Creative Users Projects.

Approximately 15% of the world’s population experiences some form of disability. Yet, the chances of being hired for a job (when these individuals are more than qualified and more than capable) is consistently undermined.

The initiative started in alliance with the disabled community, who are tired of being underrepresented and under-appreciated.

“Just a few changes can make the difference between disabled ravers choosing to stay home or going out for a transformative night. This Toronto collective is leading the charge.”

No Body Left Behind is an online campaign centred around the disabled community’s concerns regarding the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, including mask and vaccine mandates. We hope that this campaign will raise awareness around those who are being left behind as the world returns to “normal”.

Deaf, what? is a multimedia exhibit developed by Toronto-based artist Sage Lovell and photographer Alice Lo that highlights the experiences and contributions of activists, change-makers, and everyday people within the Deaf spectrum.

The Disability Arts & Activism Archive (DAAA) will trace much-needed disability* movement and arts history across what is colonially called British Columbia. Reflecting on broader movements across “North America” and even globally, how can we better honour work that has been done by marginalized disabled people in an ongoing and accessible** way?

*disability here defined as – Madness, mental illness, chronic illness, chronic pain, neurodivergence, limb and facial difference, physical disability, sensory disability, d/Deaf/hard of hearing; with the understanding that claiming Disabled is complicated for many for community, cultural, or individual reasons.

**accessible here meaning both where the knowledge is held and how it is presented, ie accessible in time-space and in format-presentation.

Unscripted: KINSHIP is a three-part podcast series exploring themes of interdependence, care and kinship in the arts. Each episode, hosted by Angela Sun, welcomes a different artistic collective to engage in conversation about how they are reimagining artistic collaboration in ways that embrace these themes as well as how relationships and radical reciprocity have been integral to the development of their collective’s unique creative processes.

In celebration of National Accessibility Week (May 29 to June 4, 2022), check out this “Accessibility in Public Art” playlist! STEPS is committed to sharing programming that explores ways to make artwork in the public realm more inclusive. Find a series of panel discussion recordings captured from the CreateSpace program over the past year with a range of artists, disability activists and industry professionals sharing their knowledge and experiences.

Longmore Institute on Disability’s Disability and (Under)representation Event Series presents “Building Disability Communities Online: A Conversation with Content Creators Sky Cubacub, Dev Ramsawakh, and Disabled Eliza. This event aired on May 6, 2022.

Looking for some bite-sized insight into the disability experience? Twenty two percent of all Canadians live with a disability… so we mic’d up our community to get the inside scoop. We invite you to listen to our brand new podcast, with short episodes ranging from thoughtful and serious to light-hearted lampoons.

Business / Arts, the National Arts Centre and Nanos Research have come together to gauge Canadians’ attitudes on returning to indoor and outdoor arts and culture events across Canada. Over 1,000 people were polled through the Arts Response Tracking Survey (ARTS). The results offer valuable insight for arts organizations across the country to help inform re-opening procedures and programming models.

Being Hybrid is a guide to adding hybrid provision to your literature event. Why? Because everyone thinks this is a huge challenge – and it’s not. We are sure that most events can offer a basic range of hybrid position – they just need to understand how.
What’s the problem?

With a full return to in-person events, more and more literature organisations are casting Zoom to the winds and reopening doors to welcome back the crowds.

However, in doing so, they are simultaneously closing the door to another group of attendees. This is a potentially far larger group. This group crosses regional and national barriers. Indeed, it is more geographically dispersed, more likely to be disabled, be poorer, have caring responsibilities, and be unable to attend your in-person event. Many of these people have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Online programming was vital for their connection to the world, and it’s been taken away.

This ODSP & ARTS GRANTS 101 document, compiled in March 2022, has been created by Pro Bono Students Canada volunteers from the Lincoln Alexander School of Law chapter and CARFAC Ontario. It is our intention to provide accessible information to those who may need it, in relation to ODSP qualification requirements and arts grants.

“Cripples ain’t supposed to be happy” sings Anita Hollander, balancing on her single leg and grinning broadly. This moment—from her multi-award-winning one-woman show, Still Standing—captures the essence of this theatre anthology. Hollander and nineteen other playwright-performers craftily subvert and smash stereotypes about how those within the disability community should look, think, and behave.

