Julia Santiago (00:00):

Start planning your events from the beginning with accessibility in mind. You need to build in accessibility at the get-go. And what does that look like? The expectation is that each individual planner will never have all that knowledge. So bring in the right people. If you start at the beginning and you start planning these different things along the way, I assure you it's seamless, and it's not overwhelming at all.

Alyssa Peltier (00:27):

Great events create great brands, but pulling off an event that engages, excites and connects audiences, well, that takes a village and we're that village. My name is Alyssa.

Rachel Andrews (00:39):

I'm Rachel.

Felicia Asiedu (00:40):

And I'm Felicia.

Alyssa Peltier (00:41):

And you are listening to Great Events, the podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators and innovators in the world of events and marketing.

Felicia Asiedu (00:53):

Welcome back to Great Events where we break down what is happening in the events world and how you can stay ahead. This episode is part of our recognition of Global Accessibility Awareness Month, a time to pause and ask, are we actually creating experiences that work for everyone? Because whether it's a massive industry conference, homecoming or digital product launch, accessibility should really be part of the blueprint and not an afterthought.

So today we are tackling the real talk around why accessibility is no longer optional, especially with new laws on the horizon. What's holding us back now, and how can you start building a more inclusive experience today? Not next year, not when you have time, but right now?

Joining me to talk about this are two amazing voices in the accessibility space, Julia Santiago, who leads the team behind the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, a major hub for accessibility innovation, and Stephen Cutchins, my good friend who I've been on the stage many times with, a global strategist helping organizations navigate accessibility compliance and get ahead of it before it becomes a problem. So let's get into it.

But first, Julia, Stephen, welcome.

Julia Santiago (02:08):

Great to be here.

Felicia Asiedu (02:09):

I'm so glad to have you because I could talk accessibility for a while, I tell you, but I'm not an expert. I'm just somebody who's like, come on, shouldn't we be doing this? So to have this great conversation, why don't you tell us a bit about yourselves? Julia, let's start with you.

Julia Santiago (02:24):

I'm Julia Santiago. I'm the managing director for the CSUN Center on Disabilities, and we are the hosts of the annual CSUN Assistive Technology Conference. Were often just known as CSUN, but not many people know what CSUN is. CSUN is actually California State University at Northridge. So we're in Los Angeles or the greater Los Angeles area, and we have hosted, as I said, the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, and this year we just celebrated our 40th. So we've been doing this for a little while now and definitely made a name for ourselves in the both assistive technology and accessibility fields.

And I'm certainly not an expert in either of those fields, but what I am quite knowledgeable in is making events accessible because we do offer or deliver this conference fully accessible as best as we can, and we usually see around four to 5,000 in attendance from the disability, accessibility, assistive technology field. So we span a pretty comprehensive event for both. We see users and professionals alike come together in this really wonderful forum that's really pushed the industry forward. In over 40 years, I can certainly say we're out in the greater LA area, but our reach is pretty broad. People in attendance from all over the globe, so we know that over the span of 40 years we have had pretty great impact. I'm happy to be here and talk a little bit more about it.

Felicia Asiedu (04:04):

That is impressive that there is a conference dedicated to assistive technology that's been around for 40 years. That is amazing. Fantastic. Stephen, before we leave you behind, tell our audience a little bit about you and what makes you the expert in this scenario.

Stephen Cutchins (04:20):

Well, I want to talk about the conference more. So I've been going there for 12 years was the first one. Some interesting things about the conference. First of all, you're looking at, you're in the exhibitor booth and you look up and there's Stevie Wonder, which truly happens. He's an attendee. He's playing with, trying out braille displays and he's eight feet away from me and he's there as an attendee. He needs these tools. So it's amazing. You're hit with white canes, you're walking down the hall and you have to stop because they're eight people, all service animals, all white canes or a dozen people doing sign language in the lobby. It's fantastic. I posted this once on LinkedIn, but it's like accessibility feels like you're pushing a boulder up a hill, and I've been doing it for 20 plus years. That's all I do. Every year I come back from CSUN. I'm like, "Okay, I'm good for another year. I can do it another year. I know why I am here."

