EDI good practice for organising events
EDI considerations are important for event planning. Prioritising EDI helps you to meet your legal responsibilities and enriches your events by ensuring that a diverse set of voices, insights, perspectives and experiences are heard.
On this page you can find advice, guidance and good practice examples related to EDI events, including policies and how you can make your events inclusive and accessible for everyone.
This month's recommended resource for organising events
A free step-by-step guide to working with British Sign Language/English Interpreters, including how to book them and how to work with them during an event or meeting.
Inclusive events guidance
These resources provide advice and guidance to help create and host inclusive events. Use the left column below to change categories. See the right column for a summary and link to each resource.
Here you will find resources to help create and host inclusive events. See below for a breakdown of each resource.
The Diversity and Inclusion in Scientific Computing (DISC) cookbook
This is intended as a resource for organisers of conferences and events to support and encourage diversity and inclusion. Although its main target is the US tech industry, the majority of the content provides general suggestions for planning inclusive conferences. It focusses specifically on plans, decisions, and actions organisers can take to produce and manage a more diverse and inclusive event.
All welcome – a guide to inclusive, accessible and sustainable events
This guide draws on examples of good practice from across the higher education sector and beyond, to support those who are involved in organising, hosting and participating in events. These can be meetings, workshops, or conferences, either online or in person. In addition, it has a good list of further resources and a useful appendix on neurodiversity.
View All welcome – a guide to inclusive, accessible and sustainable events
Access Network activity matrix
These considerations and encouraged actions relate to the work of the Access Network and consider how to incorporate EDI in both ad hoc and regular ‘internal’ project meetings, as well as general interactions with colleagues, partners and stakeholders. Relevant aspects related to events include: internal meetings; workshops and events; working groups; recruitment for events (as well as job recruitment); externally facing training; and people development. They likewise include advice on EDI considerations for communication, flexible funding applications and research activities. To find the activity matrix scroll to the bottom of the page.
View Access Network activity matrix
Lessons learned: how do you organise an inclusive symposium?
How do you organise the most inclusive symposium possible? Is inclusion a diverse range of speakers, an accessible venue, a hybrid format, or all of these and more? How do you measure inclusivity, and how do you know if you’ve succeeded? These were the questions posed by the organisers of the 2023 EDIS symposium on inclusive leadership. Here, EDIS outline some of the lessons they learned when organising the 2023 symposium, including what went well and what they’d like to change in the future.
View Lessons learned: how do you organise an inclusive symposium?
Here you will find resources to help create and host inclusive events, taking into consideration the needs of particular characteristics and groups. See below for a breakdown of each resource.
Engaging with disabled people – an event planning guide
While this was produced specifically with the intention of planning an engagement event involving disabled people, it does have some very good advice on planning an event with disabled contributors/attendees. It also includes a facilitators guide, which provides a briefing for the chairperson and presenters, a useful glossary of alternative formats and a guide to hearing enhancement systems.
View Engaging with disabled people – an event planning guide
A guide to working with British Sign Language/English interpreters
A free step-by-step guide to working with British Sign Language/English Interpreters, including how to book them and how to work with them during an event or meeting.
View A guide to working with British Sign Language/English interpreters
Make your meetings deaf aware
The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) has put together these tips to make meetings more accessible and inclusive for deaf people and those with hearing loss.
View Make your meetings deaf aware
Best practice guide – developing inclusive conferences
A practical guide on creating and running inclusive conferences for event organisers, drawing on examples of good practice from across the university sector and beyond. This guide primarily focusses on gender, but it also makes recommendations on other aspects of inclusivity and diversity, such as ethnicity, religion and disability.
View Best practice guide – developing inclusive conferences
Creating inclusive conferences for academics with caring responsibilities – guidance for conference organisers
This briefing gives an overview of findings from a small-scale, exploratory study that looked at the impact of caring responsibilities on academics’ participation in conferences. It presents recommendations for how conference organisers can be more accommodating towards these attendees.
The below video conversation looks at increasing the accessibility of conferences, both online and in-person, for those with disabilities. Simon Holt from Elsevier, who is sight-impaired, and Erin Osborne from Wiley, who has limited physical mobility, talk with Mark Carden of R2R and Violaine Iglesias, Cadmore Media. This video provides some really useful insights from those with lived experience of trying to organise accessible conferences online and in person and the challenges faced by those with lived experience of disability.
Towards conferences accessibility - a conversation
EDI policies on events
These resources provide examples of EDI policies for events. Use the left column below to change categories. See the right column for a summary and link to each resource.
Here you will find examples of EDI policies for events to help you design your own. See below for a breakdown of each resource.
Conference code of conduct
This is a template to help organisations to develop their own conference code of conducts. It has been used by the likes of EDICa to develop their own codes of conducts for events.
View Conference code of conduct
Equality and diversity in Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) conferences
This document sets out specific guidance for implementing the SLSA Equality and Diversity Policy aimed at conference organisers, stream convenors and delegates.
View Equality and diversity in SLSA conferences
Imperial College conference policy
Imperial College’s conference policy aims to promote diverse representation among speakers/panellist at events involving Imperial staff and students and to ensure that such events are welcoming to all. While the document is aimed at members of the College community, it provides a good example of how EDI can be incorporated into your conference policies. Furthermore, the policy section at the bottom of the page provides some more useful EDI resources.
View Imperial College conference policy
EDIS safer space policy
EDIS safer space policy is adapted from their in-person events code of conduct and is used to cover all in-person and online events and communications.