Arts Access - a simple "How To"

Access is becoming an increasingly important issue in society. The Australian Government's National Disability  Insurance Scheme is just the latest example of where it's currently sitting on the public policy radar. For cultural institutions, it is a good idea to not just cover the bases but to really be seen as a leader in access, pressure from government bodies is one reason, but it's also about corporate citizenship, good PR, and adhering to a vision that says the arts is for all. Another plus is done right you can build a small audience of incredibly loyal patrons.

The good news is that for the performing arts, getting a best practice access program is actually pretty easy. Here are the steps.

1. What is your legislative environment and are you up to par?
   All Councils, State Government's and Federal environments are slightly different, there's a good chance that you already cover the minimum bases - ie you have wheel chair spaces in your auditorium, ramps and lifts installed etc, however you may not and there may be a lot issues you've never even considered. The best first step is to commission an Access Audit. http://www.accessauditsaustralia.com.au/aaa_contact.aspx is one but there a few out there. You will get an independent report which you can then take to your board and argue for funding.
2. Review the report and implement what you can!
   This is really it, some things you may learn are; counter height, your wheelchair seats might not be placed in a space that allows them full access to the range of prices on offer and exactly how bad your website is for text readers.

Obviously some issues, such as installing lifts are major capital expenses but there are some cheap and even free programs you can make happen to start improving your venue/organisation's accessibility. Here are some really simple ones:

• Publish a large print version of your season brochure.
  This is just a simple copy, paste, print, bind job that anyone in your office can do. We did 25 Copies for our season launch and after the mention of our access services during the speeches all of them went that night and we had to pre-print. Check with your local vision impaired institution for benchmarks re text size, but the minimum is usually 12 point for enlarged and 16-18 for large-print. Once you've printed these off, tell your local institutions you've done this, give them copies and promote the fact on your website, at box office and via other means.
• Offer Tactile Tours and Audio Described performances
  Vision Australia provide Canberra Theatre Centre with volunteers to offer these services. You may find that your local institution offers these resources free as well. what you do is schedule a session, usually a matinee, for these services, promote the dates (and people MUST book in advance). On the day, the trained volunteers lead a discussion on stage with cast/crew members where key props, costumes and set piece are handled by the vision impaired patrons explaining their significance to the story. Then during the performance the patrons wear a special headset where audio describers give context to the spoken performance (ie "disgusted daughter walks off stage in a huff and slams a door"). The only cost of this service is a once off fee to purchase the headsets and a commitment to administer and promote the service.
• Consider loops, live captioning, FM headsets, signed performances for the Deaf and hearing impaired.All of these services are available and are reasonably affordable to implement and provide (no more than a few thousand for initial hardware and set up and specialist labor costs each performance for signed and/or live captioned performances). What technology to employ really depends on your priorities, I would argue for loop systems throughout both foyers and auditoriums as most hearing aids can tune in without needing special equipment and back up headset units for those without access to a T-switch. I would then employ a live-captioned performances throughout the year and only really consider a signed performance as a maybe once/twice a year special event (the signing Deaf being a sub-set of captioning using deaf). 
  The http://captioningstudio.com/ provide the best practice captioning service, including their world first iPhone app allowing patrons to follow the show on their own devices and there are many places including http://www.wom.com.au/ that can provide best practice advice regarding loops and headsets.

• Strobe, Haze, Smoke effectsThis needs a to be taken seriously for epileptics and those with breathing difficulties and should always be communicated when known on your website and certainly any complaint refunded. We have now adopted a process where we inform all patrons to consider that all performances may have these effects and to contact us if you have a query until such time as we know for sure.
• Carer Seats
  This is a pseudo legislative issue in Australia and basically any patron with a companion card is entitled to a free seat for their carer. Again this service really costs very little and is a cheap and easy 'win' to implement.
• Dedicated Programming
  Once you have these services in place it is easy to look for a dedicated kids show and use this as a chance to allow deaf, hearing impaired or vision impaired children to experience theatre. You may also schedule other performances such as Rain Man, which allow you to interface to autism associations and carers, it just requires an awareness within your organisations that these relationships are possible and can be used as great opportunities. Rain Man for us generated over 100 ticket sales which were used both as a fund raiser for the autism association and a shared experience for carers.
• Promote it!
  Once you have a small suite of access service generate a brochure, website, media release etc to tell people and make sure the related organisations all have copies and are on board to help promote the services. Then continue to monitor the use of these services and feedback from patrons.
• Nominate a Champion Be it self nominated or made part of a job role – it doesn’t work without a champion pushing it through and sticking up of access-imapired patrons.
• Tricks For Young Players
• Make sure any special headsets used are subject to a process of pre-show checking for battery life and are working. 
• Have a process whereby seats are set aside for people using live captions, carer seats, and the like. 
• Think about wheelchair spaces when exercising prestige pricing strategies, if not you are a law suit waiting to happen. 
• Get whole of organisation buy in especially - front-of-house, ticketing and technical.
• If using a smart phone based captioning device, does 3G work inside your thick auditorium walls?
• Respond to any complaint immediately - these are amongst your most vulnerable patrons, they trusted you when you said they could come back and enjoy the theatre and now you may have let them down.

This is pretty much it for access, take it seriously, make some innovation happen and trust me it will be one of the most satisfying projects you can undertake, especially when a patron writes in thanking you for allowing them to experience theatre once again.

• Website Accessibility Making a genuine five star accessible website is hard, expensive and you can often compromise the experience for everybody else. If your legislative overlord is not especially pushing the issue, it is best to make the issue known to your web developer in order to cover as many bases as possible such as alt tagging images with a description of that image for text readers. BUT technology is constantly improving so it is alway good to have this as a criterion in any future website tender and make the call as you negotiate with vendors.