By Tom Fazzio
Event Accessibility Accommodations
Syracuse University continues to encourage accessibility to events for all participants. This holds true with in-person, virtual-only, and hybrid events. The 2 most common accommodations are CART (live transcription) and ASL (American sign language). Maxwell ICT can work with event planners to arrange CART services, but the event planner would make their own arrangements for ASL.
Please email MaxwellAV@syr.edu to begin any conversation about event accessibility.
If you expect 100 or more total participants/attendees for your event, SU expects you provide BOTH accommodations, CART, and ASL.
If you expect under 100 total participants/attendees, you must either:
- provide both CART and ASL, or
- all event announcements/invites/posters must include notice for attendees to request accessibility accommodations. Example: “If you require accessibility accommodations, please contact (contact person) at (contact information) by (date typically 1 to 2 weeks before event).”
CART costs about $120 per hour; charged at a 1-hour minimum and then billed at 15-minute increments. The CART transcriptionist may sometimes be available to stay longer than scheduled, but it is ideal to request a realistic end time for their service to ensure full coverage for the event.
Proper planning is necessary for the transcriptionist to be prepared for the content of the event; they’ll want as much info about the speakers (names/titles/organizations/bios) and any prepared remarks (written talks, slides, etc.)
There are settings in Zoom that are required for CART live transcription to be available.
Here are some additional references from SU about event accessibility: