Accessibility Guidelines

by | Oct 29, 2025 | WiG conference

(Updated May 2024)

Introduction

The Coalition of Women in German (WiG) is an organization that strives to be accessible to all its members and participants. As such, we encourage everyone involved in WiG-sponsored panels and presentations to take steps to make their presentations as accessible as possible. This document provides some guidelines and advice to build accessibility into the panel and conference planning process, which will help people who identify as having disabilities as well as those who do not so identify. Note that these guidelines are a working document, and if you notice items or ideas that should be included but aren’t, please contact the WiG Presidential team with your suggestions (president@womeningerman.org).

The WiG Mission Statement

The Coalition of Women in German (WiG) provides a democratic forum for all people interested in feminist approaches to German literature and culture or in the intersection of gender with other categories of analysis such as sexuality, class, race, and ethnicity. Through its annual conference, panels at national professional meetings, and through the publication of Feminist German Studies, the organization promotes feminist scholarship of outstanding quality. Women in German is committed to making school and college curricula inclusive and seeks to create bridges, cross boundaries, nurture aspiration, and challenge assumptions while exercising critical self-awareness. Women in German is dedicated to eradicating discrimination in the classroom and in the teaching profession at all levels.

Guidelines for Presenters

Make your presentation or workshop as accessible as possible.

The following guidelines, adapted from the MLA Access Guidelines, are the most essential components of an accessible presentation.

  • Speak clearly, distinctly, and slowly, and always use a microphone when possible.
  • Speak with your face turned towards the audience and from a lighted area so that your lips are visible.
  • When questions are posed by a member of the audience, repeat the question before answering it, particularly if the questioner does not have access to a microphone.
  • Briefly describe any images that you project that are necessary for understanding your presentation.
  • Powerpoint slides should have text in a sans serif font of at least 36 point. 
  • Panelists should provide a digital large-print copy (at least 16 point) of their paper to submit to the conference digital repository.
  • Panelists should provide a digital large-print copy of their slides to submit to the digital repository.
  • Any video clips included in the presentation should include captioning, if at all possible.
  • Provide accessible color contrast when designing your slides. The contrast between the text and the background should be at least 4.5:1 for small text and 3.1 for large text. You can use the WebAIM Contrast Checker to ensure that your color palette meets ADA standards.

Please refer to the “Additional Resources and References” section below for further information and details.

Guidelines for Panel Organizers

Make your panel as accessible as possible.

We encourage you to discuss accessibility with your panelists and make a plan before the conference. Please make sure your panelists know about these accessibility guidelines and have plans to follow them, and please remind your panelists of the following essentials–and follow them yourself!

  • Begin each panel with a QR code or link to the conference digital repository of materials so that attendees can access large-print versions of papers and slides.
  • Everyone should use a microphone while speaking, and remind your presenters to speak clearly and slowly enough that they can be easily understood.
  • When you are facilitating a discussion, please repeat the question that was posed if the questioner has not used a microphone. 
  • Remind your presenters of these important items:
    • Powerpoint slides should have text in a sans serif font of at least 36pt. 
    • Panelists should provide at least two large-print copies (at least 16pt.) of their paper.
    • Panelists should provide at least two large-print copies of their slides.
    • Any video clips included in the presentation should include captioning, if at all possible.

The WiG Steering Committee highly recommends that you gather the requisite documents, such as the large-print versions of slides and presentations, in advance to upload to the digital conference repository for easy and timely access.

Guidelines for Conference Organizers (in person)

Help us all make the WiG conferences as accessible as possible.

WiG appreciates all your volunteer labor in organizing the conference! We ask that you please also attend to accessibility during your planning process. Below are some tips that have been collected by past conference organizers and attendees.