I guess that segues into me. Yeah, full-time accessibility, I think it was about 22 years ago, I got very lucky. I was on a project for a state and local government in the United States. They had to figure out this ADA 508 accessibility thing. Nobody really on the project knew what it was. I locked into it and realized at the time, this isn't going anywhere. And there was another person that said, "Hey, we need to start this practice." And she and I started an accessibility practice. We called it Human Factors Practice, and 22 years now I've done it through a number of companies and that's what I do here. So I was brought on about three and a half years ago here to really create an accessibility practice.

It's my passion, it's what I do. I know Felicia, we've talked before. My mother was an amputee. I grew up with two cousins in wheelchairs, cerebral palsy. I have a Tourette syndrome neurological disorder. So it just clicked. This is important. This has helping people not like me so much, but people, my loved ones, my family, and yeah, thanks to conferences like that. This year we sponsored it. We had four people go. It was pretty fun. I got to speak. I've always wanted to speak. I was actually supposed to speak once and then Covid hit and my company wouldn't send me. So yeah, so I finally got to speak. So it's my favorite conference. Yeah, besides Cvent CONNECT.

Felicia Asiedu (06:21):

I was going to say, come on Stephen. So accessibility seems to be the new imperative for people. It definitely seems to be very top of mind right now, which is actually an amazing thing and I think it's testament to some of the work that's gone in. You've spoken about 40 years. Stephen, you just mentioned 12 years ago you went to the conference and you bring back something every year. I do think there is some effect happening now where people are hearing it, but why do you think it is just so top of mind right now?

Julia Santiago (06:51):

Why people are paying attention to this more? And there's a lot of reasons for it. Yes, we have these laws in place and a lot of them really apply to government entities or public entities. When we see involvement from large companies, it makes sense for them and their bottom line to really be more inclusive because you just have more people, more users, more consumers, but in a lot of reasons why people really, or companies I should say, really get into this space are lawsuits because they don't want to be liable for X, Y and Z because someone wasn't able to access or use something.

I don't think that's the reason why you should be making your events or products accessible. However, unfortunately, that's often the reason why people start down this path. But I hope that once they start down this path, they have learned quickly how much it opens up opportunities for them. Like I said, it increases your consumer base by a lot. Most people don't realize when you have an event or a product that's not accessible, how many consumers you're cutting off, right off the bat.

We're talking about maybe what 20% of the population that live with a disability that we're aware of. Think about all the ones that don't even identify with a disability. And there's a whole lot of people that would never say they have a disability, but can benefit from accessibility accommodations that we put in place. So, if you are truly inclusive and make your environments, make your products accessible, it opens the door to 20 plus percent of the population.

I tell you, if you are a welcoming environment, you don't have to be accessible right off the bat, but if you show that you are committed to this, oh my goodness, word travels pretty quickly. And so for us, it's been the best marketing tool that you could do. People come and as Stephen described our event that we have, we strive for the highest standard of accessibility and people return and they bring other people with them. It's a great just strategy for growing your group of people, your community, and also your bottom line.

Felicia Asiedu (09:28):

Phenomenal. I mean, the thing is I love how you've come around there. You're talking about fundamentally, lawsuits. You can't get away with doing this anymore, but it is a shame I think when I hear you say that, and Stephen, I want to ask you a little bit about that law. I think it is such a shame that we have to get to a point where wrists are slapped and then it's more than wrists. It's, we'll pull the seat out from under you because you need to do what you're supposed to be doing. So tell us more about those, as much as it, I don't know, is it a shame or is it good? How do you feel and what are those laws that are coming out?

Stephen Cutchins (10:00):

And Julia this is according to CDC, the last one was 26% of adults in the US identifying as having some form of a disability. And it could be minor 12% of men are color vision deficient. It could be that or it could be fully blind. So somebody who's colorblind is common term. Somebody who's colorblind, they can still go to your conference. They can still probably navigate through your website and register and pick sessions and use your mobile app. Somebody who's fully blind can't unless you really do the software engineering work. But yeah, so for lawsuits, I've noticed from the events industry especially, the biggest one is this ADA or Americans with Disabilities Act, it's US Law, ADA Title II, which is state and local government was update and sorry, it goes into effect April a year from now. By Law CSUN's website because you receive state and local funds, by law, has to be accessible to the web content Accessibility guidelines. I think they went 2.1, not 2.2, the most recent, but these web content accessibility guidelines have been out for decades. Still some people don't meet them.

