Raising Funds and Ensuring Access - Captioning and Accessibility Consultation for Children's Miracle Network

When your mission is ensuring that 10 million children receive life saving hospital care each year, you have to sweat the small stuff. Details matter to Children’s Miracle Network, the nonprofit organization that raises funds for children's hospitals across the U.S. and Canada. Among those details are accessibility and equity, areas in the core focus of Talon Audio Visual’s Accessibility Consulting Services. In the Spring of 2023 Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals hosted their 2023 Hospital Week event in Sunny Orlando Florida, and reached out to Talon Audio Visual’s Talon Access Service to help ensure that the event was accessible to all their attendees.

Part Telethon, part healthcare industry conference, with a dash of esports, and a live performance from Andy Grammer, it was quite the event. Talon AV / Talon Access provided live human-generated CART captions in the General Session, including for the live musical performance, along with Automatic Speech Recognition Captioning Support in the breakout sessions, and an event-wide accessibility review post-conference for the client and their production teams.

We got great feedback from the Children’s Miracle Network Team, as well as from our partners on the event, one of whom was so blown away she asked us if we could “be [the accessibility] techs for all of our conferences and events? You’re the first I’ve seen that TOTALLY gets what we need to do our job the best we absolutely can.”

At Children’s Hospital Week 2023, Talon AV helped make the great work of Children’s Miracle Network hospitals accessible to all. The positive feedback we received is a testament to Talon AV's expertise in providing comprehensive accessibility solutions.

At Talon Audio Visual, we understand the importance of sweating the small stuff to create meaningful experiences. We invite you to reach out to us for more information about our Talon Access accessibility consulting services. Let us help you ensure that your events are accessible to all, leaving a lasting impact on your audience. Reach out to us today for more information and let's work together towards a more inclusive world.

Podcasts about Accessibility

I recently had the opportunity to speak on two different podcasts about a subject I’m very passionate about - Event Accessibility. The conversations are a bit different -

On the first, with Alana Mediavilla of FilmKik, I speak more generally about the role and importance of accessibility, and the ways video producers can ensure their content is accessible to all

On the second, Ben Powell of BetterCast and I get into the nitty gritty of different caption systems and how they work. Fair warning, this one is long and has a lot of tech detail.

Look Both Ways Before You Step Out: Looking Back at Virtual 2020 as we head into Hybrid 2021

The end of the first quarter of 2021 marks a full year of the events industry in a Covid world.  I think this is a good time to look back at the year past, and to look forward to my view of what's next for our industry.

I previously wrote about virtual events early in the pandemic - in March, and in April, Twice.

Take a look back and see how many of my predictions came true and how many rang hollow.

In the meantime, I’ve spent the last year producing virtual events - ranging from 1 hour webinars to 5-day flagship conferences - and my calendar is rapidly filling for the rest of 2021 with virtual and hybrid events. I know everyone in the event industry is itching to get back to “normal” - I am also excited to be in a ballroom again, but I don’t think we’re quite going to just jump back into where we left off when the industry froze in Q1 2020, and I don’t think we should want to.

Businesses large and small, and their target audiences, have discovered the power of virtual events - events without travel and catering budgets, events that span the globe, with presenters and attendees that would never have been able to come in person. Virtual productions provide increased accessibility of events to parents who can’t leave their kids at home, increased accessibility of events to people with disabilities that make attending face-to-face events difficult, and provide increased accessibility of events to independent professionals, small business owners, and students who may not have the time or resources to travel to an in-person event. Bigger events with broader audiences, or multiple smaller events for hyper targeted audiences, whichever makes more sense. Instantly evergreen content you can re-share, re-edit, and combine with other content to re-sell. With tremendous ROI of virtual, why would we want it to stop?

Enter Hybrid. I know that “hybrid events” is a buzzword of the moment, but really it’s not a new concept. Our industry has been producing hybrid events for years, we just didn’t describe them that way.

I’ve streamed millions of viewer-hours of live event video from in-person events. I remember first producing events that brought in individual speakers via teleconference almost a decade ago. TV news bridges an in-person studio with remote presenters 7 nights a week. The idea of serving both an in-person and remote audience simultaneously is really not unusual, but in the events world prior to 2020 it hadn’t been the default. The tools and techniques have existed for a while - what I think will change is the expectation and “normalcy” of virtual components in almost any event

A woman in a floral top and a man in a blue shirt smile in a screenshot of a Zoom call. The zoom interface is visible. Photo by visuals on Unsplash

Just like every event for the past several years has needed to be ready to play audio and video someone’s slide presentation, even if it’s not in the “spec”, I think every event going forward needs to be ready to add a presenter via Zoom or Teams or Meet. I think teleconference in and stream out is a default assumption for any in-person event going forward. Any event from a flagship conference to a PTA meeting will need the ability to add a call-in option at the last minute, with no fuss.

Another change I expect to stick is the shifted and elongated event cycle. As we think about the event ecosystem, and as event dates have been shaken up due to COVID, something has shifted - events are now year-round. We have less defined “event seasons” with bookend or flagship events, and more ongoing events as part of broader outreach and marketing efforts.

