Dani Rose
Accessibility expert Dani Rose, Managing Director of Art-Reach, is returning to the INTIX conference to share more knowledge with our global ticketing community. In Las Vegas, Rose is set to present a one-hour session, “Strategic Accessibility Planning,” alongside colleague Adrienne Beckham, Art-Reach’s Associate Director of Leadership Initiatives. Beginning at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 31, the eagerly anticipated session will educate attendees on why accessibility is important and how to evaluate their live event site for access (or lack of access). Guided by the disability rights phrase “nothing about us, without us,” attendees will also discover why inclusion work must center around the disability community and the importance of learning from community members with disabilities.
There will be something for everyone at this session, and the critical learnings apply to organizations of all sizes, types and genres.
“Any organization — or facet of an organization — that works with people, hosts people, communicates with people, employs people or sells to people would benefit from learning about accessibility and addressing it strategically,” Rose says. “One in four people have a disability, and so learning how to include 25% of our global human family behooves everyone. There is no venue or organization in the world that is 100% accessible. Everyone can improve.”
Indeed, a single decision has the potential to significantly impact another decision, says Rose, and one action step can ripple across an entire organization. This applies to arts and culture, sports, college athletics, music, attractions and beyond.
“This session is by no means a lecture in what the regulations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ask us to provide,” she says. “It is crafted to ask organizations to effectively investigate access at every single level and to take prioritized, data-informed, tactical steps to achieve overall strategies and therefore the overall goals our organization has for including people with disabilities in our audiences.”
Rose continues, “Strategic accessibility planning is like building a business plan for increasing your audience development by 25% and increasing audience participation by 25%. And who doesn't want to increase their audiences by 25%? We often think of access as laborious, burdensome work that steps outside of our regularly scheduled program. But by attending the session, you can learn how to make access a part of the regularly scheduled program and, therefore, the labor and the burden are lifted not only off of our organization but also off of the person with the disability. We know that when people with disabilities feel accommodated and included, they will attend more and spend more when they visit our venues.”
If you do not have any background in accessibility, this session is for you. If you are a ticketing professional with significant experience working in accessibility, this session is also for you. And it is for everyone in between, too.
“Anyone at any experience level can benefit from this session,” Rose says. “We will cover both basic and complex topics. What this session will hope to do is turn knowledge into action, and if you know more, you can do more! For our novices, we will provide resources and helpful tips to get you started. For those who are experts, we will challenge the approach to access by centering the individual needs of their community and bolster their expertise with new and innovative approaches to access. Everyone will have a list of takeaways and action steps to begin addressing access as soon as they get home from INTIX in Las Vegas.”
We asked Rose why all organizations should be interested in increasing accessibility and inclusion. “For far too long, people with disabilities have been excluded from our arts and entertainment spaces,” she says. “Maybe we are noticing an uptick in access services — more sensory-friendly tools like noise-canceling headphones, captioned performances or ASL interpreters and Deaf performers going viral after sporting events — but the shift needs to be holistic and global. I think a lot of businesses look at the ADA (or other similar laws around the world) and think there is some checklist of regulations to follow, and if so, they are ‘compliant.’ The ADA protects the civil rights and human rights of people with disabilities, and it prohibits discrimination. While many venues can say they are in state-of-the-art facilities with many access considerations built into the physical space, this provides a certain level of access but does not provide inclusion. You can follow the regulations to the letter of the law and still not be addressing the civil and human rights of people with disabilities in your community.”
Rose adds, “Collectively, as an industry, we are participating in systems and structures and procedures and policies that are designed with one audience in mind, and then we make exceptions and accommodations when we have failed to provide access to all of the other audience members we didn’t think of. Every case of access becomes a ‘special’ case, and people with disabilities have to advocate or follow a different pathway to attend. If we, instead, build access into our policies, practices, procedures and programs, we are intentionally including everyone who we consider our audience.”
A strategic accessibility plan will do just that — help organizations work toward intentional inclusion for all attendees. How exactly will this session help?
“Our approach is human-centered, not policy-driven,” Rose says. “Participants will learn how to look for and solve for access as part of the daily operations and typical customer journey, and not an exception. Our approach centers on the disability community and asks organizations to address access in a proactive, not reactive, way. I’m a data nerd, so we will also show multiple methods of collecting data to inform decision-making. Folks often tell me they want to ramp up access but have no idea where to begin. Our session will direct attendees to create an action-oriented plan to begin to improve access.”
When it comes to intentional diversity, equity, inclusion and access, Rose believes it is important to remember that each of these words mean and address different things.
“When we embrace the diversity of our audiences, we recognize that our community is already enriched with diversity, and we create events or programs that speak to not one but all of the diverse cultures within our area, which takes a certain amount of planning,” she says. “Inclusion means welcoming the full diversity of our area and creating spaces and moments for belonging. This also takes authentic connections and planning. I know one thing for sure — inclusion is not possible unless there is access. You can invite people and welcome them, but if you are not providing access for equal participation, then attending, much less belonging, is not possible. No amount of wanting to include people will create a ramp or captions where there is none. That kind of thing takes planning. Equity? It is even more complex than access. Equity is recognizing that in order for the diversity of our community to be included and have access, we (the organization or host) have to provide what each culture, demographic or individual might want or need to be their truest, most whole self when engaging with your venue. It is impossible to create equitable environments without consideration and intentional planning.”
Rose believes that every strategic planning process starts with a mission, values, a goal or several goals. From there, she says, we must break down how to achieve our high-level goals and live up to our mission via specific action steps.
“A strategic approach asks every facet of our organization to participate, making access everyone's concern and everyone's priority. There are some uncomfortable truths about the way we operate in our industry, where we create environments that fail to include people with disabilities or fail to recognize the needs of our community. Our session encourages everyone to take a strategic approach to inclusion, recognizing the diversity of their community, connecting directly with that community [and] creating initiatives that develop access and begin to address what it means to equitably participate, attend and enjoy our arts and entertainment spaces.”
If you are not already registered for INTIX in Las Vegas, Jan. 29 to Feb. 1, what are you waiting for? Register now to learn from Rose, Beckham and many other entertainment ticketing and live event industry experts.
You May Also Like
Want news like this delivered to your inbox weekly? Subscribe to the Access Weekly newsletter, your ticket to industry excellence.