If you have any concerns about accessibility needs, or if you have any accessibility requirements you would like us to be aware of, please email with them.

Before the Convention

We have arranged with the Gibson to allow a basic walk-through on Friday afternoon between 2pm and 3pm. Please ask for Aisling and tell her that you’re here for the Octocon Accessibility walk-through. Some rooms are unavailable, due to things happening inside them at the time, but you can at least familiarise yourself with where things will be. (Also Kat will be there, and you can ask Kat questions if you have questions and concerns.)

If you’re unable to make it on Friday afternoon, you can come from 7pm on Friday evening, but please be aware that it will be chaotic, as we’ll be setting up.

At the Convention

We will have a Quiet Room again this year, with some sensory items to help regulate your system. Feel free to bring your own, as well! If you need to stim, stim! If you need to vocally (and loudly) stim, the balcony would probably be a great place for that.

We are a masked convention. If you are medically exempt from masking, inform Registration when you’re getting your badge, and they’ll make sure you get the symbol onto your badge, which means Octocon volunteers won’t ask you to mask up. (If they do, please assume they haven’t seen it and say that you’re medically exempt. If someone pushes harder on that, please go to the Committee Room and let them know, because that shouldn’t happen.)

The lift to get to Octocon is open for everyone. The lift to get from the main Octocon floor to upstairs, for the Workshop and Quiet rooms, does require a key card to operate it. If you are not staying at the Gibson and don’t have a key card, there should be a volunteer available to operate the lift for you. If you are on the main level, ask at Registration, and they’ll make sure to get a volunteer for you. If you are upstairs, we will have volunteers roving periodically to see if anyone needs to go downstairs; if you haven’t seen one, please go to the volunteer in the Workshop room, and they should be able to sort you out.

If you run into any difficulties, please try to snag a volunteer or Committee member. We will try to make sure there will be a Committee member in the Trade Hall at all times. The Committee room is guaranteed to find a Committee member. The Reg Desk will also be able to help you, even if the help is sending someone to get who you need. Please do not be afraid to ask for help.

Once again, if you have questions or concerns, please email Kat at with them! We’ll do everything we can to ease your potential worries!