During the event

Treat an online event like you would a face to face meeting and think about areas which might create barriers to participation. For example, talking over people can be more common in online spaces due to lack of other communication cues. This is a particular barrier for women, who may already experience being interrupted when they want to contribute during face to face events.

Some things you might want to consider include:

• Have the facilitator be in control of muting and unmuting participants. This minimses the chance of speakers being interrupted;
• Be aware of unconscious bias and make sure the facilitator is taking contributions from a diverse range of attendees;
• You could consider asking people to indicate in advance if they want to speak on a particular topic or have questions. This can help facilitators ensure they pick a diverse range of contributors;
• Be aware of gender segregation of roles and challenge them. For example, women shouldn’t be always taking the minutes;
• Online meetings can be really tiring so make sure you think about access breaks;
• Some people might not want to have their video on and that should be respected. It might be that they are concerned about other people seeing inside their home, having the video on is distracting or that they are carrying out caring roles.

Speaking into a microphone during an online event can be intimidating. It can be more accessible to use a variety of ways for people to engage in the event. For example, you could think about:

• using chat functions for people to ask to questions;
• online polling or survey tools to explore the views of participants;
• breakout spaces to allow for more discussion in small groups;
• making it clear that it’s ok to attend the meeting and not directly participate.

If you are going use chat or text functions, it can be helpful to have several facilitators so that at least one person can act as a moderator to ensure you can respond to any inappropriate comments or offensive language. You should remind people about the ground rules at the beginning of the meeting, point them to your code of conduct and state any actions such as removing people which might happen as a consequence of poor behaviour.

If you need more help making your event inclusive, The Events, Activities and Elections section of the Equal Representation Toolkit has more information and guidance

Go back to the Online Activities homepage