Utilizing the often-conflicting tools of Critical Disability Studies and Medical Humanities, these plays and their accompanying essays approach disability as a vast, intersectional demographic, which ties individuals together less by whatever impairment, difference, or non-normative condition they experience, and more by their daily need to navigate a world that wasn’t built for them. From race, gender, and sexuality to education, dating, and pandemics, these plays reveal there is no aspect of human life that does not, in some way, intersect with disability.

Arts AccessAbility Network Manitoba (AANM) is proud to announce the completion of a new Accessibility Audit for Arts Venues. This audit differs from others, as it was completely informed and created by the Deaf and disability community. The Deaf and disability communities strongly feels that the true experts of disability and necessary accommodations are those who live with disabilities every day, not doctors, architects or other professionals.

Accessible Activism is a guide created to help transform the way disabled people plan for and participate in multiple forms of activism with the support of community and fellow organizers. The guide hopes to contribute to the life-affirming and essential practice of interdependence within activism.

This refined audit checklist was created to support theatre operators or users to conduct your own self-audit. We invite you to use it, share it and support efforts to reduce barriers to cultural accessibility!

Welcome to Into the Crip Universe, a production of Sins Invalid. Sins Invalid is a disability justice-based performance project that creates artistic and educational work that centralizes queer, trans, and non-binary disabled artists of color.

Words connect us. Words hurt us. Indigenous histories have been twisted by centuries of colonization. Host Kaniehti:io Horn brings us together to decolonize our minds– one word, one concept, one story at a time.

In collaboration with Why Not Theatre, 1S1 Theatre and Dawn Jani Birley have launched the first three pilot episodes for the web series I Am Puff. Accessible to both Deaf and hearing children, the five-minute episodes are a vibrant introduction to Deaf culture. The show is a mix of live-action and animation that incorporates American Sign Language and spoken English, with captioning also available.

Akimbo has put together a short PDF guide on making your social media posts more accessible! Check out their guide for easy-to-implement tips on colour, alt text, image description, video captioning and hashtags.

By Bonnie Sherr Klein

Kate is upset when her grandma (Bubbie) gets a motorized scooter. Will Bubbie still be Bubbie in that scooter?

Kate slowly warms to the scooter after she sees what a good friend it is to Bubbie. And shopping at Granville Island Market with Bubbie and the scooter turns out to be so much fun! Her little brother Nate loves the scooter’s bells and whistles, and Kate makes new friends on their joyous outing.

Now, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together an urgent, galvanizing collection of personal essays by contemporary disabled writers.

From original pieces by up-and-coming authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma, to blog posts, manifestos, eulogies, testimonies to Congress, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse of the vast richness and complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own assumptions and understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and past with hope and love.

Down to the Struts is a podcast about disability & design by Qudsiya Naqui, a lawyer and activist living in Washington DC. She identifies as a blind, South Asian woman, and is dedicated to making spaces and systems more inclusive of disabled people through public education, storytelling, and amplifying the voices of disabled people. She created Down to the Struts to elevate the importance of thinking about disability to build more inclusive systems and structures that acknowledge the breadth of human diversity.

Welcome to the Disability IS Art Podcast! This is a podcast about art and disability here in (K’jipuktuk) Halifax, NS. Join your hosts Kelsey MacDonald, Emma Mader, and Truelee Love for bi-weekly discussions (with guests!) about disability, the arts, and neurodiversity!

Cripresentation is a podcast highlighting queer and trans disabled artists and their work, specifically centring Black, Indigenous and other people of colour.

FWD-Doc in association with Doc Society supported by Netflix presents:

A Toolkit for Inclusion & Accessibility: Changing the Narrative of Disability in Documentary Film

A monthly podcast exploring self-advocacy, accessibility, friendships, and other topics relating to the experiences of blind young adults!

Discomfort Zone features immersive stories on chronic illness and disability showcasing our vulnerability, wellness, and resilience.