  • Have mics available in every conference room and ensure that everyone uses a mic for presenting and for posing questions.
  • Make sure all rooms have enough space for wheelchair users to access the tables and seats.
  • Please use chairs without armrests to make the seating more accessible for people of all shapes and sizes.
  • Consider working with panel organizers to set up live captioning using something like otter.ai
  • As much as we love music, please don’t play music during the breaks in the conference so that all people can hear conversations.
  • Each conference should include a digital repository to share large-print papers and copies of the slides. If possible, it would be great to have the ability to print paper versions of these documents on demand.
  • Make sure the conference hotel has accessible rooms and that travel between conference venues is accessible.
  • The WiG SC recommends consulting with your home institution’s accessibility services as you plan the conference. They might be able to make suggestions for incorporating Universal Design into the conference planning and execution.

Guidelines for Conference Organizers (online)

Make the online conference experience an accessible one.

Again, WiG appreciates the work you invest in conference organizing and asks that you attend to accessibility as it is relevant to the online environment. In addition to any relevant guidelines listed above, online conference organizers should consider:

  • Selecting online conference platforms that are ADA compliant and that build accessibility into the design.
  • Ensuring that any platform, including video conferencing programs such as zoom, include a captioning function that is enabled for any audience member to turn on.
  • Ensuring that any documentation can be shared with the audience easily.
  • Encouraging panelists to turn off screen sharing during discussions so that audience members can see who is speaking.

Additional Resources and References

“Access Guidelines for MLA Convention Session Organizers and Presenters” (MLA)

“Toward a More Accessible Conference Presentation” by Jason S. Farr and Travis Chi Wing Lau (MLA Profession)

“WebAIM Color Checker”

Update on the WiG Conference 2020

by | Jun 1, 2020 | WiG conference

Dear WiG members, conference panel organizers, and participants,

At a recent leadership meeting attended by the Steering Committee, the presidential team, the conference organizers, and other officers and former officers of the organization, we voted unanimously to hold a virtual conference in fall 2020 in lieu of our traditional in-person conference. Given that many participants travel great distances to attend the conference; that many of our members have pre-existing health conditions or are caregivers for people with pre-existing health conditions; and that many have lost access to conference funding and/or work or attend universities with significant travel restrictions, we believe this to be the only safe and responsible option. Making this difficult decision now will allow us to plan the best conference possible in this format.

We will be reaching out to panel organizers and participants today to ask for their input on if and how they wish to run their sessions online. We will also be exploring options to host a small in-person component of the conference for local attendees in driving distance of Sewanee, if this is determined to be safe and feasible. Once we have received all feedback, we will then begin creating a revised conference schedule. We plan to have all scheduling information available by the end of July with conference registration to open by August 1.

Although conference registration and WiG membership will be required to attend the majority of conference events, the registration fee will be much reduced from previous years and scaled depending on one’s income level in order to encourage as much participation as possible, particularly from those in precarious or underpaid positions. We also plan to allow members to donate conference registration fees to cover the costs for graduate student and contingent faculty participation. More information regarding fees will be available once we have a better sense of how many participants we will have.

To that end, we are asking everyone who is not presenting on or organizing a panel and who does not hold a leadership position in the organization to please fill out this two-question attendance survey that will help us get a rough estimate of participants and thus allow us to determine registration fees. One positive effect of hosting the conference virtually is that many members who were previously not planning on attending due to cost of travel or prevalence of fall conferences may be able to join us. We welcome all to attend!

If you have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Sincerely,

The Ad Hoc Virtual Conference Committee

Liesl Allingham, Regine Schwarzmeier, Maria Stehle, Faye Stewart, Helga Thorson, Didem Uca

This year’s WiG guest in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung

by | Apr 27, 2018 | WiG conference

Reyhan Sahin on antisemitism in German rap:

Im Deutschrap wurden antisemitische Inhalte erst mit dem Aufstieg von Rappern wie Bushido und Haftbefehl, also seit etwa zehn Jahren, sichtbar. Kool Savaş, seit den 1990ern Pionier des Battle-Rap in Deutschland, rappt zwar trans-, homo- und frauenfeindlich, aber nicht antisemitisch. Man könnte fragen, warum sich darüber – außer Alice Schwarzer – so wenige aufgeregt haben. Fest steht aber: Die Behauptung, dass Antisemitismus eben Bestandteil des Rap sei, stimmt einfach nicht. Dieser Trend ist relativ neu.