When you provide your audience with the knowledge they seek for, you strengthen their skillset and offer real-life value. But, this is not to say that it’s the only aspect to prioritize. You also need to focus on meeting the diverse needs of your audience, so that they feel included in your webinar and develop trust with your brand.
To maximize the impact of your webinar session, you need to create a welcoming and entirely accessible environment. In this blog, we will go over 15 strategies to create more inclusive webinars for your virtual audience.
1) Bring in a Diverse Set of Speakers:
Inclusive webinars require speakers who can represent diverse perspectives,
When diverse speakers, who share a greater understanding of a certain topic, join the session, the discussion becomes more insightful, leaving people feeling as if they’ve learned something truly valuable.
Choosing a variety of representative speakers for webinars not only enriches the learning experience for attendees but also contributes to a more balanced and inclusive session.
2) Choose an Inclusive Webinar Platform:
The platform on which you host your webinar is a crucial investment, as it can make or break the overall experience.
An inclusive session breaks down barriers, engages your audience, and gives them full access to the webinar content. And choosing the right webinar platform can help you realize all of these and more.
Make sure that your platform offers features like real-time captioning, live transcripts, keyboard accessibility, and screen reader support.
Also, check if the webinar platform is browser-friendly to ensure that people can attend the webinar via a browser like Chrome, Firefox, or Safari, without having to download any specific app or software.
While almost every system supports the English language, it is vital to ensure that your platform supports additional languages too, for clear and effective communication with global audiences.
3) Design Inclusive Presentation Slides:
To make your webinar content easily accessible and understandable, you need to design inclusive presentation slides.
Use best practices like choosing a font that is simple & easy to understand and using high-contrast colors, and adding headings, sub-headings & bullet points to streamline the readability of text on slides.
Having too much text on-screen is often difficult to read, so break down heavy text into smaller chunks. Additionally, show variety in your content. Add images, videos, and infographics to explain the points in an engaging and easily digestible way.
To create an inclusive webinar presentation slides, check out this comprehensive guide
4) Hold Pre-Webinar Activities:
Including your audience before the webinar is just as important as it is during the webinar. This is imperative in order to create a sense of community among the audience.
Consider sharing pre-webinar surveys to understand your audience preferences and potential accessibility requirements. Conduct question-and-answer sessions or run polls across multiple social media platforms.
To get your audience excited for the webinar, create short teasers related to the webinar topic and share them via personalized email. Additionally, provide them with instructional videos or infographics on how to join the webinar. If there is any technical problem during the session, share a short video tutorial on how to resolve it.
5) Provide a Live Captioning Option:
This is an important aspect of a webinar that helps you meet the various needs of the audience, maintain focus, and increase the retention of all attendees. By providing a visual representation of the words spoken during the presentation, you create a more inclusive and engaging experience for everyone.
Given that some webinar topics may be a bit too complex for some audience members, having the captions presented to them in real-time will help audiences focus on what is being taught and absorb it effectively. In addition, closed captioning ensures that webinars are accessible to everyone, including those with hearing impairments.
6) Share Webinar Material in Advance:
Another great way to make webinar attendees feel included is to share the event material ahead of time. Familiarizing attendees with the webinar topics ahead of time will increase their understanding of the topic, leading to increased participation in the live session.
Consider sending material like:
- Presentation slides
- White paper
- Case studies
- Relevant links to resources or tools
7) Target Inclusive Topics:
This strategy helps create more value for the participants, as it takes into account their needs and preferences. Conduct a survey to understand from audiences what topics they would like to learn more about. Choose the topic that is most requested and make sure that the topic is related to your brand and line of expertise.
For example, if you are hosting an SEO-related webinar, a relevant topic to add for discussion would be “White Hat SEO” or “Black Hat SEO”, depending on the audience’s preferences.
8) Appoint a Webinar Facilitator:
A facilitator, otherwise called the moderator, is someone who understands the objectives of the webinar and is responsible for overseeing every aspect of the live event.
A skilled event moderator will help make your webinar more inclusive. They coordinate with speakers, review the webinar content & suggest potential points to discuss, develop strategies to effectively engage participants, and also provide technical assistance to the audience, if needed, during the webinar.
9) Consider Multiple-Language Support:
Supporting more than one language can help your webinar multiply its reach. This opens up your content to a global audience, promoting a more inclusive event experience.
By hosting a webinar in the audience’s preferred language, you help attendees effortlessly absorb the content in their preferred language, which instills trust and respect in them towards your brand.