A podcast about putting artists, access and disability on stage, right. Welcome! DSR examines access to, and the barriers faced in, training, physical spaces and attitudes through interviews and discussions with incredible Canadian theatre and performing artists with disabilities.

Jointly initiated by OBORO and Spectrum Productions in autumn 2019, the Interrogating Access series of activities aims to equip artists, organisations, and cultural workers with the means to think through accessibility in broader terms, and to learn from the best access practices already undertaken in the cultural sector in Canada and abroad. The purpose of this series of conferences and workshops is to gather the tools necessary to stimulate better access practices in visual and media arts.

The Inclusivity Guide is a one-stop resource for community arts leaders and event organizers. It will help them consider the accessibility of their next art event and encourage the inclusion of individuals with disabilities.

This guide will help arts leaders and organizers:

• Improve the accessibility of their next event
• Increase their awareness of accessibility
• Fill their organization’s knowledge gap
• Ensure events intended for the public can be attended by the public

The Gender Spectrum Collection is a stock photo library featuring images of trans and non-binary models that go beyond the clichés. This collection aims to help media better represent members of these communities as people not necessarily defined by their gender identities—people with careers, relationships, talents, passions, and home lives.

Art Heals is a podcast about arts and mental health, and the people who create to heal. In each episode, we interview someone who uses art to enhance their own healing or who produces work that helps raise awareness about a variety of mental health challenges.

Disabled people have long been experts at staying at home, and getting creative with new ways to stay in community with one another. At the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown, many of us were wondering how we could maintain the sense of intimacy and connection that we get from gathering in crip arts spaces. Out of this desire, Crip Times was born: a new interview podcast series produced and hosted by Yousef Kadoura, Kayla Besse, and Kristina McMullin. Crip Times is a project of Bodies in Translation and Tangled Art + Disability and hosted on Andrew Gurza’s Wheels on the Ground podcast network.

A bi-weekly podcast dedicated to the fringes of the “Canadian” art scene. Hopping the Fence is hosted and produced by Mad-identified artist Rebecca Casalino in Tkaronto (Toronto). Hopping the Fence is recorded on the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Anishinaabe, and Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nations.

Jennie Bovard hosts the monthly podcast Low Vision Moments. Part story time, part comedy, part awareness driven, Low Vision Moments present those funny, potentially embarrassing experiences that happen in everyday life when you are blind or partially sighted … like physical distancing with a post because Jennie thought it was a person.

What Can a Body Do?
How We Meet the Built World
by Sara Hendren

A fascinating and provocative new way of looking at the things we use and the spaces we inhabit, and a call to imagine a better-designed world for us all.

Furniture and tools, kitchens and campuses and city streets—nearly everything human beings make and use is assistive technology, meant to bridge the gap between body and world. Yet unless, or until, a misfit between our own body and the world is acute enough to be understood as disability, we may never stop to consider—or reconsider—the hidden assumptions on which our everyday environment is built.

In a series of vivid stories drawn from the lived experience of disability and the ideas and innovations that have emerged from it—from cyborg arms to customizable cardboard chairs to deaf architecture —Sara Hendren invites us to rethink the things and settings we live with. What might assistance based on the body’s stunning capacity for adaptation—rather than a rigid insistence on “normalcy”—look like? Can we foster interdependent, not just independent, living? How do we creatively engineer public spaces that allow us all to navigate our common terrain? By rendering familiar objects and environments newly strange and wondrous, What Can a Body Do? helps us imagine a future that will better meet the extraordinary range of our collective needs and desires.

Cripping the Arts was a three-day international symposium held in January 2019 at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. It gathered people who share a belief that Deaf, Disability, and Mad arts and activism change how we understand difference, and how we create and experience art and culture. This short documentary highlights some of the memorable moments from the event. The documentary was made by filmmaker Kavya Yoganathan and produced by Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology and Access to Life, in partnership with the Cripping the Arts presenting partners: Creative Users Projects, Tangled Art + Disability, Ryerson University School of Disability Studies, British Council Canada and Harbourfront Centre.

