Key Moments to Consider Accessibility with Shay Erlich

TRANSCRIPT:

“Disabled people make up approximately 30% of Canada's population right now. We have one or more disabilities. And so whenever you're thinking about people, whether you're thinking about staff, patrons, artists, anything, make sure that disabled people are among that group of people.”

I am so happy and delighted to have Shay Erlich with us to talk about when cultural leaders should consider accessibility in their planning. Now, Shay is an accessibility consultant, also the founder of Ready for Access and an artist who tells stories through many different mediums and a journalist. Welcome, Shay.

Thank you so much for having me here, Heather. I'm really happy to be here.

Thank you. So what would you advise people in terms of knowing when to consider accessibility in planning?

Yeah. So the most important moment to consider accessibility and planning is any time that you're thinking about people.

Disabled people make up approximately 30% of Canada's population right now. We have one or more disabilities. And so whenever you're thinking about people, whether you're thinking about staff, patrons, artists, offering workshops to the public, anything, make sure that disabled people are among that group of people that you're thinking about.

I love that. So that's like every time you're planning anything that includes people, which is pretty much every program.

Absolutely. And so along with that, when do we think about people and what we're doing at the very beginning? So, like, when we're at the beginning, that's the best time to think about accessibility, because that's when we're planning our budgets. That's when we're picking our venues.

That's when we're picking, you know, our times of day. The structure of our event. All of those things get decided right away. And if you're making those decisions with access in mind, you'll save yourself so much work down the road.

And then along with that, when you're considering accessibility right at the beginning, you continue that conversation about accessibility into the story that your budget and your workplan are telling. So when you're applying for funding, increasingly juries are asking that question. How is accessibility being considered in your plans? And there are disabled people sometimes, depending on the fund.

Me at the other end of those applications who know how to read your accessibility story through your work plan and your budget, and you want to make sure that all of those elements are lining up just the same as you would for every element of your funding proposal.

Another key moment to think about accessibility is in your communications again, because communications are going to people.

Those people who are communications are going to, include disabled people and disabled people, kind of now don't go to events where their accessibility needs are not being taken into consideration in that invitation to show up. We've come to realize that organizations who know how to make us feel included at our event are taking the time to include that information and create the format and include the information that we need to know.

And we take the absence of that information as a signifier that that organization is not ready to host us and meet our needs. And so if you are doing great accessibility work, make sure that that follows through in your communications and that the community knows about it.

There's so many layers in that. So communication being in the what and the how and the what, it's about being so key. Thank you for highlighting that.

Yeah, absolutely. That's, really such a big one. And it's the thing that really makes it or breaks it, and it's where it's evident if you've done your homework or not. And then in the last place, the last piece that I would share is when you're doing evaluation and strategic planning, that when you're asking that question of how did this go, one of those regular questions are to disabled people, show up.

Do you disabled people in your organization because they're absolutely there? Feel safe to talk about their experiences in your organization as a disabled person, or speak from that experience of having disabilities? Do you only provide access features for external offerings? What would be good for both inside and outside of your organization, asking yourselves all of those kinds of questions at regular intervals, will really help move your accessibility practice forward.

It's showing not just the efforts. It's actually showing the results of those efforts.

Absolutely. And it's really just following accessibility through the entire cycle of everything that you're doing within your organization and just making sure that it's one of those pieces that you're checking in on.

Another question for folks to ask themselves in terms of evaluating events is looking at the access equity of an event, which really is looking at what was the experience that a disabled person had when accessing that event.

Did they have to do more work than non-disabled people? Were there different procedures? Were there parts of the event that they couldn't access and really looking at not just added, we make it accessible, but how was that overall experience for someone who required an accessible experience versus someone who did not?

Absolutely. And is that something that Ready for Access helps organizations do?

Absolutely. Ready for Access very much specializes in looking at working or working from an access equity informed perspective. And so things are going okay, but you know that they can be better. That's that's where we specialize in helping folks get from. We're doing great. But we want it to be better.

Yeah. Love that always I think always a question and always part of the process.

So where can people find you and ready for access?

Yeah. Ready for Access is on most social media. We're still very young so website is still under development. But come find us on social media book, conversation with me. And I'm happy to take folks through what we can do for you.

Fabulous. Thank you so much, Shay.

And we would love to hear from everybody watching and listening to this,: what are your thoughts are when considering accessibility in your planning?