The conference aimed to bring the deafblind community from around Australia together to share their knowledge about recent research, developments, and service improvements. During the event, presenters discussed topics including academic views and research outcomes, as well as personal reflections on how challenging the past two years have been for people who are deafblind.

The theme of the conference was “Deafblind Keeping Connected through COVID and beyond”, so it was essential that forming connections in-person and online at the conference was made as easy and simple as possible. 

The power of coming together to share experiences (even while being hundreds of miles away) quickly became the cornerstone of the event, and Delegate Connect aimed to create that sentiment via the platform for online delegates. It was important to conference organizers that the deafblind community felt reconnected, wherever they were located, especially after the isolation that was experienced during Covid-19.

Utilising the Delegate Connect event platform enabled SensesWA to achieve wider community awareness of deafblindness, offered a space to host content that could be streamed on-demand by their audience, and helped showcase new and emerging assistive technologies for the community.

Delegate Connect's accessible features made it possible for hundreds of disabled users to interact in a forum that was specially built for them. 

The three-day conference program included multiple concurrent live-stream sessions that were broadcasted in real-time from the event venue in Fremantle, Western Australia to an online audience. 

Each live stream was sequenced and managed by Delegate Connect's operators to ensure the viewing experience online matched that of the in-person event. Vital Interpreting Personnel provided sign language interpretation for each live stream, both the speaker and the interpreter could be viewed simultaneously on the platform for those tuning in online. This, paired with live-captioning technology on the platform, made it possible for members of the deafblind community to experience all that the conference had to offer from the comfort of their homes.

Conference-goers had the opportunity to log into the event platform before the start date to view the conference program and plan out which sessions they would like to attend and which they would like to watch on-demand. They could also view all 50 presenters, interact with sponsor profiles, and chat with Delegate Connect's live conference support personnel. 

Katie Tomkins felt that it was Delegate Connect's support that played a huge role in the success of the conference. She has this to say about Delegate Connect's service:

“The service that we received from our Account Coordinators was truly outstanding. We were helped every step of the way and given adequate, worthwhile training and key milestones to ensure our joint success. If we were running behind on any of our milestones, our Account Coordinators would follow up with clear communication and assistance to ensure we had the tools to complete the tasks.

We were extremely pleased with the lack of assistance required from our online delegates on the day. This says to me that the platform was set up well, and was very user friendly for our users with high needs.”