State and local law now says state and local up to a certain size, state and local government and any organization that receives state and local funds, which means higher ed, non-profit. So now non-profit, higher ed do a lot of conferences, and right now they're nervous and luckily from Cvent software, we've been working on this for a few years, but they're the ones ringing my phone now the most. They're just nervous. They're not sure. We never really took this very seriously. We're a non-prof. We are not sure what to do. The good part is most of it's software, but outside of that, it doesn't say your conference has to be accessible. We try to give them guidance on what to do.

So yeah, the websites lets them go there. But at the conference there are certain things you need to do, and this is a little more your side of the pond, Felicia, but this is a big one, European Accessibility Act that says that all, starting June 28th, I mean I'm talking a month from now, all consumer-facing content has to be accessible to the web content accessibility guidelines, all of it. In European Union, that's massive, absolutely massive. What they say is either new or newly added content. So July 1st, if you publish a registration site and you publish your attendee hub or by law, it has to be accessible. For existing sites, it's June 28th, 2030, so they still have five more years. So for anybody out there who runs a company, your public website, if it doesn't change, you have five years. But for conferences that you're going to publish next year, by law now they have to be accessible European Union, and it's not just businesses within European Union, it's businesses that do business with.

So you're in the UK, I'm in the US, Julia, you decide to do CSUN in Italy, by law, your site has to be accessible. Actually, it's not just your site, your electronic content, which is pretty much registration site and your attendee hub and everything. That's huge. We don't even have that in the US yet outside of federal and state and local. So this is all, the term they use is consumer facing. So for you planners, your attendee facing stuff, and that's huge and they've specified fines. One of them was like a 900,000 euro fine. I think that was the Netherlands. It was insanely expensive. Again, you better really be doing the wrong thing and trying to pretend you're doing the right thing. Government regulators, whatever, say, "Oh, our site's fine, our site's fine." And they find out it's not and people couldn't use it. That would be a big deal. They're taking it real seriously, and I genuinely think it's coming to the US.

So, I mentioned that ADA or Americans with Disabilities Act, Titles II, the state local government, Title III is places of public accommodation. So businesses Title III doesn't specify the websites of these Target, Walmart or you come to Cvent in our headquarters, it's a building, so it's a place of public accommodation. So ADA covers the building, but it doesn't cover the web. So web didn't exist yet, so at least not in public form. So that hasn't stopped lawsuits. Virtually all of the lawsuits in the US and there's 4,500 last year, 5,400 or 4,500, it was a lot, are pretty much all on ADA Title III, which is interesting. It doesn't spell out web, but they're like the intent of it was non-discrimination. So we're going to allow the lawsuits to go through. Lots and lots of lawsuits in the US.

I'm curious to see how European Union, because US is just, we like our lawyers. I'm curious to see how this is going to play out in Europe now that the law says, yeah, you can sue people over this or sue businesses over this.

Julia Santiago (14:29):

They actually, with the original iteration of it all, the fines were much lower across the EU and then they decided that wasn't incentive for companies to actually do the work. So those fines actually dramatically increased across the board to really meet this goal of broad accessibility. And you're right, and accessibility is not just isolated to the US and Europe and the EU. It's truly happening around the world, but what is missing is this true global standard that is something that I think great minds in the industry are striving towards to have parity across the globe because it's creating the same sort of end product.

But yes, and for the ADA, it's not just isolated to web for the state and local governments. It's a lot of document accessibility as well. That's really important. And so yes, here at the university we are fast or quickly moving to even just making all courses accessible across the board. So it's quite an undertaking for sure.

Felicia Asiedu (15:51):

Yeah, like I said, to me it sounds like, oh, it's such a shame that it has to get to the point where the law is enforcing all of this, but is it a shame? It's a question that I will leave with our audience to decide. Maybe that is the forcing factor. But Julia, I want to pick up on something that you spoke about standardization and having a global standard. Some might say, "I just didn't know what to do. I didn't know where to start." What do you think is holding people back currently from just getting it done?

Julia Santiago (16:20):

Yeah, I can understand that it's intimidating. A lot of companies just stop short because they don't want to devote money towards that. On the flip side, once you make things accessible, as we said earlier, you're opening up a whole group of consumers that you never tapped into before. So it shouldn't stop anyone. It makes good business sense.

But when we're talking about in the events side, start planning your events from the beginning with accessibility in mind. Don't wait until you're almost week out from your event to start implementing accessibility because yeah, that's going to be a huge undertaking. It's going to be overwhelming. It should be number one when you start making your plans, planning. As a planner myself, I always know the first thing that we're going to do is we look at the timeline, but you need to build in accessibility at the get go.

