Online Workshop: Teaching Sexuality When the World Has Gone Online
Workshop Summary
You didn’t stop caring about sexuality education when the world moved online — you started asking how to keep doing it. This page answers that question. Whether you’re adapting an Elevatus Training curriculum, using your own materials, or just trying to figure out Zoom, what follows is practical guidance from educators who did it first.
Teaching Sexuality Online: The Challenge and the Opportunity
When Katherine McLaughlin launched this workshop, about five months into the COVID-19 pandemic, 250 people showed up. “I don’t want to wait to teach sexuality,” she heard from educators across the country. “I want to start teaching it online, rather than wait until we’re all face-to-face training again.”
The demand made sense. The logistics were harder. Teaching sexuality education in person already requires trust-building, careful group agreements, accessible materials, and close attention to the specific learning needs of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Moving that work online does not eliminate any of those requirements — it adds new ones: platform decisions, tech support, closed captioning, privacy in home settings, and the challenge of keeping people engaged when everyone is on mute, and you cannot read the room.
The good news, as this workshop demonstrates, is that it is doable. “Any curriculum can be used online,” Katherine says. “You just have to think through each piece and adapt it based on what you can do online versus what you can do face-to-face.” When Katherine polled attendees at the start of this session, 28% were already teaching sexuality online to people with disabilities. This is what they — and the three presenters — learned.
Before the Training: Questions to Answer First
Frank Vaca opened this section with a list of planning questions every educator should work through before going live. They are practical and worth revisiting even if you have been teaching online for a while.
What platform will you use?
This workshop focuses on Zoom, which has a strong feature set for interactive online teaching — breakout rooms, a whiteboard, polling, chat, and screen sharing. Zoom’s paid plan (around $20/month for most organizations) supports up to 100 participants and unlocks all the features covered in this workshop. Many of those features — including breakout rooms — can also be enabled on the free version through your Zoom account settings. Other platforms covered briefly: Stormboard for professional brainstorming with a virtual Post-It-style interface; Google Slides for shared editing. Choose based on your participants’ familiarity and your own tech confidence.
Who handles tech support?
If you are presenting, you cannot also watch the chat for tech questions. Assign someone specifically to tech support — a co-presenter, a colleague, or a trusted participant. Katherine uses Helaine, Elevatus Training’s COO, in that role: “If somebody is having trouble, they can chat with her privately and get some help.” Having a separate person focused solely on technology makes a real difference in how smoothly the session runs.
Do you have two monitors?
One for your slides or shared screen, one to see participants. Katherine finds it hard to talk when she cannot see people. A laptop can serve as a second monitor; an iPad works too, and shows you what the session looks like on a tablet. Split-screen mode on a single monitor is another option if a second display is not available.
Have you practiced?
“One of the things with technology is one day everything works great, and then the next day it is showing something else,” Katherine says. “I think we have to be really flexible, too, when we’re using technology.” Practicing with a few people before your actual training — running through screen share, breakout rooms, the whiteboard, and your opening script — reduces surprises. Get on a few minutes early before each session to confirm that video, audio, and any shared resources are working as expected.
What materials do you need, and how will participants get them?
Think through every handout and decide in advance: will you send them ahead of time, share them as a PDF during the session, embed them in the PowerPoint, or mail hard copies? One educator in Michigan mailed all handouts in advance in a binder — and included nametags for the nametag activity — so participants could do the activity from home exactly as they would in person. “Even though you’re not there, they sent all the materials ahead of time,” Katherine said. “I thought that was brilliant.” For educators using the Elevatus Training curriculum, electronic handouts are available free to curriculum purchasers; contact Elevatus if you need the link.
Making Online Teaching Accessible
Aimee Sterk, LMSW — a disability justice activist, social worker, and woman with non-apparent disabilities — brought the accessibility framework to this workshop. Her guidance is specific and practical, grounded in twenty-plus years of assistive technology work with people with disabilities.
Closed captioning — not auto-captioning
Provide live closed captioning. “Auto captioning is technically not accessible,” Aimee says. “It doesn’t meet the criteria for accuracy that a live captioner would have.” For someone who is Deaf or hard of hearing, or who has another disability that requires captioning, auto-captions are not sufficient for a scheduled training. In a pinch, maybe — but not as a planned accessibility offering. Elevatus Training uses ScreenLine, a contracted captioning service, at a cost of approximately $165 per 90 minutes. Captioning companies provide this service remotely — geography is no barrier. For very small groups with no documented need for captioning, you may choose to skip it; for any open or larger session, captioning should be the default.
