Guidelines for Speakers

Preparing for Your Presentation or Panel:

• Etiquette:

  The Stanford Neurodiversity Summit is a venue for exchanging ideas about neurodiversity among individuals with a wide range of background. Although we are presenting virtually, we ask that you dress professionally in your presentations. Please prepare ahead of time what you are going to wear, so that you will be able to show the best of yourself. 

• Environment: 

  • Ambient noise: As you will present from your location, you will be responsible for keeping the ambient noise levels to a minimum. Please let your family members or other individuals sharing your space know about your presentation, so that they can avoid talking loudly or playing loud music in the background.

  • Lighting: Some of the presentations will be held in late afternoon and early evening. As the sun sets earlier these days, you will want to make sure that your face will be well lit. Find a quiet, non-reflective room free from distractions. Avoid having dark voids behind you like hallways etc. Have your source of light in front of you, not behind. Face a window if possible and wear a contrasting color that separates you from the wall behind you. Set your camera so your face is in the upper half of the screen. You may need to set your device on a stack of books or boxes. Don’t simply tilt your laptop screen up. Look into your camera as you speak.

  • Background: Your audience will see you and your background. Please check your background and remove any objects and pictures that may be offensive for certain individuals or suggestive of any controversial topics.  When in doubt, please let us know. 

• Best Practices for Using Zoom:

• Before you can use Zoom, you must install the Zoom software for your device and log in for the first time from your Mac, PC, mobile, or tablet device. Note that there were security updates to Zoom recently, so please make sure you are using the latest release.

  • If you do NOT have a SUNet ID, please click here.

  • If you do have a SUNet ID, please click here.

• Visit the Zoom test meeting at https://zoom.us/test to make sure your setup is working. Use a computer, not a phone, iPad, or tablet. Closeout of everything else on your computer and all browser tabs.

• Use an Ethernet cable connection, if possible. Ask other household members to refrain from streaming video during your presentation. A good guide on bandwidth is here: https://uit.stanford.edu/guide/telecommuting/bandwidth

• Use wired earbuds (with a built-in mic) or the microphone built into your computer. Headphones are ok but tend to look awkward. With wireless earbuds or headphones, Bluetooth may have latency, and batteries may run down.

• Volume: To ensure you are able to hear the hosts and panelists, please adjust the volume on your computer.

• Please turn off notifications before joining the webinar. Viewers will hear beeping sounds while you are speaking.

• PowerPoint: If you are preparing slides for your presentation, we ask that you do so in Microsoft PowerPoint. This is because the Microsoft suite has the best accessibility features. If you don’t have access to PowerPoint, you may use another program (Keynote, Google Slides). However, we will need your completed presentation earlier so that we can ensure it is in an accessible format (screen reader compatible, etc.).

• Presentation Format:

  In creating the slides for your presentation, please keep the following principles in mind:

  • Text: Text should be large enough to be easily read, be written in a clear font (sans serif is best) and have good contrast against the background. See the resources linked below for more information on best practices

  • Color: While color is a great way to communicate and group information, do not rely on color alone to convey information. In particular, don’t use red/green pairing to communicate key information as some people (red-green colorblind) may not be able to see the difference. Keep color schemes simple and avoid neon colors.

  • Animations: Animations add excitement to presentations, but they also add to visual processing demands, which can be overwhelming or distracting. Any transitions between slides or animations should be simple.

  • Multimedia: If you include pictures in your slides, please add image descriptions (alt text). See the resources below for instruction on how to do that.

• Resources:

  • PowerPoint accessibility guide

  • Dyslexia-friendly style guide

During Your Presentation:

• Etiquette:

  Please dress professionally. Please sit in a comfortable chair facing the camera. Sit up straight, relax, and project the same energy you would if speaking to a crowd.

• Use of headphones with microphone:

  Typically, use of headphones with microphone improves the sound quality of your presentation. However, if you are playing a video in your presentation, you will not be able to use your headphones with microphone because your audience will not be able to hear what you hear.

• Closed Captions:

  The closed captioning feature provides live captioning of your presentation. The words will automatically appear at the bottom of your presentation as you speak. This way, you don’t need to have pre-scripted your presentation or provide a transcript. In our (informal) experimenting, it has been remarkably accurate. We recommend trying out this feature beforehand so that you know how it works.

• Audience Q&A:

  The audience will submit their questions through the Q&A feature of Zoom webinars. Your moderator will filter and organize the questions, and read them to you.