And what does that look like? The expectation is that each individual planner will never have all that knowledge. So bring in the right people. If I need to figure out how we're going to best feed 5,000 people, who do we bring in? We bring in the catering staff, we have meetings with them. So start thinking about accessibility, especially if you're in the education field. Our university has a disability office. Start there. Engage those that are within your community. And if you don't have any, where are you holding this event?

There's regional centers, there's different organizations within the community that the event will take place. Start tapping in those resources well in advance. They can bring your resources to consider, to also just knowing who you're trying to attract to your event. But start small and then I promise you it takes off from there and it becomes its own animal. But if you start at the beginning and you start planning these different things along the way, I assure you it's seamless and it's not overwhelming at all.

Stephen Cutchins (18:26):

So one of the things you mentioned is asking, ask your attendees, planners are terrified of asking attendees, what accommodations do you need? I do know why. They think it's, in the US, it's called HIPAA, Health, whatever, it's Health Privacy Act, and they're afraid I'm breaking a HIPAA law if I ask somebody what accommodations they need.

First of all, it's not. You're not a medical office. Even if it's a medical conference, you're not a doctor. It's okay to ask someone, do you use a mobility device? Do you need captions? Do you need sign language interpreter? Will you be accompanied by service animal? It's okay to ask detailed questions. And then you can know, "Hey, they're in a wheelchair. What does that mean?" First of all, it means they can't squeeze through an aisle or the tables that are all the rounds are close together. They're going to need reserved space. They're going to need wider aisles. They don't reserve their space all the way in the back because that's not very dignified. All the wheelchair people to the back. You want them to be in, they don't necessarily need to be front row, but in the middle maybe and on an aisle.

People are afraid, planners are afraid to ask. When they start doing that, then they'll get more responses and then people will start coming. But in the US, there's a non-prof, I always forget the name of it. It's a non-prof in Chicago. Open Doors organization. They did a study of people with disabilities and travel habits over two years. In two years, people with disabilities spent $50 billion, billion with a B, on travel. That's 25 billion a year. They took 14 million hotel flights. If you're willing to say, "I'm going to give up every year, I'm going to close registration to 25 billion dollars worth of spend," that's so much money.

They're willing to travel, they're willing to take flights, they're willing to do overnight stays, but we as planners aren't entirely, not willing, knowledgeable. It is paralysis, but there's a certain term for it, but I don't know what to do, so I'm not going to do it. I don't even want to begin. And that's the beauty of conferences like the CSUN conference is, we're going to ask questions. Do you need a braille display?

Oh, my God. The one thing, Julia, you guys, I love it. You do for people with blind and low vision, on the first day of the conference in the morning, they give them a tour of the facility so they know the layout of the land. I mean, imagine if you're blind going to, and it's in the hotel, going to a hotel and trying to find where all the classes are and where to get your coffee, where to get breakfast, that can be pretty intimidating. They've never been there before. So they give a tour and it's great. And it makes people, when you see that in registration, do you need this tour for blind and low vision of the facility? I'm now comfortable coming and they're going to bring their 25 billion dollars a year with them. It's a staggering amount. And I've never heard a planner say, "Oh, I'm always full. We don't need any more registrants. We don't need any more money." Yeah, you do. And now you're opening it up to billions and billions of dollars a year.

Felicia Asiedu (21:18):

Let's get practical with that then. I mean, you've put that really fine point on it. Nobody wants to be losing money. And again, I'm coming back to this thought of, because of the law, you've got to make some changes because you don't want to lose money. You've got to make some changes. But fundamentally, let's just include people. I do wish that would be the starting point, but I think these business impacts are good enough reasons for planners and marketers to go to their financial officers and their CEOs and all the people that hold the purse strings and say, okay, here's a legal impact, A. Here's a financial impact, B. And maybe that might help them to have that baseline conversation. So that's really good advice. But let's give some practical pre-event, during event, post-event. What can we be doing? And I know Julia, on some of our calls, you were talking about designing for functionality, not for disability, and I know that's how you think about your conference. So tell us a little bit more about that and how planners can be practical and do that.

