AI & Accessibility: Using AI to Make Your Event More Accessible

How can AI make your event more accessible?

Without further ado, let’s get straight into the practicalities of AI and accessibility. Below, we’ve picked out several areas of the event planning and on-the-day experience in which AI could benefit attendees…

Movement tracking and accessible floor plans

Using AI to automate processes is incredibly useful, as it frees up your time to focus on other areas by interpreting large swathes of data in a more efficient way. Once AI has gathered and condensed information, you can then sift through to use it in ways that will benefit your event.

When it comes to accessibility, AI (specifically predictive AI) can help you to use movement tracking to create more accessible floor plans for your event. Predictive AI is an aspect of artificial intelligence that can be taught to analyse data and recognise patterns, and eventually predict future outcomes.

But how does this help? By using past event floor plans and attendee data, a predictive AI will be able to use movement tracking to identify patterns of how people travel through your event. Using this knowledge allows you to:

• Widen high traffic areas: once you’ve picked out the busiest thoroughfares (like hallways or corridors between stands), you can edit your floor plan to widen these areas. Not only will this help to reduce traffic, but it offers more space for people with mobility aids to move through safely and comfortably.
• Improve help stand availability: using this data can help you identify where the best places are to place assistance staff, information stands, and help desks to provide better access for all your attendees. This reduces the distance for people who may need mobility or navigational support, as well as providing a visible presence for event staff.
• Design more intuitive floor plans: events can be overwhelming, and a complicated floor plan can lead to people getting lost. By using AI, you can potentially make your floor plan more intuitive to make it easy for people to navigate to where they need to go.

Once you have a potential floor plan design, you could choose to use a generative AI to create a 2D and/or 3D model. This will allow you to more easily visualise how your event will look on the ground, and modify or edit as necessary in a far more efficient manner.

Top tip: before looking into floor plans, it’s worth exploring what a venue has to offer you. Here at ACC Liverpool, we have a Virtual Tour that’s perfect to help you get a sense of the venue before you visit the site.

Dynamic production adjustments

As an organiser, you’re likely to be pulled into a multitude of directions on the big day to ensure the event runs smoothly for your attendees. So, what if there was a way to make dynamic changes to certain production services in real time to help make your event more accessible?

Using AI, you could have the potential to control sound and light levels throughout your venue. This could be according to:

• Occupancy: when more people are at an event, you could reduce background noise to help people hear others.
• Ambient conditions: this would allow your lights to be reactive to lower light levels outside of a venue (e.g. in the evenings, or early mornings).
• Preferences: creating quiet spaces or times within your event allows for neurodiverse people, or those with sensory processing needs to attend more comfortably.

By doing this in real time, you can directly monitor how crowds are affected and adapt your audio-visual equipment when needed to ensure attendees are having a positive event experience.

Top tip: learn How to Improve Your Events & Conferences for Neurodiverse Participants with our useful guide…

Live AI services

One of the main advantages to using AI technology within an accessibility strategy is that it can be used immediately. Live AI services could prove invaluable when properly used throughout your event. Some examples include:

AI captions

Whenever you have visual media, it’s important to have captions for HoH or deaf attendees, or those with audio processing difficulties. Using AI, you can auto-generate these on videos to make them more accessible to your audiences.

Top tip: recording any sessions (for example, as part of a conference) with these captions is vital, as it allows people to review the material in a way that works for their needs.

AI transcripts

Another option is to use AI to create transcripts, which can be distributed as needed during the event. For conferences, this provides attendees with a valuable resource they can look back on, without having to rely on their own notes. Offering these transcripts in multiple forms (written, screen reader compatible etc) ensures that each person in the audience can make the most of each session they attend.

Real-time translations

Using AI to translate your videos or text media immediately opens up your event to a wider audience of people. There are some accessible AIs that can generate sign language translations too, which are vital for those who communicate more comfortably in this language.

Top tip: at ACC Liverpool, we offer a range of Digital Inclusivity services, including simultaneous translation for on-site or online delegates.

Visual AIs

Apps like Seeing AI are designed to describe images, videos, and other visual forms of media for people with visual impairments. Offering direct access to these, or ensuring they can be integrated into your event would go a long way to improving accessibility.

Screen readers and Text-to-Speech integration

When you offer digital resources, make sure they are optimised for screen reader use. Using text-to-speech technology, like screen readers, ensures people who require it can use the technology to make use of digital resources. Using these can also allow people to join in conversations and engage with group discussion who otherwise might be excluded from verbal discussions.

Speech-to-Text integration

Flipping the above, you should also consider adapting for your attendees to use speech-to-text integrated technologies. Using speech-to-text accessible AIs can benefit a huge number of people, including: those with dyslexia, dyspraxia, visual impairments, motor skill and grip impairments etc – allowing them to enter online discussions and participate in real-time.

Top tip: allowing attendees to use their own speech-to-text technology when taking notes should be part of your accessibility strategy – quiet speech shouldn’t disrupt the session, and can make a big difference to people’s experience of the event.

Chatbots

Perhaps the most commonly known of these accessible AI technologies, chatbots are a superb digital option that allows people to access information and assistance in their own time – from their own device. Programming a chatbot to work as part of your event package can help people who struggle to communicate with other people to have more equal access to useful materials.

Top tip: using chatbots for FAQs or simple requests can also free up your on-site assistants, allowing them to help with less common queries or those that need help from a real person.

Work with ACC Liverpool to make your event more accessible

Here at ACC Liverpool, we believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to fully engage with and enjoy their event experience. That’s why we’ve worked hard to create a practical Inclusivity Toolkit filled with helpful best practices and advice to make your event open and accessible to everyone. Available online, we strongly encourage organisers in particular to explore the resources included as part of your planning process. By ensuring accessibility is considered from the beginning, you can make an inclusive event for your attendees to enjoy…

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