World Con and accessibility (or lack thereof)

[sasha_feather]

As you probably know, I am one of a handful of people who run Access at WisCon. I've done this for a few years and learned a ton. Access initiatives at WisCon have largely been very successful and well-regarded.

Karen Moore recently went to WorldCon and was struck by the difference in the lack of accessibility there vs. at WisCon. She wrote us a letter to say so, and gave me permission to quote her letter in my blog. Excerpts from her letter follow:

----begin----

As difficult as it is to juggle 1,000 convention members through the Concourse Hotel’s [WisCon's event site] elevators, I have never seen a wheelchair or scooter user wait for 55 minutes to get onto an elevator at WisCon. I’ve seen that happen multiple times this weekend. It has never been necessary at WisCon to take one elevator to the ground floor, transfer to a second elevator to reach the below-ground floors, traverse a tunnel between two buildings to reach yet a third elevator in order to reach a different floor in the other building to go from one panel to the next. That is a frequent occurrence at WorldCon; in fact, one scooter user we spoke to had concluded that the best she could hope for was to be able to attend a panel in every other timeslot, because the lengthy waits at multiple elevators meant that it took her at least two full hours to navigate from one panel to the next one.

As much of a hurdle it was to move awareness of access into the forefront of people’s consciousness at WisCon, you achieved that very effectively, with announcements, signage, blue tape and multiple other means of communicating to the able-bodied that perhaps taking the stairs would not be a huge burden, and that it would be worthwhile to do so to free up elevator space for those who cannot move between floors in any other way. At WorldCon, there was nary a whisper of such messages, save for a brief blurb titled “Be Kind to your Wheel-Footed Friends” in the Saturday newsletter – and that was AFTER I buttonholed the con chair on Friday afternoon and gave him merry hell about it.

As challenging as it is to finagle a wheelchair/scooter parking spot in some of those oddly-shaped meeting rooms at the Concourse, you still manage to do so in every single one. There is absolutely NO awareness of the need for wheelie/scooter parking spaces at WorldCon. Wheelchair/scooter users are on their own to try to squeeze into space, move chairs around, and try to find a spot to settle.

And even though it is far from ideal for wheelchair/scooter users to have to use that little elevator to navigate the half-flight of stairs to reach the last two panel rooms on the first floor, at least there IS an elevator. There is at least one room in WorldCon’s venue that can ONLY be accessed if one can climb stairs, and they programmed events in that room in every single time slot of the entire con.

And finally, as much pushback as I know Access has gotten from within the committee over its mission, at least none of WisCon’s concom (that I know of) has ever seriously suggested developing an entire track of programming that doesn’t exist, located in a room that doesn’t exist, and then put the damn thing in the pocket program book, the online program and everywhere else. Evidently, someone in the WorldCon committee finds it immensely amusing to think of a convention member with no cartilage left in his hips struggling painfully down multiple escalators, across the tunnel, up more escalators, then searching through a maze of corridors for a program event, only to find a sign that essentially says “Ha, ha, gotcha, Sucker!” The con chair heard from me on that topic as well, by the way. His response? “Well, I’m sorry you don’t see the humor in it.”

-----end-------

WorldCon does have an accessibility department, but it sounds like it is not succeeding. It also sounds like, from this last paragraph, that the ConCom trolled its own membership.

I repost this here not to pick on WorldCon or to cause drama, but rather to say, here is a problem, at this covention and at others. What can we do to work on addressing this problem?

Initiatives at WisCon succeeded because of committed activists and allies. I suspect that each convention will need insiders on their con coms to bring initiatives forward-- that change will have to come from the inside.

At one convention that I won't name at present, I think that criticism around accessibility caused a very strong backlash, and that comparisons to WisCon only made the backlash worse. We were seen as condescending outsiders to their in group. My own perspective is that I have practical experience that I want to share, but, the criticism was not taken as constructive and relationships were damaged.

This is not my intention here. Better access improves things for everyone involved, and it is not as hard to implement as one might think.

Thoughts?

