Chicago Worldcon accessibility woes

[vivdunstan]

Extremely relieved I decided against paying for a virtual access ticket to this year's Worldcon in Chicago which is happening right now. They are using Airmeet, which admittedly isn't Gather Town. But I anticipated problems. The conference have now emailed out a fulsome apology to Worldcon members for the accessibility issues that people are having. It is such a shame, and so extremely unnecessary. The New Zealand Worldcon a couple of years ago aced a purely online conference using Zoom and Discord. But yup, very relieved I'm not battling the tech! By contrast the Tolkien Society are hosting a hybrid Oxonmoot this weekend, in both Oxford in person and online via Zoom / Discord and later YouTube for catch up videos. They have handled this technology wonderfully for a couple of years. I have full confidence I will be able to access and enjoy this year's event too, though mainly on catchup. But yup, glad I dodged the Worldcon.

Comments

[a_cubed]

Thanks for the kind words about CoNZealand. When we pivoted to virtual, one of the things I know we had staff working on was the accessibility issues of the virtual model.