Julia Santiago (22:18):

I think we naturally, as an event planner myself, I always think about what would I want? And so sometimes you have to climb out of me, the me of it all, and it's really to have an understanding as to just broad functionality. I think, oh, wouldn't it'd be easy if we just had a mobile app and it popped up all these wonderful things, but guess what? That actually limits someone else. There's so many different layers that you really need to take into consideration that you can't just focus on one element because if your website's not accessible, guess what? They're not coming to your in-person events. So you may have made your in-person events super accessible, but how are you going to tell people that's accessible if your website isn't accessible? So they've stopped there.

Felicia Asiedu (23:14):

Yeah. Can we double-click on that with you, Stephen? I know that is your area about websites and registration. I really want planners to be like, okay, here's what I do. So what can they do?

Stephen Cutchins (23:26):

From a planner out there, before I talk about software, ask your attendees. I'm going to hammer that again. Ask your attendees what they need because if they're comfortable, then they'll come and you might get it wrong. It might not be perfect. Like you might, oh, I finally have people in wheelchairs and mobility devices coming to my conference. Well, I didn't realize that tall cocktail tables don't work for them. Next year I'll have lower tables. I'll have at least some lower tables. It's a mistake, but at least they're there and you can learn from them. They'll go, "Hey, how long does it take?" Two minutes go, "Oh my gosh, we should have had a lower table. Let me have somebody go grab one." Done. But getting them in the door and doing the due diligence, try to make it right in the first place is great. And then every year it can get better and better. Every conference.

From a software perspective, I like to say Cvent does the heavy lifting for our planners. Honestly, 95% of the electronic part, the website registration, it has to be on the software. You as a planner, you can't pick XYZ event software company and try to make it accessible if it's natively not, it's just probably not going to work unless you start doing heavy coding. So we've made it where keyboard focus and screen readers and braille displays and everything, just natively works.

Planners have to do really three things. They have to do image alt text. They have to do a proper heading structure, and they have to choose proper colors. That's kind of it. And like an attendee hub, we have this, I want to say newer feature. It's not so new now, but we will check colors for you. And if you have safe color mobile, we'll actually tweak colors a little bit to make a match. We make it optional. If you want to do like, "Hey, neon yellow is our branded color, we're only going to do neon yellow." Okay, then maybe you have to do black text. But if you have safe color mode on, and we'll tweak those colors to make it work. But if you pick the right software, there's not a whole lot you have to do.

Julia Santiago (25:15):

I'll add to that. I think number one, not everyone knows what they're looking for when it comes to accessibility, especially when we're talking about web and software. And as you're having these conversations with your vendors that you're looking to bring on, ask. Ask, have you had an accessibility review? There are a lot of companies that don't, and Stephen is correct. We do use Cvent and we've used Cvent for registration for many years, and this year we have expanded the different products that we used. And it's because Cvent has gone through accessibility reviews and even a single product, even though it's gone through an accessibility review, not all features are accessible, but you need to ask and find out what is and what isn't. We plan our event with only utilizing features that are accessible. We'll never pick a feature that isn't, but you need to determine what level of accessibility you're going to go down or use.

But first and foremost is gain that knowledge. Find out. Some companies are going to be like, "What? What's that? I don't know." And if that's the conversation that I'm having with a vendor, we're probably not going to go with them. However, you have to ask those questions. Find out are their products accessible? Do they have the report on what that accessibility is? Can someone explain it to you so you understand?

Oftentimes it's just high level software lingo that I personally don't even know. So my bottom line question is, what features are accessible? What aren't? What should I use? What shouldn't I use? Doesn't mean it rules out the product entirely, but I just need to know how do I tailor our use and what can we do to make this to ensure that this is accessible to all?

Stephen Cutchins (27:13):

That report, there's a thing called a VPAT. I know that's what you're talking about. The V-P-A-T, Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, mandate it for your vendors, preferably that they don't write it themselves. They're third party audited, like an accessibility firm. And at a prior company, I would help out procurement. I was in the CIO office. We would get VPATs where it was support, support, support supports. Julia, you know as well as I, everything is supports. And in another column it's called remarks and explanations and it's blank. They have no idea what they're talking about. So a VPAT that says, supports isn't always a good thing. It's, "Oh my god, Julia's going to spend this huge contract, quick fill it out and send it in and just put everything as supports."

Felicia Asiedu (27:55):

If it doesn't say supports, what are people looking for?