Include how to access closed captioning in your opening script — it is easy to forget. “I sometimes forget to mention closed captioning and how to access it,” Aimee says. “So we had it right in our notes for our PowerPoint, to talk about that.” On Zoom, attendees on a laptop or desktop click the closed caption button at the bottom of the screen and select Show Subtitles. On a tablet or iPad, subtitles usually appear automatically.
Open with an accessibility script
Write a script for the beginning of your training that goes through every accessibility feature you are offering — and every one you are not using. If you are not using the chat box, say so and explain why, then offer an alternative (Q&A function, email, etc.). “Go through point by point what you want people to know and say right at the very beginning in your welcoming script, what features you do have for access and what features you are turning off,” Aimee says.
This matters especially for the chat box. For some screen reader users, the chat is read aloud over the presenter, making the session inaccessible. What helps some participants may create a barrier for others — so before relying on chat, check in with your participants about what works for them.
Accessible handouts
If you are mailing printed materials ahead of time, use a minimum 14-point font and print on one side per page. Make sure your PDFs are accessible: the test is whether you can select and highlight text within them. If you can, it was created with real type and will work with screen readers. If the text was scanned as an image, it will not. Adobe has published a guide to creating accessible PDFs.
And crucially: “Have your handouts have pictures and words,” Aimee says. “That is really important for people with cognitive disabilities and print disabilities to be able to follow and connect meaning.” For electronic materials, alt-text on images serves the same function for people using screen readers.
Cameras as an accessibility tool
“Cameras can really help with accessibility for people who are hard of hearing,” Aimee says — lip-reading is impossible when cameras are off. Build a group agreement to keep cameras on when possible, while allowing people to turn them off when they need privacy or when the camera feels overwhelming. For participants with ADHD or sensory sensitivities, turning off the camera is itself an accessibility accommodation, not a problem to fix.
When participants do not have devices
Not everyone has a device or a reliable internet connection, and that is a barrier worth naming. Aimee pointed to the AT3 Center — the national hub for assistive technology programs — as a resource: every U.S. state and territory has an assistive technology program that may lend devices or offer low-interest loan programs for purchases. The National Disability Rights Network can also advocate for funding for assistive technology for eligible people. Some educators in this workshop had built small loaner libraries of inexpensive tablets and Chromebooks, with a Wi-Fi hotspot available to borrow as well.
How to Engage Your Class on Zoom
One of the workshop’s central practical questions is: how do you keep people engaged when they are all on mute and you are talking to a grid of small rectangles? Katherine and her co-presenters shared the tools they rely on and demonstrated several of them live during this session.
Chat
The chat box is one of the most versatile engagement tools — when it works for your participants. You can use it for group responses to a question, for private questions to the presenter or tech person, and as a low-barrier way to surface energy when the room feels quiet. “I also use it sometimes when I feel like there’s low energy,” Katherine says. “People are kind of on mute, so it’s sort of harder to jump in. So I might pose a question and have people use the chat.” Assign someone to monitor the chat and bring questions to the presenter — do not try to track it yourself while presenting.
Breakout rooms
Breakout rooms are among the most powerful tools for teaching sexuality education online, precisely because they solve the problem that the main room cannot: small-group conversation. In the main room with everyone on mute, it is hard for participants to jump in. In a breakout room of five people, everyone can unmute and have a real discussion.
“In the small groups, people bond, get connected. They work really well,” Katherine says. Breakout rooms can be assigned automatically — Zoom mixes participants randomly — or manually, where you choose who goes where. The host can pop in and out of any room; participants in a breakout room can click “Ask for Help” to signal the host to come in. You can also broadcast a message to all breakout rooms at once, useful for a “two minutes left” warning.
A few things to know before you use them: give participants any links they need before sending them to breakout rooms, because once they are there, they can only chat within their own room. If the host leaves Zoom without assigning another host, everyone gets kicked out, and the recording stops. And if you want participants to type responses in the main chat after returning from breakout rooms, tell them before they leave — chats from inside breakout rooms do not carry over.
Whiteboard
Zoom’s whiteboard is a direct digital replacement for a flip chart or easel. Access it through screen share → whiteboard. Available tools: text, draw, stamp, arrow, eraser. You can save the whiteboard at the end of the session — it saves to your Zoom folder and can be emailed to participants afterward.
Katherine used it live during this workshop to demonstrate a brainstorm: “What can you do to meet a partner?” Participants typed or drew responses on the shared whiteboard. It is a natural fit for any brainstorming activity you would normally do with markers on a big pad. Only hosts and co-hosts can initiate the whiteboard, but participants can annotate on it by going to “view options” → “annotate.”
Polls
Polls are simple, quick, and a surprisingly effective engagement tool — especially when they are anonymous. You create them in advance on the Zoom website and launch them during the session from the polling button at the bottom of the screen (host only). Results display in real time and can be shared with the group.
