Best Practices in different diversity aspects so we have more accessible hackathons. The project started during Hack the Hackathon Volume 3.
Raise awareness of different groups of people, barriers to entry, and possible solutions for more accessible hackathons
- Allissa Dillman 🇺🇸
- Cal King 🇺🇸
- Cleo Schulten 🇩🇪
- Daniela Huppenkothen 🇩🇪 → 🇳🇱
- Kadri Tiisvelt 🇪🇪
- Kiev Gama 🇧🇷
- Lavínia Paganini 🇧🇷 → 🇳🇱
- You might need to target your hackathon to certain groups, but maybe not others —> making it inclusive to everyone is very difficult!
- Bring in stakeholders from different communities you’re targeting! Make sure they are part of the organizing team
- It’s important to be aware that some of these categories are very context-dependent (e.g. understanding of ethnicity might depend on country; different nationalities have different visa restrictions in different countries)
- Many of these categories can possibly not be considered independently, but intersectionality needs to be considered
- Universal design: “the design of products, environments, programmes and services to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design”
- Universal design recognizes the common needs e.g. shared by persons with and without disabilities
- Being more inclusive needs more awareness on what diversity is, what are the different types of diversity
- To make more inclusive hackathons, consultations with diversity experts can be an option to upgrade the hackathons (eg workplace inclusion consultants)
- Hackathon organizers are often bound with a limited budget and with a high efficiency requirement, leaving opportunities for inclusiveness limited. Awareness raising needs to move to the design phase of the hackathon and the budgeting.