DCA March Accessibility Webinar

Florida Division of Cultural Affairs and VSA

March 27, 2013 12:00 p.m. EST

Captioning Provided By: Vicki Johnson, CRR, CCP, CBC Realtime Communication Services, Inc. Tampa, Florida 33656 813-814-7736 phone [email protected] Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

How to Plan a Successful Visit for the Hearing Impaired.

>> Maureen: Good morning. This is Maureen McKloski of the Cultural Affairs division.

>> Good morning, Maureen. This is Anna Glenn.

>> Maureen: Good morning, Anna, nice to have you with us this morning.

>> Marian: Terry, this is Marian asking a question. I'm not sure if Maureen has asked you. Yesterday, we were talking about listening devices in the theater. We didn't know how, when you have a cochlear implant, how that works for you.

>> Terry: How that works for me. Well, Marian, I still use captioning.

>> Marian: Okay.

>> Terry: It has devices that will hook up to my cochlear, but I'm still, as my brain still tries to recognize language, I’m still training -- the brain is still being trained. I go -- for instance, there is a movie theater here that captions everything. They have glasses that will caption even in 3D. So every single movie they have at the Governor's Square is captioned. I go to the theaters in London like the Open Air and National that have captioning. Here, there is only one theater that has captioning so I go to our theater.

>> Marian: Okay. Thanks!

>> Maureen: Good morning, Vicki. Vicki is with us and transcribing.

>> CART provider: Good morning.

>> Terry: So, Maureen, you will remind everybody to introduce themselves before they speak?

>> Maureen: Yes, ma'am.

>> Maureen: Good morning, Brian, nice to have you with us today. >> Brian: A pleasure.

>> Maureen: We are providing open captioning services. This is provided by the VSA and the Division of Cultural Affairs from Realtime Communication Services. Vicki Johnson will be transcribing today. We will have, in order of speakers: Marian Winters, the Executive Director of the VSA Florida covering definitions and Strategies. We will then have Brian Hersh, Education and Outreach Director for the Asolo Repertory Theatre from Sarasota speaking. We will have Anna Glenn, the curator of public programs, Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. Then we will have Terry Galloway from the Mickey Faust Club in Tallahassee. Then, I will be doing Tools and Statistics. This is Maureen McKloski from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. We will also have a question and answer period. If we do not have time to answer all the questions, we will do them in an e-mail after the Webinar is concluded. You can always feel free to e-mail or call me with any questions that you have regarding this or any other accessibility issue. You can call me or e-mail me or fax. The Communication Access Realtime Translation accommodation is provided by Tess Crowder of Realtime Communication Services and Vicki Johnson is here with us today doing the transcribing. The provision of an effective CART accommodation using CART depends not only on the skill of the CART provider, but also on the ability of the CART provider to hear what every speaker is saying. Please speak slowly and clearly. In addition, speakers must identify themselves every time they speak, so the CART provider can identify them to the remote listeners. Our goal for this series is to provide you with the resources and information needed to create successful implementation and experiences for your organization and broaden the outreach to your community. Accessibility Webinars are to provide you with the information and resources regarding marketing, statistics, for media and board members, tools and real stories from real people. Remember, that the first step in building audiences and engaging the community is to insure that the facility and programs welcome people with disabilities. We would remind you to speak again slowly and clearly and identify yourself each time you speak. We will begin with Marian Winters and we appreciate everyone joining us today.

>> Tim: This is Tim Storhoff, the information specialist here at the division, so I'm kind of watching the tech aspect and I'll be able to answer questions in the chat box as they come up. Marian, I will hand over control of the Power Point to you now.

