THREAD: As far as we know, we are the first festival to ask all of our poets and performers to screenshare any written material during events. This is so that deaf and hard of hearing poets in our community can access our events. We have had some complaints that some people
Prefer to see the poets face rather than the document. We want to show you these two photos to show you can have accessibility and still see the poets face. In the first photo you can see the document taking up the full screen and our Co director Clare Shaw as a small square. 
In this photo you can see a huge Clare Shaw face and the document as a tiny square. This is possible by dragging the line that divides the document and photo. It should not solely be the job of disabled poets and organisers to make change. As able bodied poets and organisers,
We should be doing some of the heavy lifting. Sometimes this can feel uncomfortable. When someone points out you aren't accessible, or your lineup is too white or too male or too straight, sometimes the first reaction is defensive. We need to listen to those voices
And learn to sit with our own discomfort and then make changes. Thank you to all the disabled writers we have consulted with and talked to and learnt from to try and make our festival more accessible this year, people like @HodgsonWrites @danielsluman we are listening to you, we
Will keep listening to you and we stand with you all. We still have fibe days left of the festival but @ShareClaw and @kimmoorepoet are already making plans to make sure we continue to improve our access. Any other organisations that would like any help/support (after festival)
Please get in touch. We are very happy to share what we have learned and the mistakes we made along the way. End of thread. Whew!
The two photos we shared:one is of a laptop with a document opened up large and a small photo of Clare Shawn's face on Zoom. The other has Clare's face as a large picture and a small picture of the open document on zoom #MakePoetryAccessible
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