At the last minute, I signed up to be a speaker for a recent meeting of my Toastmasters club. To make it easy on myself, I decided to present an excerpt from a tried-and-true presentation I’d given many times before. What I didn’t expect was to receive feedback that would make my speech even better!
My presentation, “Presentation Skills for Brainiacs,” teaches STEM professionals how to be better at presentation design and public speaking. I’d given it four times previously, so I thought it was already as good as it was going to get. That morning, I spoke about how storytelling and experiences are great ways to engage an audience.
There’s a demonstration I always use that really wows the audience! To show how people with low vision have trouble using mobile devices, I invite an audience member to the stage, ask her to navigate to Google on her smartphone, then tell her to close her eyes and look up a topic of the audience’s choosing. Of course, she fails. The point is made that without good vision, it’s hard to use flatscreen technology.
During my speech evaluation, somebody pointed out that shutting one’s eyes doesn’t simulate low vision, it simulates blindness. He suggested having the volunteer wear vision-diminishing goggles instead. It was something that had never occurred to me but which I instantly knew would make the demonstration resonate more deeply. Immediately after returning to the office, I found a way online to make goggles that simulate vision impairment. Using an old pair of safety glasses, clear nail polish, and toilet paper, I was able to make goggles that simulate cataracts in just 10 minutes. This simple tool will do a much better job of demonstrating to my future audiences that low vision inhibits technology use!
My involvement with Toastmasters has made me a much better public speaker over the years. And even though I consider myself a fairly accomplished presenter, this experience showed me there’s always room for improvement and opportunities to grow.