Comments

[elialshadowpine]

The problem is, what you think of as obvious may not be to others. I am not diagnosed but have a lot of Asperger's traits. That example of Ann VanderMeer, I would have interpreted as a sarcastic play on a common theme. I mean, if you list the place as something like Hogwart's, then people are probably going to get it, but there are people who will be confused, have to think about it, and then be really annoyed. It's not funny to a lot of us.

[elialshadowpine]

... I have been to cons that had legitimate programming scheduled for 2am. This would not be a clue to me.

[amberfox]

I'm somewhat nocturnal by preference. I would rather the programming run til 2am than start at 9am; I usually go to bed around 5am if I don't have a morning appointment.

Linked

[brainwane]

Just wanted to let you know I linked to this in a discussion of WorldCons and inclusivity. Thank you.

Re: Chicon's Stagg Field

[jackandahat]

OK, I'll admit - I can't actually see it on that map, on the West Tower the only text I see is "West Tower meeting rooms" and "Concourse between towers". But if it's on the map that people sore, that challenges even more of what the critics were saying.

Re: Chicon's Stagg Field

[amberfox]

On the stacked-level map, it's on the Bronze Level, second room from the back, between Wrigley and Soldier Field, and it looks like next to Gopher HQ.

Re: Chicon's Stagg Field

[jackandahat]

Ohh! I was looking at completely the wrong map, thanks for pointing it out. (I was looking at the smaller one.)

Wow. That's... the way people were going "People should have known!" I'd assumed that the room wasn't on the map. How the hell is someone who doesn't work there meant to be familiar with it to that degree? Even if I'd been in Soldier Field the day before, I'd assume I'd just missed Stagg Field at the time.

Re: Chicon's Stagg Field

[jackandahat]

Ignore my previous comment - Amberfox explained, I was on the wrong map. (I clicked the top one and scrolled to the bottom of that, my fault!)

Wow. Just, wow.

Re: Chicon's Stagg Field

[amberfox]

I give whatever credit there may be to a monitor large enough for NASA; it makes details larger, which is good for playing computer games.

Re: Chicon's Stagg Field

[jackandahat]

Nah, I was actually on the wrong map altogether - I missed that the "scroll to the bottom" was meant for the initial page, clicked on the link and then on the top map, and then scrolled. Which doesn't help because the top map has much less detail.

But the way people were talking, I thought it was going to be a case of "It's the second room on the 26th floor" (joke being the hotel only goes up to 25) or such. Not "Yes, it's marked on the map in a perfectly reasonable fashion, indistinguishable from all the other rooms that actually exist."

[neotoma]

the insiders know not to look for it

Which is a reason not to do it a WorldCon, because just how many people who aren't regulars are there? Especially for people who aren't native English speakers and unfamiliar with all the media to get that the names are for fictional characters, the locations reference English-language puns, etc?

not maliciously done by any means

Seriously, whether the intent was malicious or not doesn't matter here. That people were lost and struggled to find a place that didn't exist does. That they were told that their complaint about the fake track meant they had no sense of humor by the con chair does.

I might go to a WorldCon, but I have serious doubts that I want to go to a ChiCon.

Re: Linked

[sasha_feather]

Thanks brainwane, I appreciate it!

Absolutely appalled

[(Anonymous)]

Visiting from ML (due to brainwane's link), and I have to say I'm gobsmacked that in 2012, accessibility is still something so many places are doing wrong, or not doing at all. I am, at the moment, able-bodied, and it's been years since I was any kind of con (and the ones I attended were usually Star Trek-related), but via ML I'm finding out about more and different types.

And the idea that the "big dog" of the con world would think inconveniencing people (at minimum) with a fake program track is a joke? That they'd have a con that size in a hotel that sounds like it was designed by an architect who'd never seen anyone use a wheelchair, or maybe that the hotel company tromped on any more access-positive designs (probably due to costs)?

Bloody hell. I think part of the evaluation process for a con hotel/convention center ought to include "walkthroughs" of the venues by people using scooters or wheelchairs, at the very least, so that accessibility issues and any workarounds can be pointed out on the website as soon as possible.

Syd

[pedanther]

Of course it's possible for legitimate con programming to be scheduled at 2am. But on a day when, due to the daylight saving time change, there is no such thing as 2am?

