The Situation
When you’re staffing a convening with dozens of presenters across a single day, you can’t run a training beforehand — there isn’t time. But accessibility doesn’t take a day off because the schedule is full. Presenters needed something they could actually use: a quick, practical reference they could check before stepping on stage (or opening a Zoom room), not a policy document they’d skim once and file away.
The challenge was scope. Accessibility in live presentations spans everything from slide design to verbal description to how you handle Q&A. Fitting that into a single usable job aid meant making real editorial choices about what to include, what to cut, and how to organize for the moment someone is actually using it — probably three minutes before they present.
Design Decisions
Organized by time, not topic
The checklist follows the natural arc of presenting: before, during, after, with in-person specifics flagged separately. That structure mirrors how someone actually thinks when prepping, not how accessibility frameworks tend to be organized.
Human voice, not policy voice
Job aids often read like legal disclaimers. This one was written to sound like a thoughtful colleague left a note — concrete, direct, and kind about the why without being preachy.
Examples as scaffolding
Several items are genuinely abstract if you’ve never thought about them before. Indented examples provide just enough context to make the checklist actionable for someone encountering the concept for the first time.
Actually checkable checkboxes
Sounds obvious, but a lot of “checklists” don’t include actual boxes. This one is print-ready with real checkbox affordance — because the job aid only works if someone can interact with it.
The Artifact
The final deliverable is a single-page PDF designed to be printed double-sided or saved to a phone. It covers five key phases of accessible presenting, with a tone that’s warm enough to feel like support rather than compliance.
Note: the version below has been lightly generalized from the original. Internal links and org-specific resources have been removed; the content and structure remain intact.
Accessibility Guidelines for Trainers & Presenters
PDF job aid · Print-ready · Single page
What I’d Do Differently
If I were building this for a longer runway, I’d pair the job aid with a 5-minute pre-event microlearning module — something presenters could complete the week before that would prime them to actually use the checklist. A one-pager works best when it’s reinforcing something, not introducing it cold.
I’d also want to gather feedback after the convening. Did presenters use it? What felt confusing or redundant in practice? Job aids are only useful if they change behavior, and you don’t know whether they do without asking.