Our safety and security approach for the RightsCon Continues Summit

September 17, 2026 • Event info • 7 min read

The RightsCon Continues Summit is in less than a week and we’re sharing an update and reminder of the core policies, principles, and processes that help keep the summit a safe, productive, and inclusive space.

The RightsCon Continues Summit was designed as a space to showcase and celebrate the resilience and strength of the digital rights community in the face of the threats and challenges the sector has experienced in recent years. The safety and security of our community are at the heart of our planning. Please review our key safety guidelines below to help prepare for your online participation!

Core Plans

As with past years, the core principles and policies governing RightsCon, such as our Code of Conduct and our Participation & Privacy Policy, remain in place. By registering, participants agree to read through and abide by these policies. Registered participants can find information about safety and security directly on the RightsCon Summit Platform, including on ways to report incidents, details about our approach, and our full policies.

Our approach

Before embarking on a hybrid model, RightsCon was convened fully online for 3 years from 2020-2022, and our approach to safety and security for the RightsCon Continues Summit follows the same framework built to facilitate our previous online editions. 

Our Safety Working Group (SWG), an internal committee composed of our RightsCon team, Access Now’s SecTec, and Code of Conduct teams, has worked to review, discuss, and adapt our internal security and safety processes to ensure we remain positioned to best understand the risks posed to the RightsCon community and respond effectively to issues should they arise.

As with previous years, this includes:

• Staffing a 24/7 help desk and a number of additional operations and production team members;
• Training technical moderators to support the successful delivery of every single session;
• Providing Code of Conduct training to technical moderators and all event staff so that they can provide rapid First Response to incidents to prevent further harm;
• Developing detailed session organizer and participant guides to support strong sessions and productive conversations;
• Holding discussions around effective participant guidelines to maintain positive engagement across the community;
• Reviewing of our reporting, escalation, and response framework and plans;
• Undertaking risk assessments, analysis, and scenario planning.

Informing your participation

The RightsCon Continues Summit will be hosted entirely online, is open to the public, and allows for free-of-charge registration. It is, and always has been, a multi-stakeholder space and environment and an opportunity to bring diverse voices and opinions into one space.

Diversity is central to the success of RightsCon and the strength of our community. While we’ve developed safety and security measures to protect people from harm, we also want to acknowledge that there may be instances during the Summit when you encounter individuals or organizations who have a different approach, background, or hold different opinions than yourself or other members of your community.

We’re confident in our community’s ability to engage respectfully in thoughtful and complex dialogue on sensitive topics, but we also recognize that our community spans diverse backgrounds, experiences and viewpoints. No participant, speaker, facilitator, or organizer should use disagreement as a defence for discrimination, violence, or abuse or pressure another participant to disclose personal identities and experiences. Please familiarize yourself with our Code of Conduct and reach out to us if you are concerned with how a situation is escalating.

Further, while we take great care to ensure every participant enjoys a safe, enriching experience, we also rely on each participant taking stock of their own safety and security, and implementing measures appropriate to their own circumstances. As you prepare for RightsCon, we encourage you to take some time to assess your digital hygiene and digital security best practices when working and interacting in online spaces.

When participating in RightsCon, we encourage you to:

• Be mindful of the public nature of certain spaces and manage the information you share accordingly (any information you share may be shared outside of those online spaces);
• Be thoughtful regarding the information you share or receive (including URLs and attachments) relative to your ability to verify a fellow participant’s identity;
• Be aware of any phishing attempts and fake websites by verifying you are using the official RightsCon Summit Platform;
• Where you have the need to discuss highly sensitive topics, consider the most appropriate platform or channel for such exchanges. 

Beyond safety and security: inclusion and accessibility

Inclusion and accessibility are integral areas of focus at RightsCon. Not only does this mean making space for people whose voices have been systematically excluded from global convening spaces but also ensuring that these spaces are accessible and welcoming.

Ensuring that the RightsCon Continues Summit is an inclusive and accessible space for our diverse and growing community is continuous work, and we have built on this work by:

• Reflecting on, evaluating and adapting our policies and practices;
• Hosting multilingual sessions;
• Supporting low-bandwidth session participation options;
• Facilitating a chat function for non-audio interaction between participants;
• Implementing platform-wide image descriptions for screen reader accessibility;
• Ensuring interactive elements on the platform are keyboard navigable;
• Enabling closed captions by default in Workshops and Roundtables;
• Supporting closed captions for Dialogues and Fireside Chats;
• Providing virtual psychosocial support delivered by our partners, Vita Activa.

Beyond feature improvements, it’s important to us that accessibility is on the agenda. Participants can join a disability justice meetup to connect with participants working on this topic. 

These efforts are only a starting point and part of our long-term strategy to broaden accessibility at RightsCon. It’s important for our work to be informed by the community it serves and we welcome your feedback and suggestions on how we can improve our efforts. You can get in touch with us at [email protected].

Reporting and responding

During the Summit, participants will be able to reach out to our response team with any questions or to report an incident. To create a safe and supportive environment that remains productive there might be some instances where our team needs to respond with a quick decision (“First Response”) to ensure the safety of the community, prevent further harm, and stabilize the situation. Our response team will then work to assess the situation carefully and decide on the final response and remedy, with the best interests of our community, and those most at risk, in mind.

In building an adaptive reporting and response process, we are guided by the following objectives:

• Maintaining a safe environment where participants can engage freely without fear of intimidation, harassment or violence, or threat or reprisal;
• Fostering a space that supports strong dialogue and productive conversation;
• Developing strong response mechanisms designed to take quick action to reduce the amount of harm;
• Operating with confidentiality, recusal, and documentation security as top priority;
• Clearly and transparently communicating our policies and processes;
• Continuously listening and learning about how we can best support and serve the community.

Be mindful of phishing

Phishing attempts may use the ‘RightsCon’ image or personality as a means to trick you into providing sensitive information. Please remain vigilant and alert to any targeted impersonation attempts, such as ‘look‑alike’ RightsCon invitations or tickets, fake registration pages, spoofed emails, or emails impersonating our team.

Official RightsCon platforms are rightscon.summit.tc and rightscon.org. Our staff work for Accessnow.org and the RightsCon team use ‘@accessnow.org’ email addresses. All of our official social media accounts are listed on our website. 

If anything seems off, such as unexpected timing, unusual sender address, unfamiliar links, or you’d like to verify something, please don’t hesitate to avoid interacting with the message and report it to [email protected].

Contacting us

Below are the ways you can get in contact with us before, during, and after the Summit:

• RightsCon Help Desk: All technical issues or platform questions can be directed to our help desk 24/7 during the summit via a chat function in the platform or by email at [email protected]. 
• Code of Conduct: All Code of Conduct questions or incidents can be reported 24/7 during the summit via email at [email protected].
• If you have any other safety or security concerns related to your participation that falls outside of the help desk or Code of Conduct policies, you can get in touch with our safety team by email at [email protected].

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