We are launching the yearly Open Challenge as a fun and positive way to improve the ratio of female speakers at aviation and logistics events year on year until we reach gender parity.
Air cargo industry events are a great opportunity for men and women professionals to network, build authority and get profiled. In this sense companies organising trade shows, conferences, online meetings and seminars play an important role in facilitating this. Although it is not always easy to build gender diverse event programs, the key is to start, even if the first steps are small. The potential of finding great female experts is there. Our goal is to support industry event organisers with a solution – a comprehensive database of experienced, inspiring and authoritative female professionals in aviation & logistics.
Every small improvement in gender diversity at air cargo events counts and taking up the challenge to commit to making this first step is easy. Let’s work together and define these next steps!
We invite all industry event organisers of all sizes and business models – private businesses, media companies and international organisations – to take up the challenge to improve the representation of women speakers at their 2021 events.
Step 1: 📢 Publicly accept the challenge and commit to gender balance improvement at your events (feel free to use our templates and communication materials (pdf)). Don’t forget to inform the partners you work with to organize your events!
Step 2: 🔔 Reach out and tell us what you commit to (based on your past events’ gender balance KPIs as we push for improvement: don’t be afraid to be ambitious!)
Step 3: 💥 Build your inspiring 2021 event programs with a diverse line-up of speakers. You will soon be able to use the free Female Experts Database we are buidling (while we are building it, contact us as we already have great female experts identified)
Step 4: 📈 Record and publish your 2021 events’ KPIs: gender balance of your attendees (for onsite events only) and speakers
Step 5: 👏🎉🏆 Be proud of your success, celebrate and set the next benchmark for 2022!
Sustainability, diversity and inclusion being at the core of our values, Change Horizon and Meantime Communications are joining forces to launch the Women in Aviation and Logistics Pledge to mobilise the industry and drive a concerted and measurable action towards gender equality.
We believe there is a role for everyone within the aviation & logistics sectors to enact positive change for equality and we call all industry associations, companies, academia, and individuals to join us in leading the change by signing up to the Women in Aviation and Logistics Pledge.
Improving gender balance at industry events would be an important step towards a more sustainable air cargo industry. With our expertise and experience in air cargo sustainability domain, we can help event organisers integrate their events into overall sustainability strategy and organisations embed sustainability in their overall corporate priorities.
Reach out to the Change Horizon Team if you need help with your sustainability strategy.
Sustainability is a major modern business differentiator with a potential to boost brand reputation and visibility. With our expertise in PR, communications and branding, we can help event organisers leverage gender balance progress by providing a sustainability-driven communication and branding strategy.
Reach out to the Meantime Communications Team if you need help with your communication and brand strategy.
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We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to