Accessibility in Scrum events
Hello!
I'm here to make some questions and bring a discussion in an specific theme: Accessibility in Scrum Events.
In my Scrum Team, one of the QAs are blind, he is responsible for execute the Accessibility tests in our software.
All ours Scrum events are online, and the most complicated for him is the Retrospective.
We use a tool called Miro, it's a board where everyone who is at the board write post-its and put in a themed column. This tool is really complete, but do not have Accessibility at all, and in every event he can't participate like others Scrum members.
So, my questions are: Someone already dealed with this kind of situation? If yes, what tools you use?
Our retrospective is based on "What we do that was good, what we do that wasn't good and wat whe can do better?".
Do you guys can think in anny other format who can be better to do in online mode and in an accessibility way?
Sorry for the long post, but i searched in internet and don't find anithing relating Scrum events and accessibility.
Have you asked him how he would like to participate, and what tools might be used?
I agree with Ian that the next step should be to talk to the team member and understand how to best enable him to take part in the Sprint Retrospective.
For everyone else, I would recommend keeping in mind the purpose and intent of the Sprint Retrospective. The retrospective is an opportunity to have a conversation to inspect the last Sprint with respect to "individuals, interactions, processes, tools, and their Definition of Done", and other aspects of how the team goes about their work. You don't need a lot of tools to support a conversation. I'd think about if writing notes on a board is taking away from good conversations among the team, and you don't necessarily need to see to hear and talk.
Thanks Ian!
Thanks Thomas!
In that case, I already talked to him about it. And in a discussion, best tool to intermediate the event would be the Google Sheet, in the other hand the team is used to use the Miro tool because of the facilities like beeing able to write things in anonymity and voting in improvment cards.
But Thomas, you are right on the point when you say about removing the focus on tool and focus on interaction.
I will try to bring a more "humble" approach about the tools, but reforcing the value on that event.
I've had students in Universities use JAWS from Freedom Scientific. There are several tools for visually impaired people. Of course ask your team mate.
But for retrospectives you can try fun retro or ideaboardz to check if they work with these tools. I'm pretty sure excel would work.
The retrospective (and other events) should be about conversations, not visualizations. So try to see how you can not be so reliant on the visualization.
Here's a thought, try one sprint, just as an experiment, with no visualization and check how it works with the other team members. Maybe you'll learn a few tricks by walking in your other team mates shoes.
As @Chuck says, the Retrospective is about conversations. So do just that. Instead of using a visual tool to get the team to agree on topics of conversation, just get them talking. You would be amazed how much people will start talking if given the chance to do so. In fact, if I were in this situation, I would ask the team for permission to focus the entire event on how to better include your one disabled member in all of the activities of the team. They may be having trouble in other areas as well so let them be open and honest with the team. And give the team an opportunity to show respect in helping to make things better for him.
Thanks Chuck, thanks Daniel!!
The Team Retrospective will be tomorrow. And we will try a more conversation approach this time.
I appreciate your advises and will come back to post the results!!
Hello, I'm back to report what happened.
In our retrospective we opened the event changing the method. I sugested to the team that that retro could be different.
So, I sugested to we talk and express what was good, what was not so good and what we could improve for next sprint.
The conversation was awesome and i noticed that in this way, we had less points to discuss but we had more deeper and openess from subjects to talk about.
And just to record, the tool called IdeaBoardz has some accessibility, I talked to my colleague and we made some tests, we concluded that we could use it in some future situation.
Thanks for everyone who collaborate with my issue!!