How online conferences add together accessibility and inclusivity

In a world where opportunities, privilege and experience can vary drastically based on where you are born, online conferences and meetings are a great leveller. We have witnessed this for ourselves through the Virtual Winter School in Computational Chemistry (VWSCC). This online school, effectively a conference, has been running annually since 2015, motivated by the goals of accessibility, community building and supporting young scientists. Over the years, we have seen a growing number of attendees from a diverse range of career levels and geographic locations. Our 2021 edition, magnified by the effect of the pandemic, when conferences became inaccessible to the wider community, welcomed 2139 participants from 100 countries, over half of them students.

These findings convinced us that virtual meetings can indeed significantly broaden a community, and that accessibility is one of the greatest strengths of online mechanisms.

We have continued to explore accessibility and inclusivity as part of The Future of Meetings (TFOM) community. Our definition for accessibility is that everyone should be able to participate from wherever they are with as few restrictions as possible. Inclusivity means everyone feels welcome and wants to participate. In our experience, with accessibility and inclusivity in place, diversity will follow naturally.