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NJ Climate Week
A practical, NJ-oriented checklist for making community climate events genuinely accessible.
An original guide for event hosts on this platform.
Before the event: choose a step-free venue, confirm accessible restrooms and parking, publish transit directions, offer an ASL/captioning request path with a realistic notice window, and write an accurate accessibility summary for your listing.
During the event: reserve seating near the front, keep aisles clear, use microphones even in small rooms, describe visuals aloud, and brief volunteers on where accessible facilities are.
After the event: ask one question about access in your feedback form and carry the answers into your next program.
Start with the venue: step-free entry, accessible toilets, and seating. Then plan interpretation and captioning before you publish, not on request. Finally, describe what you actually provide in the listing itself, so an attendee can decide without having to email and ask.
State step-free access, whether ASL interpretation or captioning is provided, transit and parking options, whether the event is free, and a contact for access requests. Saying nothing is read as no provision, so publish what you have even when it is partial.
Give a realistic notice window in your listing and set it from your own interpreter's availability rather than guessing. The practical failure is publishing a request path with a window too short for anyone to actually book, which reads as provision but is not.
Yes. Use a microphone even in small rooms. Rooms that feel fine to a speaker are frequently not fine for attendees using hearing aids or sitting toward the back, and the cost of using one anyway is nothing.
Confirm step-free entry, accessible toilets, and accessible parking, and get transit directions you can publish. Confirm these yourself rather than accepting a venue's general claim to be accessible, since that word covers a wide range in practice.
Say precisely what is and is not provided. Partial information lets someone decide for themselves; vague reassurance does not, and it costs attendees a wasted journey. Accuracy matters more than sounding fully equipped.
Brief volunteers on where accessible facilities are before doors open, so an attendee asking gets an answer rather than a search. Also keep aisles clear and reserve seating near the front.
Yes. Describing slides, charts, and demonstrations aloud makes the content usable for blind and low-vision attendees, and it also helps anyone seated where the screen is hard to see.
Ask one question about access in your post-event feedback form and carry the answers into the next programme. One question consistently asked and acted on beats a long survey nobody completes.
Yes. The Accessible Event Checklist for Hosts is an original guide published by NJ Climate Week and is free to use, including for events not listed on this platform.