Accessibility for
REAL TIME EVENTS

Art Exhibitions

Art Beyond Sight opens in new window provides online accessibility training in verbal description of artwork.

Vital Practices in the Arts opens in new window is a resource guide for documenting, producing, and sharing arts and knowledge in ways that are accessible, collaborative, and disruptive.

Accessing the Arts opens in new window (ATA) is a Deaf and disability arts initiative bringing together artists and arts leaders to build knowledge around design thinking in our communities and center difference in the design and development of accessible solutions in the arts.

Akimbo opens in new window is a Toronto-based company that promotes contemporary visual art, video, new media, and film locally, nationally, and internationally via the internet, mobile and social.

The Braille Legacy opens in new window is a musical about Louis Braille performed by a cast of blind and visually impaired actors.

The Cripsters opens in new window is a monthly feature on disability and culture from the point of view of disabled people featuring topics that intersect with art and disability through a social justice lens and that crip/disrupt the way we think about disability.

Disability Arts International opens in new window previews a short film about touch tours and access and inclusion.

American Alliance of Museums opens in new window and why accessibility is more than compliance.

Art History Teaching Resources opens in new window is a peer-populated platform for educators who use visual and material culture in their teaching practice. This online class looks at examples of the disabled human body as it has been represented in art history.

Amy Herman opens in new window tells us that the average museum guest spends 17 seconds viewing each piece of art and says that Harvard Art History professor Jennifer L. Roberts requires her students to sit before a single painting for three full hours, a time she says is “explicitly designed to seem excessive” so that they might truly take the time to excavate the wealth of information in the piece. This blog post on Visual Distractions opens in new window invites the viewer to really look at a painting and make note of everything you see.

Johanna Hedva opens in new window shares a template for an ‘access rider’ for artists and speakers at art and literary events.

ASL for Performance

The Sound of Metal trailer opens in new window: Punk-metal drummer Ruben (Riz Ahmed) begins to experience intermittent hearing loss. When a specialist tells him that his condition will rapidly worsen, he thinks his music career — and with it, his life — is over.

The Sound of Metal star Paul Raci opens in new window discusses how he discovered acting by interpreting films for his Deaf parents.

A selection of poems from Deaf Republic opens in new window by Ilya Kaminsky, with animated illustration by Jennifer Whitten published in The New Yorker, February 11, 2019.

Christine Sun Kim opens in new window describes how she combines American Sign Language and musical notation systems in her drawings.

Christine Sun Kim opens in new window performs the American National Anthem at Superbowl LIV

Christine Sun Kim opens in new window describes her disappointment how only a few seconds of her performance was shown during the Superbowl LIV, broadcast on Fox TV. “I had hoped to provide a public service for deaf viewers and believed that my appearance might raise awareness of the systemic barriers and the stigmas attached to our deafness—and move some people to action,” she writes. “I hope that despite the failure of Fox to make the performance accessible to all, it did do that.”

Deaf Broadway opens in new window production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Zoom

Amber Galloway Gallego's website opens in new window has examples of her work and information about Music Interpreting

Education, Conferences and Festivals

Cripistomologies of Disability Arts Culture: Reflections on the Cripping the Arts Symposium opens in new window: A special issue of Studies in Social Justice reflecting on Cripping the Arts, centering ‘cripping the arts’ as a political project.

Joy Stacey of Drake Music opens in new window summarises the key findings from Drake Music’s research in to how we can make online music education accessible and inclusive.

Get Creative with Classical Music opens in new window from the BBC highlights Figurenotes opens in new window, a simple and progressive way to learn to read and play music. Each musical note has a colour, and each octave has a shape.

The Guardian opens in new window asks the question “So, where are the disabled music teachers?”

My Music Ability opens in new window is a pilot project for inclusive music education at the music teacher training college of the Conservatory of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In March 2018, it invited the UK’s Drake Music to be ‘artist-in-residence’ to help facilitate the project. Senior Lecturer of Music at the Conservatory, Melissa Bremmer reflects on the initiative.

Drake Music Scotland opens in new window has 22 tips for inclusion and accessibility in music education.

Rendezvous with Madness (RWM), founded in 1993, presented annually by Workman Arts opens in new window in Toronto, is the one of the first, largest, and longest running mental health arts festivals in the world. RWM uses art as an entry point to investigate realities and myths surrounding mental health and addiction and encourages the breakdown of stigma across many cultures. Each film screening is followed by a panel discussion with filmmakers, mental health professionals and people with lived mental health experience. RWM includes performances, artist talks, art exhibitions, question and answer sessions, and workshops. You can visit the RWM archive of films, catalogues, performance, artist talks, and question and answer (Q & A) panels here opens in new window (RWM, 2021).

Inside Out opens in new window challenges attitudes through the promotion, production and exhibition of film made by and about 2SLGBTQ+ people of all ages, races, and abilities.

For nearly 30 years, Inside Out has brought Toronto's 2SLGBTQ+ community together in celebration of the best queer film from Canada and around the world. Through annual Festivals in Toronto and Ottawa, filmmaker initiatives, youth engagement, workshops, and year-round events and screenings, Inside Out is engaged in challenging attitudes and changing lives.

Funded by the Toronto Arts Council, the Inside Out access guide was developed in 2019-2020 by film festival representatives and disability activists and consultants to address obstacles and barriers to accessibility at film festivals in Toronto.

Reel Access Accessibility Resource Guide 2.0 opens in new window

Teaching and Learning Research In Action opens in new window produced a series of short videos based on making media accessible. Yhasmina Garcia, Chelsea Jones, Sheyfali Saujani, and Anne Zbitnew share their suggestions for how educators can collaborate to address access in media production.

Theatre Performance

Inclusion, Don’t Forget About Us: Disabilities in Performing Arts in The Harvard Political Review opens in new window describes Chickenshed Theatre from the UK and Shedhelsinki opens in new window from Finland, two inclusive theatre organizations that remind us that disabled actors exist (stop ignoring them), spaces should be open and accessible, and what to do next.

CBC's Q with Tom Power opens in new window features an interview with Dawn Jani Birley, who performs as Horatio in Prince Hamlet in American Sign Language.

The Conversation opens in new window discusses relaxed performance, radical accessibility, disability arts, and the importance of reaching a diverse audience.

Listen to an interview with David Roche, a self-proclaimed "inspirational humourist" who took to the stage with jokes and personality to explain his facial difference so that others could get past it.