>> Marian: That's scary, Tim, thank you. And thank you, Maureen. I apologize up front for my voice, but I've got this cough that's going around and luckily, we're not in the same room. So it is a pleasure to be here today. I want to just briefly go through some of the best practices for the population of people who are hard of hearing or who are deaf. So, the population is hard to picture because having a hearing loss isn't always something that you recognize right away. So, briefly, here are some pictures just to go through, that might be people who are -- who have hearing loss or not. I just wanted us to think about the population. These performers actually do have a hearing loss and they're from China. They performed at a VSA festival in D.C. a couple years ago. What the whole purpose of this discussion is, for us not to be like this young man in the picture, looking at nothing and not understanding what he's doing. So for the terminology, hard of hearing are individuals who have usable residual hearing or use hearing aids to amplify sound. Deaf individuals have little or no usable residual hearing. The statistics say there are about 10.3 million people who have hearing impairments or 3.5 in the national population. Florida reports about 680,000 individuals. And it ranges from a brief hearing loss from mild to profound. Some people can hear certain sounds while others might not be able to hear anything. It's a population that has quite a range of abilities. I want to briefly go through some of the tips when you're working with someone identified as having a hearing loss or who is deaf. You need to try and get the person's attention tactfully. You can wave your hand. Sometimes people suggest tapping them on their shoulder but sometimes other people say that's not appropriate. I think you find that out when you work with that person, or flash the light. When you look directly at the person who is speaking, if you're using a sign language interpreter, speak directly to the person who is deaf, not the interpreter. That shows respect for the person and the interpreter knows where to position themselves in order to do their job correctly. If you position yourself so that the object being discussed, this is for visual art museums is between you and the interpreter and within the line of sight of the patron. Be careful that you make sure that you face the light source rather than the patron facing the light source. When you're giving a tour or you're walking around your facility and you have patrons who are hard of hearing, try not to give out any information to patrons when traveling between the exhibits. Be a lively speaker, use facial expressions. Rephrase rather than repeat and don't assume that someone with a hearing aid can hear you. You still have to follow the best practice tips even when you know that person uses a hearing aid. When we speak to individuals, we speak under many different environments. One-on-one with the individual, there's an informal group meeting and there are formal meetings, in a classroom or in the performing arts or at parties or restaurants. Depending on the kind of place, or your environment, it depends on some of the tips you might want to use. I'll speak for a few minutes on presentations, when you give a presentation and you have someone who is hearing-impaired. Best practice would be to assume that there might be someone in the audience who is hearing-impaired because oftentimes people don't let you know that they do have a hearing impairment. The best practice would be to take turns speaking, no two or more people speaking at the same time. Prepare an agenda prior to the meeting so people who can get a copy of what the discussion is going to be about. Follow the agenda, have materials in writing. Have a note taker and in our instance today, we're having our CART reporter and thank you very much for that. Send out a written summary of the meeting and repeat questions asked by the audience and reemphasize, repeat main points. These are pretty good any time we give a presentation. You need to project your communication, don't shout, and speak clearly at a moderate pace; don't hide your mouth, chew food, gum or smoke while you're talking. If you're speaking with a microphone, try to have the microphone not hide your lips because some people will continue to read lips and they will need to see your lips. So you have to position yourself correctly with the microphone. It's okay to rephrase if you are not understood. Try not to use the same language, but it is okay to rephrase. It's also okay to communicate with a pencil and paper, if need be. Let people know when you're changing the subject. Sometimes people with hearing loss will want to communicate with you and you need to give them some time to communicate. Be positive and stay relaxed. Individuals who have had a hearing loss from birth, their language may be a little bit slower than others, so you need to allow times for them to give their responses back. Talk to a hard of hearing person, not about him or her and offer respect to help build the confidence. In a recent workshop I gave at the Harn museum, there was an individual with a hearing loss. We also happened to have an acoustician and the individual with hearing loss said there are many places I can hear and places I cannot and the local Acoustician said that Acousticians can go into your facilities and find those spots where hearing can be maximized. I thought that was pretty interesting. They'll also identify for you those spots that are dead, and which you really shouldn't have any conversation going on. An accessibility checklist for people with hearing loss; your information should be in public announcements about access, signage to inform people of available hearing assistance, amplification available if you have it and your information desk and education staff well trained. That's really most important, to make sure your training for your staff is ongoing and they're trained for any disabilities we may be talking about. Your access should be available on your website, what information you have, what accommodations you have; also, when you send out e-mails and through your social media. Your programs, not only does your facility need to be accessible, most definitely your programs. Again, we look for written material, scripts of videos and spoken presentations are important, Captioning, when available and Assistive listening systems. And I know Maureen will go into that. You may have an ASL interpreter or you may use a CART reporter. When you're working with your programs, you need to make sure that your lighting is good, that they can – individuals can read the labels or read information and also necessary to have lighting for where you stand, if you're using an interpreter. Labels can be confusing and for someone who has a hearing loss, it's even more so. Make sure your labels are understood by the population. The best way to help you do this is to have some individuals who are hearing-impaired go through and look at your labels and see if they understand what you're trying to get across.

