How we work: inclusive retrospectives for the GitHub Accessibility leadership team

Introduction The GitHub Accessibility leadership team uses inclusive processes for retrospectives to ensure all team members can participate fully, despite disabilities that might make traditional tools inaccessible.

Team Members and Tools Used The team includes members with blindness and hearing impairments. The team uses mainly GitHub Issues, GitHub Discussions, Zoom, and Slack to collaborate.

Setting up the Retrospective The team used GitHub Issues to house the retrospective, highlighting the importance of using appropriate markdown formatting to facilitate navigation. They used a Starfish retrospective and created a discussion forum for each of the five categories, encouraging participants to contribute ahead of time.

Participation and Inclusion To ensure full participation, the team prioritized comments and used threaded replies to facilitate conversation. They encouraged participants to introduce themselves verbally, keep their cameras on, and announce important expressions or hand signals.

Conclusion Finally, the team posted a summary of the retrospective’s findings, enabling participants to check back and hold each other accountable as they work to implement the next steps.