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Introduction

This section will cover how planning is essential to access; including how to centre access at the planning stage, gather access needs, financial planning, fundraising and how to manage access budgets.

You can centre access in planning by working through the intrinsic model of accessibility. The intrinsic model of accessibility centres access from the very first planning conversations, through fundraising, planning, production and display, taking account of access needs at every stage. This begins with gathering the access needs of artists, audiences, stakeholders, staff and yourself.

There are a number of ways you can gather these access needs:

Access Riders

An access rider is a document that outlines a person's access needs, often used by artists when working with an arts organisation. It should include information on the access barriers a disabled person faces and what they need to have equal access to work. All artists should be supported in making an access rider at the beginning of the working relationship. The artist should be given the adequate support and information required to make an access rider. An access rider does not require someone to name their disability, and should not be negotiated. Access needs may change over time, which can be flagged in the access rider or sent in an updated rider.

You can see examples of access riders at Access Docs for Artists

Reasonable Adjustments

Reasonable adjustments are a legal requirement in Ireland and the UK, which requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for workers to have equal access to work, promotion and training.

This often begins with a meeting with the manager, where access needs are officially recorded. The employer should then make a plan of how to accommodate the workers' access needs including adaptations to the workplace, access equipment and software, flexible working hours or the ability to work from home.

Reasonable adjustments are often not adequate in meeting all the access needs of disabled staff, but is a useful place to begin a conversation around access. It is advisable that if the reasonable adjustment process does not meet all access needs, an employer should provide further support outside of the process.

Community Consultation

It is also important to centre the access needs and desires of audiences, stakeholders and communities. Creating space for disabled audiences and stakeholders to inform access provision at a museum or gallery is important in ensuring their knowledge, experiences and needs are involved in planning and delivery. You can centre these voices in a number of ways:

Accessibility Steering Group

An Accessibility Steering Group is a paid group of d/Deaf, neurodivergent, chronically ill and disabled people with a wide range of lived experiences that share knowledge with an organisation in the effort of improving access, reducing barriers and combating ableism in a project or organisation. This group can meet for a specific period of time or on a regular occasion to share knowledge and consult on a wide range of accessibility topics.

These meetings can be held online or in person, and should have an access budget to meet the access needs of participants.

Representation on the Board

Boards serve an important role in managing an organisation, hiring staff, building relationships with stakeholders and funders and informing policy. Alongside an Accessibility Steering Group, it is also advised that an organisation should have a number of d/Deaf, neurodivergent, chronically ill and disabled people on the board. With this representation on the board, the lived experiences and knowledge of disabled people will inform the development of a more accessible organisation that is connected to disabled communities and has experience of reducing access barriers.

Access Planning

Once you’ve gathered the access needs of the team and stakeholders involved you can decide on what access provisions the project needs. Every project will be different and every artist will have different access needs so it’s important that access planning is adaptable and centres the needs of those involved. Access planning looks different for every project and everyone you work with, but these are some useful questions you can ask when planning:

  • What are everyone’s access needs?
  • What production schedules are realistic and accessible for everyone?
  • Has anyone flagged any potential flares that may require flexible schedules/deadlines?
  • What staff are needed for this project, what is their capacity and does anyone have leave coming up?
  • Do the artists or staff need support workers?
  • Do the artists or staff need equipment or software to do their job?
  • What does the artwork need to be made accessible? For example: captioning, audio description, seating, a quiet room, touch tours, relaxed viewing etc.
  • Do we need to train staff or generate new partnerships to make this possible?
  • What’s our budget?

Financial Planning

Once you’ve gathered the access needs of all stakeholders, and built an access plan around that information, you can begin to financially plan around those needs. It is advised 10% - 20% of the production budget is ring fenced for access costs. This will allow you to cover planned access costs and contingency for unplanned costs. You may budget for a certain level of access provision, and then an unexpected access barrier arises. It is best to have that budget available, rather than fundraise for it last minute, risking unnecessary access barriers.

This is a high financial demand on often tight organisational budgets that can be accommodated in a number of ways. Firstly, you may choose to reduce the amount of programmes you produce, in order to adequately resource accessible programmes. Reducing programmes can allow an organisation to focus the finances, staff and time needed to produce accessible programmes and work with d/Deaf, neurodivergent, chronically ill and disabled people and artists.

You may also choose to fundraise for these additional costs, or a combination of both.

Fundraising

In the UK and Ireland

Arts Council Ireland, Arts Council England, Arts Council of Wales and Creative Scotland allow for access costs to be requested on top of standard project budgets. When fundraising for art projects or commissions, the access needed for the artist can be fully or partially supported through this. This access budget can be used to hire a support worker, access equipment or software, fees for the additional time needed for some disabled artists, transport or any other access costs needed to make the project possible, and reduce access barriers.