Stephen Cutchins (27:58):

Well, if it does say supports and everything in some of the guidelines, and it's based on those web content accessibility guidelines, like 1.1 is the first one, and then, oh, sorry, 1.1.1, 1.1.2, there's a row for every single one, and I should know the number 58 of them or something like that. If it says supports, that's great, but it'll say over it and we yet to do it by product. So like one for registration, one for passkey, one for attendee hub, one for the mobile app. It'll say the Cvent registration site enables planners to choose proper color contrast... And it's related to 1.1., well, 1.101's all text. But anyway, it's related to that. Hopefully you won't have any that say does not support, but you will have some of, we have them that say supports with exceptions, meaning it's not perfect. Color contrast might be bad on one of the native buttons, and it's not perfect.

You should be able to read it and realize it's accurate or say, "Hey, show me the defect." Prove that defect is actually logged. We use JIRA. Show me the defects from your defect tracking system. And they should be able to say, "Hey, give me an hour." They do, have quality pull a report and they show it to you. And Julia, I want to mention one thing that we, it was the mobile app. TPGI is the company that does our audits. We gave them a for test. It was a prerecorded event. It wasn't live. So at CSUN, somebody had a problem, posted it on chat, and we saw it and found the person and had them demo it with our test date. I think it was the way it was lazy loading. When it loaded a certain number of messages or something like that. It took a second to load.

Well, as a sighted user, I can see, it shows that it's loading. A blind user didn't hear that, so they thought the messages were whatever, it was done. Oh, is the scheduling. So they thought the scheduling had loaded, and they're like, well, it's not loading all the things. And I visually can see, oh, you just have to wait a second and the next 10, 20, whatever it was load. So we have to figure out a way to let users know that more are appearing because they thought it was broken. They just didn't know that when you scroll to the bottom, you have to wait a couple of seconds and then the rest of them load and then you can scroll more. And we were logging defects with our phones literally on the CSUN conference floor because we hadn't tested it in a way that it wasn't the real world, which actually goes back to also get more people with disabilities at your conferences.

Felicia Asiedu (30:19):

I love that idea of having more people trying to encourage more people with disabilities to come to your conference, letting them know. Similarly, with the LGBT community on things like Airbnb, they're like, we are friendly for you. Just being really in the marketing, we are accessible for you or we're trying to be, and we'd like to welcome you so that they will come, would be just a great thing for people to do, I think.

Julia Santiago (30:43):

From the get go, if you just have a statement on your web server that you're committed to accessibility, that alone is inviting. People know this is top of mind for you as well. You shouldn't wait until registration and you're asking a question for people to find out because as for us, we have to earn our attendees from the start, not halfway through the timeline because then you've lost them already. And you need to make sure you communicate to your community that, yeah, we're working to make this event accessible. Help us. If you have questions, if you have something that you want us to keep in mind, contact us here.

Stephen Cutchins (31:28):

Yeah, that's the important part that we're trying to make the event accessible. And here's an email address or phone number that goes a really long way to let people know, "Hey, we want to hear."

Felicia Asiedu (31:38):

Okay, so we have spoken about quite a few things. Stephen, it was a shameless plug, but we're going to make The Big Book of Accessibility available in this podcast. So if people are on our podcast page, they can definitely get that. I'm going to help our listeners with our final top three takeaways. If they were kind of dipping in and out of this podcast, everybody, listen, this is the moment you've been waiting for. What are the top three takeaways for our listeners?

Julia Santiago (32:03):

For me? Don't be afraid. For those who have little experience in this arena, you're afraid you're going to do something wrong. I think as often the number one thing, say the wrong thing, ask the wrong thing, do the wrong thing. And then that opens you up to more liability or more whatever, scrutiny or it's just going to blow up on you. And as event planners, we plan all scenarios, right? The worst case scenario to the best case scenario and everything in between.

It's okay to make mistakes. We don't get this right every year, but over 40 years, we may have honed in and perfected certain things. I promise you we make mistakes every year, but we strive to be better every single year. Every year we make sure post-event, we ask the questions of sometimes we don't really want to hear the answers to, but we ask them because we need to hear those answers. Where did we miss the mark? Because every year we want to improve. So that to me is number one. Just don't get in your own way in some of this stuff because it's that being uncomfortable that stops us from actually doing necessary work.

Felicia Asiedu (33:24):

Stephen, number two?