I will answer the question about CART in just a moment. I see that question came up. You need to have a visual fire alarm system because individuals with hearing loss won't be able to hear the alarm and also another alarm system where something is going on where people might be alone in the museum, say in the restroom or other certain areas. The CART system is what's happening right now with our reporter. They take down exactly what is being said and type it out on a screen. It could be a large screen, if it's in a presentation, where you are in the audience. For today, the CART reporter is typing online to individuals who need to be able to read what words are being said. Tess's group is able to do her CART reporting for all over the state, if you're interested in using that. And her information will be available to you all. Just to let you know that these issues that we're talking about are important and they unfortunately go up before the Department of Justice to have settlements made because people have filed suits against organizations such as the Spy museum in D.C., in the 2008 ruling, they said they need to provide captions for all audiovisual audio only and computer interactive program or provide the scripts or raw text or ASL interpreter and they have to display information. So what we want here, through our workshop, our Webinars, is to make sure that we don't read about you in having a suit against you for something that you could have easily worked on. A suit also says that you have to designate an ADA compliance officer, which is part of your application to the Division, so you have to list that person's name. You also have to train your supervisors and managers. We say that you -- all your staff should be trained in how to provide access for individuals with disabilities. And that the training should be within 30 days of the new hire. That's very important because there's always turnover. We ask that everybody have good training to be able to work successfully with all visitors to your facilities. And so the Justice Department has said that the settlement will serve as a model for insuring enjoyment, required by the ADA. That's why I want to bring it to your attention. That's all I have for you today. Thank you. >> Maureen: Thank you so much, Marian. Now, we have Brian Hersh, the Education and Knowledge Director for the Asolo Repertory Theatre for Sarasota and he will be speaking about the Shadow Theatre interpreted program and Open Access Theatre Series.

