Accessibility is…evolving.

The least dangerous approach often requires that we put assumptions aside. Ask questions of your collaborators directly. Attune to decision-making that should be done collectively, with space for dialogue and disagreement. Access needs can be emergent and mysterious, so moving with curiosity is often the best approach. Be especially care-full in comparing your previous experiences with Disabled Artists to new collaborations.

Access is a transformative practice and it’s ever-evolving. Just as the arts are always progressing with new innovations, tech, and more, so is access. There is no one way to achieve access. It is imperative to keep up to date by listening, following, and amplifying the Disabled Community.

Although important disability anti-discrimination legislation has sometimes created standards and definitions about access, there is no one-size-fits-all form of accessibility. Our bodyminds change, our relationships to others change, our interfaces with our surroundings change. And so, too, must our notions of what accessibility is and does.

We end here by stressing this ever-evolving nature of accessibility as a call, an invitation, and a prompt. To keep going, keep innovating, keep learning, and keep connecting.

Disabled Artists are making work that models how the artistic process can be a way of creating the conditions we need to thrive. Disabled Artists make artistry that makes space for all of us. 

“There’s so much in my experiences growing up in an immigrant household, growing up disabled, and having all of these different experiences in which I didn’t have a lot of say of who I was, or who I can be, or who I could be received as. I became possible through the art of making processes where I was creating things that allowed me a fair amount of creative choice. Having that choice, that amount of exploration made it possible for myself within those processes, creates respite: a place where I feel, where I see my wholeness, see abundance, and see that my experiences are enough and have always been.

The process of making art for me is also tied to how I see myself and how I am in the world. I don’t know if I would be here if it weren’t for having an artistic process. I don’t know who I would be without it.“

Yo-Yo Lin, “On the Process of Processing”