Arts Council Northern Ireland currently does not allow applications to apply for access costs separately from the overall project budget.

In Ireland

  • You can apply through the Capacity Award to build access capacity within the organisation, such as for equipment, seating, ramps, software, consultancy or training.
  • Art and Disability Ireland is a useful resource and funder that specifically funds disabled artists for mentorship, training and new work. They also provide support and advice around access to the projects they fund.

In the UK

  • Arts Council England has limited avenues to fundraise access costs specifically but with thoughtful planning, it is possible to incorporate these costs into organisational budgets. This is particularly pertinent for National Portfolio Organisations (NPO), who can build access costs into their long term budgets when (re)applying for NPO status.
  • Unlimited is an arts commissioning body that supports, funds and promotes new work by disabled artists for UK and international audiences. The funding and support they provide centres the access of commissioned artists and production teams.
  • Shape Arts is a disability-led organisation that works to improve access to culture for disabled people through providing training, funding and participation programmes for institutions and disabled artists.

Consistent Planning

Access centred planning must be consistent as disabled artists, audiences and staff rely on their access needs being met. It may take you some time to implement these policies and use these tools, but it is important that once you do begin to reduce an access barrier, you continue to do so consistently.

  • If you start using captions on films; all films must be captioned.
  • If you work with support workers, you should continue to do so.
  • If a website is accessible, all future websites and content must stay accessible.
  • If a commitment has been made that all venues will be step free, all venues must be step free.
  • If you implement flexible working and working from home policies, they must stay in place.
  • Disabled artists, audience and staff rely on consistency. It is okay to learn as you grow, and learn from mistakes, but access cannot be used tokenistically.

Opportunities

If a project includes sharing opportunities such as jobs, funding, residencies, open calls or other opportunities, it is essential that the information needed to apply successfully is accessible. There are a number of ways opportunities can present information in an accessible way:

Web Accessibility

Web accessibility is a set of standards that ensure a website is accessible to use for people with visual, motor/mobility, auditory, seizure and cognitive/intellectual disabilities. It is a robust set of standards that can be reviewed in full on W3C.You can see examples of accessible websites on:

When designing a website it is advisable that the designer you are working with has experience in accessible web design or is familiar with web accessibility standards.

Colour Blindness

In addition to using high contrast colours, when designing opportunities it’s also essential to consider the needs of colour blind people.

You can check what colours are colour blind friendly on Colouring for Colorblindness.

Readability

Clear, simple and concise language is important in creating accessible opportunities for many reasons. The average reading age in the UK is 9 years old, so language used should be readable for that age group. This involves short, concise sentences with simple language, avoiding long or technical words, such as jargon, buzzwords or art speak.

You can check the readability of a text using Readable.

Image Descriptions / Alt Text

All images on a webpage or online documents should contain image descriptions / alt text. An image description is a written caption that describes the essential information in an image, and can be read by screen readers. This should be used on websites and on social media posts.

Large Text

If a website doesn’t meet web accessibility standards you can include a number of downloadable documents that are screen reader compatible and accessible to those with low vision. This includes Large and Plain text versions. A large text is a document for low vision people in sans serif size 18 font, minimum 1.5 spacing, using bold text, asterisks, or dashes to emphasise a section of text and should contain both upper and lower case letters.

Easy Read

An easy read document is a document that is easier to understand, using short jargon free sentences, larger font and images or symbols. An easy read document should be in a sans serif size 14 font, use recognisable images and be in PDF format that can be downloaded. Easy read documents are designed for people with intellectual and learning disabilities but are useful for people who find reading difficult, have memory issues, and English isn’t their first language.

Audio Version

An audio version is a clear well paced audio recording of someone reading a document. It can be professionally recorded for a high quality file. If resources are limited it can be recorded using the voice memo app on a smartphone, ensuring everything is still legible.

Sign Language Interpretation

A website can also provide sign language versions for each web page available via video. Depending on your location and your audience you will need different sign languages. Irish Sign Language (ISL) is used in Ireland and British Sign Language (BSL) is used in the UK. You may want to consider hiring within your region, as their is variations in language between Scotland and England for example

You can see an example of BSL interpretation on the Unlimited.

British sign language interpreters can be hired via services such as Interpreters of Colour Network in the UK.

You can find information on where to hire an Irish sign language interpreter on the Irish Deaf Society.

It is important to consider the specific lived experience and knowledge of the material that is being interpreted. If the material includes community specific language, such as for queer, Black, Global Majority, Traveller, Roma or disabled people, request an interpreter who has that lived experience and/or knowledge of the language.

Language

Depending on where you are based, offering multiple language options is advisable. If you live in a bilingual or multilingual region it can be helpful to offer multiple language options so the opportunity is accessible to everyone in the community.