Katherine demonstrated two polls during this workshop. The first asked: “Have you been teaching sexuality online to people with disabilities?” The result — 28% yes, 72% no — gave the group an instant shared picture of where they stood. The second question asked what messages participants received about sexuality growing up; “Don’t talk about it” came out on top. “You can use this as a way to talk about, huh, what do you think about this?” Katherine said.
Polls work best with readers. If your class includes participants who do not read, Zoom’s reactions (thumbs up, heart, etc.) are a more accessible substitute. Katherine raised the idea of polls with pictures rather than text — using the annotate function to let participants stamp or mark an image, such as “is this a public place or a private place?” — as something worth experimenting with.
Other tools worth knowing
The spotlight video keeps the current speaker in view so participants see that person prominently, rather than switching the camera based on who is moving. Reactions give participants a low-barrier way to signal agreement or ask to speak without unmuting. And Frank Vaca modeled something worth building into your opening: encouraging participants to add their pronouns when they rename themselves in Zoom, normalizing pronoun sharing as a group practice.
Adapting Face-to-Face Lessons for Online
The adaptation question is not whether you can teach sexuality education online — you can. It is about taking what you have built for an in-person room and making it work through a screen.
Start by going through your existing lessons one by one and asking: what is the core activity here, and what is the closest online equivalent? If you normally brainstorm on an easel, the whiteboard is the equivalent. If you normally have participants handle physical materials, consider mailing them in advance. One educator in Michigan, Sherry, described adapting a body-parts lesson by sharing her screen and having participants identify parts — and she mailed all handouts in advance in a binder, including nametags for the nametag activity, so the bodily-autonomy lesson could unfold exactly as it would in person. Katherine called it brilliant.
A few practical notes from the session:
Page numbers on your PowerPoint. If you give participants a PDF of the slides ahead of time, you can say “go to page 5” rather than constantly switching your screen share. This reduces technical friction for everyone. Katherine noted that she sometimes skips screen sharing altogether and references the PDF: “Sometimes I just refer to the PowerPoint.”
Settings for showing videos. When showing a video during a session, click “Share computer sound” and “Optimize screen share for video clip” before clicking Share. Without those two boxes checked, sound often does not transmit. Test this with someone else on the call before the session. “Sometimes all of a sudden there is no sound even though I’ve clicked those things,” Aimee said. Testing early is the fix.
Google Slides for shared editing. Several educators in the workshop chat mentioned using Google Slides as a shared document that participants can edit in real time — useful for sorting exercises and body-part labeling activities that normally require physical manipulation of cards or objects.
Elevatus Training electronic materials. Educators who have purchased the Elevatus Training curriculum can access electronic versions of all handouts at no extra cost — no scanning required. Online PowerPoints for all 22 curriculum lessons are also available separately. Contact Elevatus if you need either.
Group Agreements and Privacy in the Online Setting
Online teaching introduces privacy challenges that do not exist in a classroom. Participants are at home, and in many cases, they are not alone. Family members, staff, roommates, or children may be in earshot — or on the same screen. These are worth naming in your group agreements before they become problems.
Group agreements for online
Group agreements belong in online classes just as they do in person. Aimee recommended adding a few specifics to the online format: keep cameras on when possible, with the option to turn off for privacy or sensory reasons; stay muted except during discussion or in breakout rooms; use the raise-your-hand feature to ask to speak; use headphones when possible to prevent others in the home from hearing the group.
Consider creating separate ground rules for staff or family members attending alongside participants, specifying that their role is to support — not to speak for — the people they are with. “Give some ground rules for staff and parents around what their role is in the class,” Katherine says. “And you can even privately chat to them like, oh, remember, you’re not going to answer for them.” You can also invite participants themselves to brainstorm what they want from staff and parents on the call, which gives those ground rules more ownership and authority.
Privacy at home
Younger people or other household members who are not participants may not be ready for the content. Recommending headphones is a partial solution — it prevents others from hearing the group, but not the participant’s own responses. It is worth raising this directly in your group agreements and acknowledging that it is not always fully solvable. Katherine noted the parallel to online therapy: “That’s a challenge with therapy, too, online therapy.”
Should you record?
“I wouldn’t recommend recording it if you’re teaching sexuality,” Katherine says. “People might be more self-conscious that it’s being recorded.” If you do record — for your own review or to share with a co-presenter — you must disclose that to participants before you start. The recording should not be shared beyond those who know about it and have agreed to it.