There is less waiting for the big tradeshow to announce products, and more year round marketing drip. Even one-off events are part of a broader marketing ecosystem, and clients need all events to align with their broader communication goals, online or off.

As in-person events return, and as clients evaluate their goals and event needs, I expect to see more roadshows, smaller regional events, and overlapping regional events that are connected via video technology to bridge in-person speakers and audiences across multiple venues and locations.

Woman in a green dress uses a VR Headset in an art gallery. Photo by Sophia Sider on Unsplash

As high profile clients focus on adding pizzaz to their events, we move into an area where hybrid gets interesting and we get beyond the basic stream or Zoom call. Under the hybrid-event umbrella, there are some newer technologies and techniques that have really gained traction over the past year. I expect to see more events using consumer-facing VR and AR technology and studio side xR tech, 3D virtual sets, and volumetric stages along with Unreal Engine, disguise, and other media server environments to make the experience for the online audience more immersive than your average zoom call.

Another tech innovation I expect to see more of is the Pepper's Ghost “hologram” on stage. It was used to much fanfare to “resurrect” beloved performers at music festivals over the last few years, and I expect it to be used to “beam” CEOs and keynote speakers into multi-site conferences to allow “embodied” presentations to remote audiences when executives can’t travel or events overlap.

There are many more technologies, techniques, and event formats on the horizon. As you plan online, in-person and hybrid events, think about the specific takeaway you want the audience to have before you pick a format or technology. Keep in mind audiences you might have missed in the past, and how you can bring your event and message to a more diverse audience who might experience your event differently than other attendees. Consider ways to make your event more accessible to people with a variety of different personal, ability, and travel needs. Think about the experience you want each person in your audience to have and define the goals for takeaway and experience first, then pick the platform, format, or venue that best fits those needs. For some events an online-first approach may still offer the best ROI.  Where in-person components fit the bill, remember that there are a myriad of options to bridge an in-person and online experience to maximize impact.

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Tim Kerbavaz is the Technical Director of Talon Entertainment Audio Visual.

Talon AV provides virtual and in-person event production services for private, corporate, and community events across the United States. Serving a wide range of events, from political round-tables, to Silicon Valley Tech Company Conferences, to community festivals, to automotive-industry board meetings, Talon Entertainment Audio Visual provides technical expertise and an exemplary attendee experience.

Thank Goodness for the ADA: An AV Guy’s Challenge for 2016

Last week, I fell and hurt my leg. It’s not a serious injury, and I’ll be fine in a week or two, but it’s eye opening to see how much harder it is to work and live in a world designed for people with two working legs. I’m really grateful for the accessibility features of public buildings, particularly door openers and easy-to-grab handles and railings. Because I’m suddenly using these features, I’m noticing how often they are not there. In one venue, I came up against exterior doors and restroom doors without automatic door openers, room doors without easy-to-grab pull handles, and aisles between chairs and tables that were not wide enough to maneuver crutches through.

 As is the nature of event production, I often find myself lugging heavy things in and out of trucks, onto sidewalks, and into buildings. Current injury notwithstanding, I’m usually physically able to climb stairs, step onto curbs, and lift things up and down. Even as someone who’s fairly young, strong, and mobile, I’m always glad to find a curb cut, an access ramp, and an elevator almost everywhere I go, because I know I will be less tired and less sore the next day. When I find these features in a building, I am reminded that it’s not by accident that buildings are required to have accessibility features. Curb cuts, ramps, and elevators are the product of years of protest and legal battles fought by people with physical disabilities demanding access to the same libraries, businesses, and schools that I’ve accessed my whole life. These are life-changing tools for a person with limited mobility, and we can’t diminish the impact on people with temporary or permanent mobility impairments. As a young strong person, I’m not the intended user, but I’m always struck by how much easier MY life is because of these features. As someone with a temporary injury, I benefit especially right now, but even people with no injury or disability benefit every day. Just think of how useful they are to all the UPS drivers who can wheel packages up the ramp instead of carrying them by hand, or the moving crews who can use the elevator instead of the stairs to get your dresser up to your new 8th floor apartment.

 As an event technical director, my job is to make event technology work. My job is typically centered around audio, video, and lighting, and there are usually other event planners involved in making more of the general logistics decisions. I’m not a furniture or party rental expert, but given my own personal experience, as well as my advocacy work, I’m going to set myself a challenge for the rest of 2016. I’m going to challenge myself to be an evangelist for accessible event design. Of course I’ll advocate for the technical aspects of accessibility, but I also want to be a better advocate for the future me who unexpectedly comes to a conference on crutches or in a wheelchair, and the future blind conference attendee who needs the program in braille, and the future deaf or hard of hearing viewer who needs captions on the online conference videos.

 I’m challenging myself to make my events in 2016 more accessible to ALL our audiences, and I hope you’ll join me in that goal. And at the end of 2016, let’s make it a habit.

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Author Tim Kerbavaz is the owner of Talon Entertainment, a Davis, CA based Audio-Visual company.

He can be reached by email at tim@talonent.com.

Header Image Credit: Wheeler Cowperthwaite