Voices takes a moment to explore the stories of people we encounter everyday. What will people share when they’re given an open platform to express themselves? And who will take a moment to listen? Hopefully you. Hosted by Michelle Brandenburg and Engineered by Camille Craig.

The Vancouver Adapted Music Society podcast.

Reel Access is a year-long initiative by a working group of festival representatives and disability consultants, artists and activists, whose aim is to bring film festivals together to find solutions for improving accessibility at festival events.

This program is dedicated to the education and exploration of disabled life, giving voice to the life and experience of people with disabilities. We cover a wide array of issues and disabilities. We are people who discuss issues we are passionate about and topics we are interested in. We show how disability is in the mind of the beholder.

We talk about equity, inclusion, and accessibility for people with diverse abilities, on campus and beyond. Tune in every second Wednesday from 3-4pm for interviews, music, news, events, and awesome dialogue.

Speak features the stories and voices of BEING Studio artists.

Stories of Care is produced by the C.A.R.E. Centre, and arts groups Innovations in Concert and Bradyworks / Instruments of Happiness, funded by the Quebec government’s “Culture in Schools” program and guided by clarinetist and Artist in Residence Louise Campbell.

The project seeks to empower C.A.R.E. Centre clients to learn and participate according to their abilities, foster their own artistic expression and promote visibility and understanding of what it means to live with disability. Clients will develop skills to record and produce their own podcasts well into the future.

A podcast by Critical Design Lab about disability, design justice, and the lifeworld.

The DisabilityAfterDark Podcast was launched in September 2016, completely independently by Andrew Gurza. It is a podcast that shines a bright light on issues about sex and disability with host, Andrew Gurza.

Learning to navigate a new way of bringing live performances to an audience can be daunting, which is why Attitude is Everything has created an Online Music Events Access Guide, with tips and tricks to ensure that your gig reaches the widest audience possible. It includes guidance for live music spaces of all sizes, from arenas to grassroots venues, and is full of suggestions to ensure that everyone can enjoy your online performance.

Inform & Connect is the American Foundation for the Blind’s ongoing podcast series created to foster togetherness and camaraderie within the blindness community through informal storytelling and learning about relevant and interesting topics.

DisTopia is a podcast produced by DisArt which looks at disability from the inside out. This podcast’s central goal is to raise the voice, visibility, and value of the Disabled community through conversation and critical reflection.

The VOICE Lab is a podcast about disability, art, and access.

How do we unlearn negativity and learn to love ourselves and each other? What’s the first step towards becoming more empathetic? Listening. Academic, TED alum, and advocate Sinéad Burke leads candid conversations to create a classroom in podcast form with diverse, notable guests who explain what it’s like to be them. They challenge us to confront our biases, deepen our humanity, and feel empowered to impact and be ourselves in the world around us. Let’s go!

Disability Arts Online & Graeae present The Disability And…Podcast, which promises to get right to the heart of some of the most pressing issues in arts, culture and beyond with a series of bold, provocative and insightful interviews with disabled artists, key industry figures and the odd legend.

This series explores how the Americans With Disabilities Act has shaped modern life for people with disabilities in the 30 years since it was passed.

The VOICE Lab is a podcast about disability, art, and access, recorded on Treaty 4 Territory at the University of Regina, in Regina, Saskatchewan. You can expect to hear episodes about disability arts in Saskatchewan and Canada, personal experiences of disability and accessibility, and about creative projects from the VOICE Lab. This podcast is made possible through the collaboration and support of Astonished! Inc., the Faculty of Media, Art, and Performance, and the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Regina, and Mitacs, through the Accelerate program.

The Disabled And Here Collection is a disability-led effort to provide free and inclusive stock photos shot from our own perspective, featuring disabled BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) across the Pacific Northwest.

Welcome to the Bodies in Translation year-end digital collages, which compiles the art, activisms, and reflections of artists and researchers throughout the project. Using visuals, text, and audio, these collages reveal the interwoven ideas, and admired works explored by our valued collaborators and artists.

Relaxed Performance (RP) is an accessibility practice which “invites bodies to be bodies” in theatre spaces, including in their movement and vocalizations. RP also involves technical modifications, which were introduced in RP training sessions across Canada over the past several years.

