With many meetings/conferences/seminars & lectures moving to virtual platforms in 2020 these often create issues for hearing impaired ppl. A . Approx 1 in 6 ppl has a hearing impairment. The loss varies, aids help but do not correct, many lip read, some (not all) sign 1/9.

2/9 My hearing loss (since childhood) spans a slight loss in low frequencies to profound hearing loss in the highs, as shown. In simple terms, I cannot hear many consonants (which is what ppl recognise speech with), I recognise speech by vowels and heavily rely on lip reading.

3/9 I had a cochlear implant in my left ear 2 yrs ago, which improves my ability to recognise the highs but it is not (and never will be) perfect. 22 channels trying to mimic thousands of hair cells is a bit of an ask. Hearing aids amplify sound but cannot replace lost hair cells

4/9 For many hearing impaired ppl the key things in any presentation are: 1) a clear voice (accents can be difficult for us!) at a sufficient loudness (not soft, not shouting); 2) the ability to lip read the speaker; 3) slides that accurately describe the message being conveyed.

5/9 This is hard enough when meeting in person, online can pose additional difficulties. These include, but are not restricted to 1) a lapse in time between the voice & visual (if the speaker is able to be seen), 2) difficulty reading lips on smaller faces, 3) sound quality.

6/9 Providing closed captions makes these presentations much more accessible (& are also appreciated by ppl who are not native speakers of the language spoken). Many of the virtual platforms (Zoom, Webinex) do not have a free closed captions option available. Teams does & helps.

7/9 If you are organising a conference that will be accessible online afterwards pls consider having all presentations captioned prior to uploading them- a captioned & non-captioned version enables ppl to choose. I attended one such conference this yr & it was (& appreciated!)

8/9 If you are organising a live event, pls consider having someone caption live (if live captioning is not already provided). Not everyone signs & sign language varies in different countries. PowerPoint has live subtitles available (I have not seen that in action though).

9/9 If speaking, try & keep your head up and close enough to the camera to enable lip reading. These are my perspectives. Others are very welcome to add more in if I have missed anything. @DisabledStem @DisabledHighEd hopefully we can improve accessibility by promoting awareness.