Stephen Cutchins (33:25):

Ask and act. I really want our planners to ask these questions and then act on it. If somebody says, "Look, I'm in a wheelchair and I'm accompanied by a service animal," and you don't know what to do, ask them. And it could be as simple as, "Okay, I need two reserve spaces." So I think ask and act. I think, don't forget about legal. Make sure the two big ones in the US it's ADA for state and local government, April of 2026, April of next year. And this European Accessibility Act is in a month, June 28th. So if you're launching June 28th, there on, any websites that are going to be used in European Union, whether or not you're based there in the US and the UK, it doesn't matter. If you're having an event posted a website and European Union, it has to be accessible by law starting June 28th this year. So, a month.

And the third is, please, for no other reason, it's the right thing to do. For me, it's a very personal thing. But all of that aside, there are people in the US alone who spend $25 billion a year on travel. If they're not coming to my conference, it's probably on me because they're willing to travel, they're willing to fly, they're willing to stay overnight. The average spend is $125 bucks a night average spend. They're willing to spend money, 14 million flights. And if they're not coming to my conference, it's not their fault, it's mine. So I want to open up those doors. And sometimes, it's like we talked about Julia, it's not that hard. You have to ask the questions, make sure the site's accessible, like read The Big Book for some tips, shameless flood, but it's not nearly as hard as people think.

Felicia Asiedu (35:01):

Julia anymore? I'll give you one more.

Julia Santiago (35:04):

Accessibility for all. Honestly, if you are going to have an inclusive event, it should be for everyone, not just for someone with a disability or the disability that you've defined. You don't want to just have an accommodation available. Make the event accessible in its entirety, have all gender bathrooms, have a quiet space that anyone can utilize. It doesn't have to be isolated to a blind user that needs specific accommodation or a deaf person that needs a specific accommodation. The event as a whole should be inclusive because then it's inviting to everyone. And honestly, that's one of my biggest things is you can make an event that everyone feels welcome and feels like they can be a part of. And it's when you just do isolated accommodations, you have not made a welcoming overall environment. And in some ways, a lot of people with disabilities, it should be equal for all, accessible for all. And so when you're doing a single accommodation, you're doing something different for one person. That's not the approach around accessibility.

And so when you're planning an event, I know this is very nebulous to say, but when you're approaching accessibility, you have to think of it as something that is standard for all, not special for one. So that's the mentality that if I can at least impart with everyone, is go in with that mentality and then you start exploring how you make individual accommodations, but you make it available to all.

Felicia Asiedu (36:59):

Amazing. Thank you so, so much. I love that that's where we landed, that it should be for everyone, accessibility for all. And I cannot thank both of you enough for imparting your wisdom from your experience to things that you are still learning and on that journey, which I absolutely love because nobody has got it sewn up. And I think being a bit fearless is what's needed so that everyone can just try. Just try and do your best. And that's all we can ask for.

So thank you so much and Stephen, for joining us. One quick question, Julia and Stephen, where can people find you? Are you on LinkedIn? Where can people find you if they want to connect?

Julia Santiago (37:39):

I always say, I am not the conference, so I'll always point people towards our conference. So you can always learn about the CSUN Assistive Technology at csunconference.org. So it's C-S-U-N conference.org. Love it.

Felicia Asiedu (37:57):

Thank you. And Stephen?

Stephen Cutchins (38:00):

Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. It's Stephen, S-T-E-P-H-E-N. Stephen Cutchins, C-U-T-C-H-I-N-S, stephencutchins1. I think it's Linkedin.com/stephencutchins1. I'm out there.

Felicia Asiedu (38:11):

Fantastic. So thank you so much and until next time, keep learning, keep planning, keep making great and accessible events. Thanks for joining.

Alyssa Peltier (38:24):

Thanks for hanging out with us on Great Events, A podcast by Cvent. If you've been enjoying our podcast, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

Rachel Andrews (38:34):

And you can help fellow event professionals and marketers just like you discover Great Events by leaving us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

Felicia Asiedu (38:44):

Stay connected with us on social media for behind-the-scenes content updates and some extra doses of inspiration.

Rachel Andrews (38:51):

Got a great story or an event to share? We want to hear from you. Find us on LinkedIn, send us a DM or drop us a note at greatevents@cvent.com.

Felicia Asiedu (39:01):

Big thanks to our amazing listeners, our guest speakers, and the incredible team behind the scenes. Remember, every great event begins with great people.

Alyssa Peltier (39:10):

And that's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep joining us as we redefine how to make events great.