The report was written by Andrea LaMarre, Carla Rice, and Kayla Besse.

#WeShallNotBeRemoved is a UK disability arts alliance formed as an emergency response to the pandemic.

#WeShallNotBeRemoved is a forum to advocate, to campaign and support D/deaf, neurodivergent and disabled creative practitioners and organisations through and after Covid19. The aims of the alliance are:

• To ensure a sustainable future for disability and inclusive arts in the UK through and after the pandemic
• To amplify the voices of D/deaf, neurodivergent and disabled creative practitioners & disability arts organisations at a time of crisis for the arts and for disabled people

Membership of #WeShallNotBeRemoved is free, open to all individual D/deaf, neurodivergent and disabled creative practitioners and disability/inclusive focused organisations operating in the UK’s creative industries with over 400 members.

Disability Reframed is a collaborative online learning community built out of a need for societal reeducation on disability. Disability Reframed combines self-learning with open dialogue and conversation to create a space where decades old attitudes towards disability, disabled lives, and disabled people are dismantled, examined, and then thoughtfully rebuilt.

For many artists – now more than ever – an online presence is the foundation of a ‘successful’ practice. It is how artists connect with their audience, their supporters, and collaborators and is a primary route to financial stability through sales, funding, and partnerships.

But being ‘online’ isn’t simple and for many artists it can be overwhelming and confusing, meaning they miss out on the potential perks. It feels like there is a lot to do, from marketing yourself, running websites and social media accounts, and documenting your work in a presentable and shareable way.

We have compiled this resource for any artist looking to improve their online presence, using our own experience, advice from Shape Artists, and the thoughts and reflections of our wider network.

How to support black lives matter from home.

This article includes information about how to enable the Compose image descriptions setting and instructions for composing image descriptions.

Plain Language Association International (PLAIN) is the international association for plain language supporters and practitioners around the world. Our growing network includes members from over 30 countries working in clear communication in at least 15 languages.

A communication is in plain language if its wording, structure, and design are so clear that the intended audience can easily find what they need, understand what they find, and use that information.

This Access Guide was created for people coming to Cripping the Arts in January 2019. Inside, you will find information about the space in which the symposium was held and about other things participants might want to know before the event.

View access guide (PDF)

CNIB’s goal is to create a better Canada – a barrier-free Canada – where every individual, regardless of vision loss, is able to fully participate in the world around them. Creating this barrier-free Canada means not only ensuring buildings and roadways are safe and accessible for all citizens to enjoy; it also means ensuring that the way we communicate with each other is just as accessible – things like signs, ads, books, websites, brochures, product packages and so many other communication materials we absorb in everyday life. How do we do that? By making the print we produce as clear and readable as possible.

Forms are used for many types of interactions on the web. When we talk about the accessibility of forms, we are usually referring to their accessibility to people who use screen readers or keyboards. People with other types of disabilities are generally less affected by faulty forms. It should be noted, however, that everyone benefits from a well-organized, highly usable form, especially those with cognitive disabilities.

Black, Disabled and Proud: College Students with Disabilities is a consortium of colleagues working in disability services at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Predominantly Black Colleges and Universities (PBCUs) in the United States. They have compiled resources to help connect BLM to disability resources and to help Black students with disabilities learn about intersections of disability and race in the movement.

A group of volunteers providing captions and/or transcriptions for any #BLM-related videos.

IF you find a #BlackLivesMatter Instagram video without captions, DM @transcribe.this and their volunteer team will work on it and post it.

Accessible promotional video produced by Luminato Festival 2017

Access Smithsonian strives to provide consistent, effortless access to the Institution’s programs, collections, and facilities.

In this film, we ask prominent disabled people from the disability community what is the social model of disability, and why is it important to them?

This resource is a new and ongoing initiative of Access Visual Art, AccessTO and Akimbo and aims to provide you with up-to-date and reliable information about the physical accessibility features of art venues.

The Arts and Activism Directory (AAD) is co-produced by Bodies in Translation and Tangled Art + Disability. AAD is meant to recognize, commemorate, and document activism in the arts in Canada. The purpose is to highlight and profile artists in Canada who are exploring activism and social, cultural and political resistance in their practice.

