Image Description: Jo-Anne is a Black woman standing on stage gesturing to the side with her right arm extended out and her palm open. She is looking down at her hand. Her hair is in a short light brown fro. She is wearing a bright green shirt that flows out from her waist ending just past her hips and bright green pants. Photo by Mitchell Jodrey at Halifax Fringe Festival (2023).
What is Accessibility?
Accessibility is the ability to access or benefit from a system, place, thing or experience. For example, a person might consider the physical accessibility of a building, the readability of a website, or whether a performance will have ASL interpretation or audio description. Accessibility brings benefits to everyone!
Accessibility is our aesthetic. We believe it enhances the beauty of performance, and we believe accessibility is a work in progress. We are constantly in a process of learning more about accessibility.
Art and Accessibility:
Curious about how how to make your next art event more accessible? Feel free to ask us questions about accessible marketing strategies, hiring accessibility consultants and ASL interpreters, or how to plan for accessibility from the start of your organizing process.
We want our website to be accessible to as many people as possible. Click the icon at the top left corner of the home page to play with some of the accessibility features below:
Display contrast: You can choose between dark or light contrast Font size: You can change the size of the text Underline links: You can underline links to make them easier to find. Readable Font: You can play with different font types. Accessible videos: You can view signed, audio and captioned videos with transcripts.
Accessible Videos:
Video Description: This is footage of Speaking Vibrations from 2022 at the Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa, Ontario and intends to give a visual and aural example of what the show is like. The trailer consists of quick cuts of all the scenes in Speaking Vibrations. They include footage of solos, duets, and group shots of the performers dancing, singing, and signing. The stage is sometimes darkly lit. Sometimes they are performing in front of a brightly lit and coloured screen, and sometimes there are projections behind the performers with captions of the songs that are being sung or signed. There is a heartbeat sound effect throughout the video.
Video Description: This is a video with clips from Speaking Vibrations 2021 Accessible Concert Film. This video’s intention is to give a visual and aural example of what the show was like in 2021. The video consists of long cuts between all of the scenes in Speaking Vibrations. They include footage of solos, duets, and group shots of the performers dancing, singing, and signing. The video starts off silent, and then there is sound of the artists singing or making sounds from percussive dance. There are English captions during sign language and singing.
