Imagine yourself leading a regional meeting with representatives from local churches. You’ve been reaching out to diverse leaders longing to include their voices and vote in critical decision-making. But despite your best efforts, most don’t show up. The few who attend seem confused, struggling to keep up without translation. You can almost hear their frustration: “Why should I even bother coming if I can’t understand anything?”
Then, you discover spf.io’s live captions and translation solution. After using it for a few meetings, more leaders start to attend. Your assembly begins to feel whole again, as people feel energized and eager to connect and collaborate.
But just as things improve, another challenge arises: voting. Some leaders hesitate to vote because they can’t understand the question or motion. You’re stuck manually counting votes, dragging out the meeting and leaving everyone exhausted.
That’s when you find out about spf.io’s Multilingual Polls. People can vote in their native language from their mobile devices, while anyone needing captions and translation can follow along. Poll results are available in real time, eliminating the need for manual counting and simplifying the voting process. However, this originally allowed non-voting observers to vote.
Now, with spf.io’s latest release of access control for polls, you can limit voting access to only authorized participants via a “poll-enabled audience view” link. Meanwhile, other attendees can still access live captions and translations, making meetings accessible to everyone.
Why access control for polls matters
The new access control for Multilingual Polls enables you to run a more efficient voting process and maintain accurate results without sacrificing accessibility. Non-voting attendees can still observe the voting process through the non-voting audience view, ensuring your meeting stays inclusive.
What will your audience see?
The image below illustrates the difference in what your audience will see when you start the poll.
If they open the audience view via the poll-enabled link, they will be able to vote, as shown on the screen on the left.
If they open the audience view via the regular link, they will see the screen on the right, where a pop-up will appear showing that voting is in progress.
Read the step-by-step guide or download the PDF guide on how to use this feature here.
This added level of control means only the people allowed to vote can do so, while your meeting remains accessible to everyone in their preferred language.
Leaders who don’t speak English and once felt excluded from decision-making now know their voice and vote matter. They show up because they belong.