10) Have the Technical Team Ready For Support:
Make sure that a technical team is available and ready to resolve any technical issues that may come up during the live event. This ensures that the event goes smoothly, without disruptions.
Unstable internet connections, software errors, and audio or video issues are some of the common glitches that occur in online events. Having a specialized technical team that is capable of proactively resolving such obstacles, assures people that immediate assistance is available.
11) Welcome Your Audience:
Give your guests a heartfelt welcome that they will cherish. Show them how much their attendance means to you and your brand. It will help create a friendly atmosphere right from the beginning. Create a brief slide with the “welcome statement” or create an introductory video and present it to them using screen sharing to express your appreciation.
12) Have Multiple Engagement Options:
It is ideal to have multiple engagement options available, to increase the inclusiveness of your webinar. Live polls, Q&A sessions, chat, and breakout rooms are a few crucial engagement features that allow participants to participate proactively.
Such interactive tools encourage attendees to actively interact with the session and remain engaged in the learning process.
13) Record Webinar Session:
Typically, a live webinar takes place at a set time. When the live session ends, the webinar concludes and that is that. This format excludes those registrants who missed attending the event. Ideally, you want to extend the webinar access even to the non-attendees, to truly deliver value to those interested in the topic.
Recording the live session and sharing it with the non-attendees so they can watch it later on demand is a great way to do just that. This also allows session attendees to revisit sections of the webinar that they want to and note down key points from the session.
14) Thank Attendees Post-Webinar:
Take the time to thank your guests for attending your event. A sincere and heartfelt note of gratitude shows your appreciation for the time and effort attendees have devoted to you.
You host events, invite audiences, educate & engage with them, and facilitate the overall session. But disregarding the post-event thank you to attendees can make it look like you don’t value their time or contributions.
Send your ‘thank you’ message via e-mail as soon as possible, once the event concludes – i.e. within 24-48 hours of the event while it is fresh in everyone’s mind.
15) Gather Attendee Feedback:
Even if all the ‘inclusive webinar’ boxes are checked, there will still be some scope for improvement. And your participants are a great resource when it comes to receiving honest reviews. They can tell you about the entire experience in tremendous detail. Attendee feedback is the best source for understanding how your overall event went, what worked, what didn’t work, how accessible it was, etc.
To gather feedback from program participants, attach a brief feedback form to your follow-up email and encourage them to fill it out. This will help you identify errors and take appropriate action to ensure your next webinar is more inclusive.
Why Host Inclusive Webinars?
Hosting an inclusive webinar brings benefits to both the host and attendee. Let’s look at them:
- Broader Audience Reach: Your inclusive approach can attract a larger audience pool. When you add closed captioning and screen reader compatibility, you break down barriers and create a more inclusive and accessible experience for your audience.
Also, having a diverse range of speakers increases the visibility of your brand to individuals from different cultures. - Enhances Brand Image: Inclusive webinars play a vital role in improving brand image and establishing a good brand name among viewers. When webinar attendees feel that a welcoming and respectful environment has been created for them, they have a positive experience that builds a strong brand identity in their minds.
- Improves Attendee Learning Experience: Regardless of the purpose of hosting your webinar, whether it’s to educate attendees about a specific topic or engage them, inclusive webinars significantly enhance the learning experience.
By including resources such as subtitles, transcripts, and screen reader integration, you actually make learning easier for webinar attendees.
In addition, when you offer a multilingual option, you ensure that attendees from various cultural and linguistic backgrounds can fully understand the webinar’s content.
By optimizing elements such as the right contrast of color, unique font, and a clear visual hierarchy, you guarantee that all attendees can access webinar content with ease. - Boosts Engagement and Attendee Participation: Accessible virtual webinars mean increased involvement in the session. When you create an environment where attendees feel connected, they are more likely to engage with you.
Incorporating real-time interactive features such as live chat, polls, and Q&A sessions allows the audience to ask queries that they may have during the session and receive answers in real-time, which leads to a more enriching conversation.
Final Thoughts
The world is increasingly adopting a global approach in all aspects of business. Incorporating inclusivity as a part of your company culture, including your webinar marketing practices. Remember that diversity is essential to creating an inclusive virtual webinar session.
Implementing best practices such as selecting inclusive webinar software, assigning diverse speakers, designing inclusive presentations and more such approaches can help you make your event inclusive and accessible for all your audiences.
FAQs
Real-time captioning, live subtitles, screen reader capabilities, adjustable color contrast, multilingual support, and transcripts are needed to meet a webinar’s accessibility goals.
