sending participants a copy of the instructions 3 days before and give them time to ask questions during the testing.

Relevant pages

Plan: Meet people’s accessibility needs

Plan: Give participants clear information in advance

Plan: Plan accessible in-person activities

Deliver: Check remote tools

Follow up: Use feedback to evaluate

Allow time for questions and debriefing

Allow time for reflection and debriefing for participants and for the organisers or facilitators of the activity. This will help all people involved to manage the physical, mental, and emotional effort required for the activity.

While the aim of an activity is not to trigger issues, it’s important to take a trauma-informed approach and provide time for both facilitators and participants to debrief with a person they trust. It is also important to ensure that people (both participants and facilitators) can access programs such as employee assistance programs and services and Mental Health First Aid training.

Relevant pages

Design: Make participant experiences positive

Mental health and wellbeing (Disability Gateway)

Guidelines for trauma informed practice: supporting people with disability who have experienced complex trauma (Blue Knot)

Group participants carefully – consider who is in the room

For activities that involve coordinating a common time for a group of people to come together, such as a focus group, you should:

Prioritise the needs of diverse people with disability.
Decide whether it is appropriate to group people with similar or different experiences together.
Make sure any grouping does not prevent or hinder full participation from all participants.

Example

Content warning: police, women’s safety

You are planning an online workshop about the safety of young women on campus. You do not want to separate people with and without disability. Instead, you consider whether there is greater benefit in having a mixed group or a similar group. At the beginning of the day, you want participants to discuss their concerns freely, so you make sure none of the on-campus police officers are present during those activities. For the main presentations, you group everyone together. For the smaller group activities, you make sure the two participants who need to be able to see the Auslan interpreter are in the same group.

You also need to consider the power dynamics in the group. Some participants may not feel comfortable providing open and honest feedback depending on who else is present. For example, if there is someone from or representing:

government organisations, such as Services Australia, child protection agencies, the NDIS and NDIS Local Area Coordinators
a disability service provider on whom the participant relies for any type of support
an advocacy group who does not share the same viewpoint or experience as the participant
an intelligence or enforcement officer or organisation such as the police
an authority figure.

Offer alternative participation methods

It is good practice to offer participants a range of ways to participate. Be gracious in the way you respond to participants’ situations and offer help.

Only offer participants alternative participation methods that you have the resources to facilitate.

There are many reasons a participant may be unable to participate in the planned activity; however, they may still want to provide input. Difficulties may include:

attending the scheduled activity due to time or location restraints
attending the scheduled activity due to unforeseen barriers, such as illness, emergencies, transport problems, or internet connectivity
affording the additional supports required to attend, from carers to transport
accessing the activity format
having to provide some or all input during the session, but preferring to provide it afterwards, perhaps in an alternative format or after checking it.

Some alternative participation methods include:

offering alternative participation formats like phone calls, surveys, or focus groups, as well as alternative submission options like text, video, drawing, and audio recordings
rescheduling the activity
scheduling an additional activity for the individual or a group; this could follow the same agenda or be adapted to the new setting/format/group
providing your contact information to participants so they can send input to you directly
creating a survey or submissions process to receive additional input
inviting participants to other scheduled events in the activity
providing financial assistance so the person is not left out-of-pocket after participating in the activity.

Ensure participants are aware of any alternative modes of submission that you can provide to them. Do this in your initial communication, during the activity, and in the activity follow up.