By Bojan Fürst

Remember those long meetings that we used have back before COVID-19 put us into virtual mode?

The ones located on the fourth floor with an out-of-order elevator and no accessible washroom nearby? The ones with presentations written in tiny fonts? The ones where only the people closest to the speaker can hear what is being said? You know, the ones that seemed to be designed to exclude anyone who might need a bit of extra time or room to navigate and new and unfamiliar place?

The good news is that after reading this issue’s KMb toolkit, you’ll have the information you need to make sure you never organize one of “those meetings” again, not even when we get to go back to seeing each other face-to-face.

As a member of Research Impact Canada, Memorial has access to a library of helpful toolkits designed to help you communicate research with the people who could use it.

This time, we’re featuring a submission by the Ontario Municipal Social Services Association. They’ve created a guide to help you create accessible, welcoming space that encourages all participants to contribute and share their knowledge and perspective. The Guide to Conducting Accessible Meetings will help you plan, conduct and evaluate your meetings, both in-person and online, to make sure everybody can participate.

See the guide here.

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Bojan Fürst is the Knowledge Mobilization Manager with the Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development at Memorial University of Newfoundland. It’s a complicated way of saying that his job is to match community needs with university resources. He also hosts Rural Routes, a podcast that explores what it means to be "rural" in the 21st century.