[amberfox]

Does everyone know when it changes? I didn't until I worked through it; it never mattered until then.

[pedanther]

To be honest, I probably wouldn't myself without being reminded. FOGcon, according to the account above, did make a point of reminding attendees.

(I should say that I have not myself had anything to do with FOGcon, so I'm only going by the accounts above. FOGcon's joke seems to have been accompanied by some reasonable amount of effort to minimise the harm done, but I'm still dubious about the whole idea of fake program items in principle.)

[elialshadowpine]

I don't usually remember what day the time change is unless someone reminds me. I'm also not going to really be thinking of something like that at a con when I'm already in a lot of pain and exhausted, and unless someone outright says "daylight savings time", a mention of "time change" in a SF setting is probably also going to make me think of something SF-y in the first place.

[xiphias]

I noticed several years back that accessibility appears to have two parts: the physical makeup of the area, and the social and human ability to consider the issues.

A few years ago, Arisia in Boston was at a quirky Hyatt which is built something like a ziggaraut. It is gorgeous, and has quite a bit of charm, and is physically completely inappropriate for the kinds of traffic patters that a con has. And the place was NOT built with accessibility as a concern.

This caused major problems, of course. But fewer, and less serious, than at many other cons, because both the con runners and the hotel staff went out of their way to try to deal with the problems, both proactively and reactively. Actual thought went into how to mitigate the problems, actual resources went into trying to solve them.

The results weren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, and Arisia has since moved to a different hotel. But I was impressed by how much LESS serious the problems were than they might have been.

Re: Stagg Field track

[julieandrews]

I can think of some people who regularly go to Wiscon who'd be really good at a panel like that! They'd have to book it in the biggest room, I think. :)

[julieandrews]

That's a good idea. It would get other big cons (conventions AND conferences) to sit up and take notice.

Re: Stagg Field track

[jackandahat]

Yeah - all you need is someone who has knowledge on a particular subject and some acting skill, and with a pool of people that big that's not so hard to find.

or, be careful what you ask for ...

[paradoox]

Or, the court might just decide that since most cons (Dragcon may vary) are selling MEMBERSHIPS and the ADA explicitly excludes private groups not formed for the purpose of discrimination, that most cons are not subject to the ADA.

And then there is what "is" "reasonable".

Various cons have looked into this and decided that whether or not they are subject to the ADA they have a moral obligation to do the best job they can. But a court ruling might just make some cons do less.

Just saying ...

On the other hand, it would seem to me (and I'm not a lawyer) that the attendees would have a better time going after the hotels including the Dragoncon hotels.

[(Anonymous)]

^^^ This!

WisCon is held in a venue that is less than perfectly ideal for access needs. But WisCon's committee (the ENTIRE committee, not just the Access department) goes to extraordinary lengths to embrace access needs and implement changes in every facet of the convention, from registration to con suite to programming to hotel liaison work to publications. And the committee also provides near-continual reminders to the entire community in attendance throughout the con of the importance of respecting access needs, including "how to be a useful ally" information.

At least in my eyes, this is what raises a decently accessible event to an exceptional one. And there was absolutely none of that at WorldCon this year, despite the fact that the known deficiencies of the venue made it even more critical than it is at other events. That is the crux of my dismay (fury) with the WorldCon committee: as bad as their venue was for access, they didn't care enough about the percentage of their members who absolutely required access accommodations in order to fully experience the convention to do any kind of adjustments, or even to remind members to be supportive/helpful until they were reminded that it might be a good idea.

And in the year 2012, that is Just Plain Wrong.

Re: or, be careful what you ask for ...

[julieandrews]

The cons themselves could go after the hotels. But I suppose that'd be a good way to ruin your negotiations for future years.

[(Anonymous)]

The understanding i have is that it was not hotel worrying about damage to its walls, as people have noted there are ways around, but that age old problem in Chicago, union demarkation.

Apparently things (everything) that is afixed to any wall has to be afixed by a member of the carpenters union at union minimum rates. So signage that for most cons would cost cents each to produce and display would have costs tens if not hundreds of dollars each. The result very little convention signage.