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

In light of these uncertain times, and with an urgency to keep communities actively involved in solving the challenges we face, we’re working with artists and community members to research and compile a central community source of information about supports and online tools for artists and arts leaders to make communication and online activity accessible. Please get in touch if you would like to contribute!

Produced by the Association of Registered Graphic Designers. Revised second edition. This book is meant for anyone involved in the process of designing communication materials. This is a broad group of individuals, including professional graphic designers, clients, educators, students and many others.

The team at Creative Users has designed a special Accessibility in the Arts icons package (containing 25 icons) for all of your print, web and marketing needs.

Download the icons (ZIP file)

Through an EnAbling Change Project with the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario (the Government of Ontario), the McMichael—in conjunction with service providers—has launched art education programs for a wider range of visitors with disabilities within an environment that directly supports their needs.

The toolkit is intended to help agencies evaluate the accessibility of their social media programs for persons with disabilities, identify areas that need improving, and share their own ideas and recommendations for helping ensuring our modernization programs are easily accessed by all who need them.

In partnership with Tangled Art + Disability, the British Council, Harbourfront Centre, Ryerson University, Bodies in Translation and Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice, Creative Users Projects co-hosted the Cripping the Arts in Canada Symposium in January 2019. The digital catalogue from the event is available online

Deaf Spectrum has released a Queer Trans ASL Dictionary, which is being continuously updated.

Host Joeita Gupta along with guest contributors brings us closer to issues currently impacting the disabled community across Canada and the world. Listen Monday-Thursday at 4 p.m. Eastern.

Art in the Time of COVID-19: Part 2 is a panel discussion that explores how we value art and artists during a time of crisis. Even though many artists are increasingly vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic, they’re finding new and innovative ways to share their work for our collective well-being. Captioning and transcripts.

Art in the Time of COVID-19 is a panel discussion that explores how we value art and artists during a time of crisis. Even though many artists are increasingly vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic, they’re finding new and innovative ways to share their work for our collective well-being. Captioning and transcripts.

This is a quick tutorial on YouTube for all the ASL Interpreters figuring out how to provide access during the pandemic.

Meet Me Accessibly is a three-hour audiobook, written and narrated by Jonathan Mosen. It takes you from the basics of attending your first Zoom meeting, all the way to content sharing of your video and audio from a computer or iDevice.

From large-scale film festivals to individual film screenings, this booklet by ReelAbilities Film Festival: Toronto will give you resources on accessibility for people with disabilities so the magic of cinema is available to everyone!

A great resource for the performing arts community in Canada. Generator has gathered tips, tricks, and best practices for producing live performance in Canada and put them together in one place. Check out their Accessibility section for resources to help make your performances accessible for artists and audiences, and more.

This toolkit was developed by the School of Media Studies and Information Technology at Humber College, Tangled Art + Disability and in collaboration with disability-identified, Mad and Deaf Humber students and artists.

The result is an accessible PDF resource of developing practices that informs and educates artists, arts organizations, curators, students, staff and faculty on ways to incorporate accessibility into the presentation of art and design. The project provides practical guidelines around inclusion and access in art galleries and spaces.

The Canada Council for the Arts has produced a guidebook for organizations working with people who are Deaf or who have disabilities. The guidebook containts terminology, tips and best practices for organizations who are working to increase participation of people with disabilities in their work and programming.

The Deaf Artists & Theatres Toolkit by Cahoots Theatre Company serves as a resource and guide to increase innovative collaborations between professional theatre companies and Deaf artists as well as to increase engagement with Deaf audiences.

These resources feature innovative ideas and solutions to support creative spaces such as galleries, museums, theatres and culture hubs in making their spaces more accessible.

Add your skills & capacity to various initiatives, to lend support and potentially reduce the impact of COVID-19 by:

1. Providing relief & support to medical services & vulnerable populations.
2. Strengthen networks & skills to create a faster recovery when gatherings are permitted again.
3. Cope by helping, learning & adapting.

Please note, all initiatives listed in the directory are independently initiated and run.