Hi.
My name is Amanda Lacy.
I am a phd student at Texas A&M University in the Sketch Recognition Lab.
Today I’ll be presenting on the emergent inclusion of remote meetings.
I have always been completely blind.
After graduating in-person from a large, crowded university and then working remotely, I became
interested in the dichotomy of virtual and in-person meetings.
The rapid shift to online that occurred in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic had
an immense impact on our society.
Remote work also changed my life.
The switch to virtual events instantly improved my quality of life and ability to function.
For instance, before 2020, being unable to drive limited my activities severely.
With the move to remote came new opportunities, and I was no longer limited by travel.
First, let’s discuss some background.
A lot of the traditional issues surrounding inclusivity and accessibility are associated
with compliance: institutional requirements for meeting certain standards, like the Americans
with Disabilities Act.
The move to online removed one of the big barriers to inclusion for some people, which
is physical travel, but even so, the ADA contains no explicit regulation for digital spaces.
And the adoption of remote work and learning still had a lot of barriers.
Some people who benefited from remote work still found it isolating.
Remote work from the before times and the rapid shift to everything being online are
two very different situations.
In this project, we wanted to collect specific feedback regarding inclusivity in virtual,
in-person, and hybrid spaces.
We conducted a two-phase study starting with a survey and then following up with one-on-one
interviews.
The survey introduction and questions invited the participants to think about the events
they attended most frequently, both virtual and in-person, and consider how well these
formats met their working, access, and social needs.
In total, we surveyed 104 people spanning a variety of ages, professions, and disabilities.
Of those, we followed up with 12 people for hour-long individual sessions over zoom.
For the survey, we used Likert scale questions as well as thematic analysis on the written
responses to get a quantitive understanding of our data.
Most participants said that in-person gatherings met their social needs well enough.
However, 40% of them said that virtual events did not meet their social needs well at all.
Notably, there was no significant difference in these responses based on whether they had
a disability.
When discussing freedom to move in their environments and access, we found a very interesting result.
In-person, those with no-disability reported feeling like they had slightly less control
than those with disability.
In the interviews, we learned this was due to the interpretation of the words in our
questions.
For example, those with no disability felt they were constrained in movement if they
couldn't grab a water bottle or eat food in a meeting without being distracting.
Conversely, those with a disability thought of issues related to being able to sit down
or stand up or leave the room to use the bathroom.
When it comes to virtual access, we found that those with disability and without reported
much the same results.
Again, access meant different things: those with no disability reported the limiting factors
to be that they couldn't hop in their car and drive somewhere; those with disability
were more concerned by having so many meetings from the same place and dealing with tech
issues.
Based on Chi-squared analysis, we found no disparate impacts between groups.
Of course, a solution where everyone is equally unhappy may not be the best one, but a solution
with no disparate impact is a good place to start for improvement.
Another interesting finding came when we considered people's perspectives on being social in-person
and willingness to turn on their cameras in virtual.
We found that comfort with in-person meetings increased with age and life experience, with
a strong statistical correlation of R = 0.9.
However, for virtual meetings, feelings of discomfort and self-consciousness generally
increased with age, but this trend was statistically not significant.
Generally, all age groups felt equally uncomfortable turning their cameras on.
Again, we consider the lack of disparate impacts as a good starting point.
The transition from in-person to virtual meetings also brought with it an increased number of
interruptions as well as connectivity and technological issues.
When participants mentioned the difficult to describe qualities of being physically
near someone, we coded this generally as "in-person energy".
This was the most common occurring code.
One of our participants worked in healthcare and reported the difficulty of trying to provide
care through remote sessions just due to the lack of body language.
This is one of the major problems people had with remote.
In academia for instance, professors reported missing the non-verbal feedback from their
students.
Social needs was probably the largest concern overall.
We believe this speaks strongly to the need for engaging interaction through video.
Research has shown the value of video and its role in sense of community.
From a policy standpoint, we believe the situation could be improved by encouraging more people
to use video in fun, engaging ways.
For instance, one of our student respondents said they felt video being on would cut into
the professor's space, but if they could have a customizable avatar to give them a greater
sense of control and fun, they would be more likely to use video.
I've had this experience in my own research meetings where we've played with video filters
to make video fun, and it works!
This could be a fun experiment within professional standards of course!
For tech issues, we believe software can help.
For example, Robert's Rules of Order are a well accepted way to manage meetings.
Software that could automatically manage speaker selection and times could reduce the perception
of awkward pauses and interruptions due to tech issues.
Likewise, a true anonymous chat, could facilitate richer interaction for students, who are sometimes
too shy to ask a question, even in-person.
Of course, this would need some moderation.
Some interviewees pointed out that in-person meetings can be overwhelming to the senses,
especially for people with sensory processing disabilities.
Most remote platforms cut out noise above a certain frequency and volume, and also display
the name of the current speaker.
These features sadly don't exist in real life.
An easy way to retain these benefits is to keep the virtual option for the people who
need it.
Technology such as sound-dampening materials, and practices such as saying one's name before
speaking, can also be combined for a better in-person experience for everyone.
In this paper, we've explored emergent inclusion which is another way of saying accessibility
that happened accidentally when people with various backgrounds were all forced to adapt
to a new situation at the same time.
I would like to thank our participants, and especially our interviewees, without whom
this work would not be possible.
Thank you for listening.