Creative Users Projects: Accessing the Arts

Accessing the Arts is a research and development initiative that aims to amplify D/deaf and disability culture online to make discoverable for the public, a truly inclusive arts culture.

We are working with communities and arts organizations across Canada, co-creating and
designing solutions in the sector that remove barriers in the arts and create more opportunities
for D/deaf and disabled people to connect to and access the arts in a digital world.

Our goals are:

•  To build opportunities for communities to co-create and design innovative solutions that
  make Canada’s arts and culture sector more accessible.
• To deliver daily and accurate updates to underserved communities across Canada about
  accessible events and opportunities in their region.
• To make D/deaf and disability culture visible and discoverable and broaden awareness
  of new accessibility policies and practices.
• To connect artists and arts leaders to the resources, knowledge, and opportunities they
  need most to create and innovate.

Our contributing partners include:

Tangled Art + Disability, Live Describe, Deaf Spectrum, Inside Out Theatre, Luminato Festival, Young People's Theatre, Why Not Theatre, Nightwood Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Theatre Local, the Toronto Fringe Festival, VocalEye, Inclusive Design Research Centre (OCAD5 University), Culture Creates, Accessibility Cloud, Critical Distance, The British Council, Royal Conservatory, Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, Ryerson University’s School of Disability Studies, User Experience Design Program at University of Toronto’s iSchool,
Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology and Access to Life, and Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice.

(Kadi & Lam, 2021, p. 4-5)

Project Website:

https://creativeusers.net/accessing-the-arts/

Organization:

Creative Users Projects

Project Activities:

Research and knowledge-sharing, workshops, network building

Project Publications:

Final Report

Keywords:

Design, Access, Human-centered Design, Difference-centered Design, Critical Access, Deaf and disability arts, Media arts

Timeline:

• "June-Aug 2019: Research planning with academic partners at the University of Guelph
• Sept-Dec 2019: Developing low-fidelity wireframes to explore what kinds of accessibilityinformation may be useful in an art event listing
• Jan-Feb 2020: Developing a functional prototype based on wireframes
• Mar 2020: Conducting usability testing of functional prototype to gather user feedback
• April-May 2020: Conducting COVID-19 Focus Groups as part of user research activities
• June-Aug 2020: Generating design research recommendations for ATA Platform
• June-Nov 2020: Conducting literature review of research on the information needs ofD/deaf and disabled individuals, and on human-centered design practices, with aparticular focus on the arts and culture context
• Nov 2020: Conducting Human-Centered Design Workshops
• Jan-Mar 2021: Emergence of Difference-Centered Design, Writing of Final Report" (Kadi & Lam, 2021, p. 5)

Funding:

Canada Council for the Arts - Digital Strategy Fund

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