Accessibility committees: the first meeting

Most likely your first meeting will be rather informal, but this is the time to establish that you mean serious business, there will be an agenda, and expectations however little it would be.

Introductions

It is a good idea to put some thought into the first introductions, don’t just go around to ask for names and positions, but let people talk about why they joined, what are their expectations, why is the accessibility committee important to them. Most likely you will have people there who have a passion for the work, let them talk about it. At the beginning the excitement will be big, but down the road it can change, and it is important to keep reminding people why they joined, and reestablish their excitement, I will talk much more about it later.

Roles and responsibilities

Chances are that the person who organized the committee will chair it, at least initially, but this is a good time to talk about leadership, because the lead/chair of the committee comes with responsibilities. If it is more than a handful of people, I would also recommend electing a co-chair just in case you need someone to step in when you are not available.

This is the time to start discussing ownership as well, as most likely it is not the chair of the committee who owns it. Is the chair nominated by the organization, do members elect the chair? How long is a term?

Policies and bylaws

This is the time to start drafting the working document of the committee, depending on the structure you can create policies, bylaws, or just a governing outline. But it does help to start putting rules on paper and work it out during the first few meetings. Hopefully it will be a living document that can change as the committee grows and strengthens. But I would recommend don’t spend most of the time to write governance. Though it is important, keep up the momentum and start getting stuff done from day one.

Take it seriously

I can’t emphasize this enough: the accessibility committee is serious business. It doesn’t matter that you can’t surround it with social activities, actually you should. Add some casual conversation, pizza, cookies, lemonade, whatever floats your boat. But remember, you have this committee for a reason. There should be progress during each meeting, and soon have goals achieved no matter how small. The members will ultimately take the committee as seriously as seriously the committee takes itself. Here the committee chair will have a responsibility, especially because you may have a team which has not participated in an accessibility committee before.

The first thing you can do right now is to figure out how often you will meet, establish this cadence in writing, and set up the next meeting now.

Do something with it today

Finish the first meeting with an action item!

This may not have to be a huge thing, but don’t let the initial excitement fade away. There will be moments when this will be your biggest challenge, you might as well start preparing for it.

The first action item could be something like: recruiting new committee members from areas of the organization which are not yet represented, ask people to bring ideas for the next meeting, nominate committee members who will propose an expanded governance document, or just pick any small organizational accessibility pain point that you think you could resolve. Look for low hanging fruits here, you will have time to tackle the big ones.