Voter Accessibility: Improving your election coverage for people with disabilities
Oct 14 2022
WHEN:
Oct 14, 2022 at 11:30am
CONTACT INFO:
Beth Francesco
MORE INFO:
Journalism Institute
Midterm elections are Nov. 8. Are you prepared to be a watchdog for disabled voters in your communities? What is your newsroom doing to ensure your election coverage is useful and accessible for disabled voters? How are you covering voter rights and accessibility leading up to and on Election Day?
More than 61 million Americans live with disabilities, yet they remain underrepresented in journalism produced by U.S. newsrooms. As a decisive midterm election approaches, recent coverage shows state and local measures intend to: reduce voting by absentee ballot, limit access at polling locations, and limit information explaining how people with disabilities can cast their ballots.
On Friday, Oct. 14 at 11:30 ET, join the National Press Club Journalism Institute for a virtual discussion among experts in voter access, disability representation, and accessible news coverage on best practices to cover disabled voters and to highlight voting access issues they may face. Registration for this program is open; it will take place on Zoom.
Panelists include:
- Thomas Hicks, Chairman of the United States Election Assistance Commission
- Jessica Huseman, Editorial director for VoteBeat
- Hannah Wise, Central Region Audience Development Editor for McClatchy and creator of Disability Matters, a toolkit to help newsrooms to better serve the disability community
Wendy Lu, senior staff editor on the Flexible Editing desk at The New York Times, will moderate the discussion. Lu is also a global speaker on disability representation in the media.
We hope you’ll join us for this important conversation, supported with funding from the Gannett Foundation. Please email Beth Francesco, deputy executive director for the Institute, with questions.
About the Institute
The National Press Club Journalism Institute promotes an engaged global citizenry through an independent and free press, and equips journalists with skills and standards to inform the public in ways that inspire a more representative democracy. As the non-profit affiliate of the National Press Club, the Institute powers journalism in the public interest.
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