Consent and guardianship
A question came up in this workshop that surfaces regularly: do you need Consent from a guardian to provide sexuality education to an adult with I/DD? “I personally don’t believe that education can be taken away from someone,” Katherine said. For adults who are their own guardians, Consent comes from the individual. For adults with legal guardians, practice varies by state and agency — some ask the guardian as a courtesy, while others treat it no differently from any other life-skills education. In New York, guardianship does not typically extend to education decisions. The Elevatus Training curriculum includes a consent form for participants to sign, placing Consent with the person receiving the education.
What the conversation in this workshop also surfaced: parents who raise concerns about sexuality education are often worried you will “teach them to have sex.” But as Katherine says, “a lot of it is more about healthy relationships and how you communicate. So sometimes they worry about that as well.” Reframing — and motivational interviewing with reluctant guardians about the pros and cons — can move people who were initially opposed. Educators in this workshop’s chat reported that meeting with guardians and focusing on safety typically resolved the opposition.
Free Online Resources for Sexuality Education
Katherine closed the workshop by sharing several free online resources that educators can incorporate into online or in-person classes.
NCIL Sex Ed for Self-Advocates
The National Council for Independent Living created a free video series on sexuality education, made by people with developmental disabilities for people with developmental disabilities. The series covers: introduction and myths, sex/gender/genitals, puberty, masturbation, healthy relationships, Consent, pregnancy, STIs, how to put on a condom, and a wrap-up. The videos are short, which makes them well-suited as class supplements — show one after covering a related topic, then discuss. Search “NCIL Sex Ed for Self-Advocates” or “Sex Ed for IDD NCIL” to find the full series.
Consent videos
Consent for Kids is a YouTube video designed for young children but used effectively with adults with disabilities — its core messages (your body, your choice) are universally relevant. Classic Consent and a Planned Parenthood consent video were also part of Katherine’s shared slides. All three are free on YouTube.
Disability representation in media
The Elevatus Training website includes a curated article reviewing disability representation in television and film — Atypical, Glee, and others — with discussion questions you can use in class. There is also a “Down for Love” CNN story about a couple where both partners have Down syndrome, with relationship-focused discussion questions. And Katherine’s flat-out recommendation: Love on the Spectrum on Netflix, a five-part Australian documentary about people on the autism spectrum and dating. “Watch it. Really good.”
Technology guides for self-advocates
The Self-Advocates Becoming Empowered (SABE) Technology Handbook is a user-friendly guide to technology, including social media, written by people with disabilities for people with disabilities. There are two handbooks plus YouTube videos. Search “SABE Technology Handbook” to find them. Aimee also noted that SABE may have specific guides to using Zoom.
Watch the Workshop
Download the Resources
The following resources are available as free downloads:
Workshop Slides (PDF) — The full presentation slide deck, including Zoom tool demonstrations, the accessibility checklist, and links to all external resources mentioned during the session.
Workshop Chat Transcript (TXT) — The full participant chat from the live session, including tips, tools, and resources shared by educators from across the country — and from the UK and India.
Going Deeper
Getting your lessons online is one part of the work. The curriculum you are teaching — and building organizational support to teach it — is another. These Elevatus Training offerings address both:
Aimee Sterk, LMSW, is a woman with invisible disabilities and has been working in the aging and disability community for over 20 years. She started her career helping people transition out of nursing homes and progressed to policy and program development to support community living using assistive technology. She has presented to and worked with governmental task forces and audiences around the state and nation on inclusion, grant writing, nursing facility transition, financial literacy, disability, voting rights, effective communication, community-based long-term care, and assistive technology. As social policy chair for the League of Women Voters, Aimee coordinated an award-winning program for the National Organization on Disability to increase voter accessibility for older adults and people with disabilities in West Michigan.
Frank Vaca is a self-advocate with the intersectionality of LGBTQ+ issues and autism. He really enjoys helping spread the word about the great products of Elevatus Training. He is a Sexuality Educator for the Michigan Developmental Disability Council and part of the Leadership Development opportunity with the Michigan Disability Rights Coalition. He is also a peer mentor on the side. When called upon by Mary Shehan-Boogaard of the Development Council, he has talked about how having a sexuality education curriculum that is inclusive to all people with disabilities is a must. The Elevatus Training mission is meaningful to him because knowledge breaks down stereotypes and fosters self-awareness for autonomy. His interests, passions, and hobbies include advocating, public speaking, creating digital art, reading, and watching empowering stuff.
Katherine McLaughlin, M.Ed., AASECT Certified Sexuality Educator, is the Founder, CEO, and Lead Trainer for Elevatus Training. She has been a sexuality educator and trainer for over 30 years. As a national expert on sexuality and intellectual and developmental disabilities, she trains professionals and parents, as well as people with I/DD, to become sexual self-advocates and peer sexuality educators.