>> Brian: Thank you, Maureen. This is Brian Hersh. Thank you, Marian as well for having me today. I want to talk about three specific things today. One, what is Shadow Theatre? How does it impact audiences and artists? And how can it be applied in the future? So just a quick note even about Asolo Repertory Theatre; we've had a long standing commitment to accessibility. One of our programs is kaleidoscope a theater program working with adults and teens with disabilities, which we just received an award for this winter. Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs, the open access series is one of these series. The south Miami-Dade cultural arts center and their general manager, Eric, approached us one day about Shadow Theatre, since we now have a touring project. They described Shadow Theatre to us. It sort of happened as such: “We know of ASL interpreters and when they're often at a theater performance, we will see the interpreters to the side and all the action happening in the front and what then happens is in Shadow Theatre, we then have the cast, in this picture, in their costumes, and then we have interpreters, who are actually out front often and using ASL to give the dialogue to the stories and performances. What this then does is give a seamless performance. So people who are deaf and hard of hearing and who understand ASL don’t have to choose; do I want to look at what the dialogue of what's happening or do I want to see the action? With Shadow Theatre, it's a holistic performance. You experience both in real-time. The sign is happening along with the action.” What Asolo Repertory Theatre is able to do; we have a production we do each fall. In this case, this is a shortened performance of Hamlet. It's about 60 minutes and we often do pieces in Shakespeare and pieces of classic work. So what happens essentially, is our ASL interpreters, who are not necessarily actors but ASL interpreters, first take a look at Shakespeare's language and interpret that into contemporary English. When any of us hear or read Shakespeare, we may not be able to understand it to its fullest. So the ASL interpreters then interpret it into English and contemporary language first, and then find the ASL signs that will tell the story most seamlessly. A lot of research is done generally. As a theater company we send the adaptation to the interpreters and send videos of rehearsal and then exchange and the ASL interpreters will sit in to some rehearsals as well. Then, when we are touring, from Sarasota we have gone to Miami, we then are in residence about a week, where we rehearse seamlessly, because in each of these performance, there might be a fight, there's various specific choreography, a lot of movement and blocking. The ASL interpreters always kind of trumpet -- you're never in our way, we can only be in your way. There's a fast quick learning curve to make sure that people are moving together and the action is indeed very seamless. One of the things that we have found in this project or one of the impacts from using ASL; is that certainly we're giving access to a group who may have not always had an easy time to understand Shakespeare. I really find that applies to everyone. Hard of hearing, deaf or not, because Shakespeare, the language is complex, the ASL, in many ways, it's so beautiful and so seamless and very picturesque at times, that it gives everyone an opportunity to comprehend the story and it's real time- while it is happening. What we have found is people who have never necessarily been able to understand Shakespeare or engage with that writing very well; it has now opened up this to a vast array of audiences amid Shakespeare and classic work much more accessible. Also, it's become its own advocacy, although this has been in Miami, the audiences who have seen this essentially are hearing, hard of hearing, and deaf. And as much as it has been for the deaf population to have this ASL shadow interpreted theater, it also has made a great advocacy letting people know and awareness tool as well. Then this last picture, you can see here, even our actors learn to sign. In this case with Hamlet, the last line of the play was “the rest is silence,” all of the actors learned to sign that as well. How can this be applied, for example? So we are a tour. We're based in Sarasota. This tour is in October and November. It looks like we'll be taking Romeo and Juliet this season back to Miami. We are still working on those dates. But this kind of project can take place anywhere, where there are ASL interpreters. So I just want to toss that out there, in the sense of, since this project is very mobile, we have very few -- we deliberately have no elaborate set pieces, very limited props, and the piece of work the theater itself is short enough to fit in a class period which makes it very accessible in its own right. These types of productions can go anywhere. With Shadow Theatre, it can be anywhere where there are ASL interpreters. So thank you.

>> Maureen: Excellent. Thank you so much, Mr. Hersh. Next, we have Anna Glenn from the Curator of Public Programs of the Museum of Fine Arts for St. Petersburg. She's going to discuss the museum partnership and the education program with the Blossom Montessori School for the Deaf.

>> Anna: Good afternoon. Thank you for listening in and having me be a part of this discussion. Again, I'm the Curator of Public Programs at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida. We have a collection that's basically 4500 years of art and represents cultures from around the globe. So the story of Strokes of Genius begin about five years ago, as a product of a discussion between the then assistant director of Blossom Montessori School for the Deaf and our then Curator of Education here at the museum. Blossom Montessori School for the Deaf is a school that's approximately 30 minutes away from our museum. It serves students that are deaf, hard of hearing or hearing. Their parents are deaf, hard of hearing or hearing as well. What we wanted to do through this program is create an opportunity for students to have an experience that they may typically not have, being at a cultural organization. We definitely wanted them to have opportunities to apply their ASL vocabulary. We certainly wanted to connect with what was going on in the classrooms and made sure that we communicated with their instructors on what was happening in their classrooms. Again, following that Montessori Method of following the student, following their interests, following their strengths and allowing them to really communicate and make this part of their discussion. In five years, the program has grown, and we've seen a lot of change in the students. We'll talk about that a little bit throughout the presentation. But I did want to just say, from the beginning, we definitely had staff at both the school and our museum interested in this program. Then, we informed both boards of what we are doing and planning on. So they were invested in that from the beginning. What we do with the staff, more on an everyday basis, is we remind them, we treat this as we would any other student group. We inform each other we will have a group in the museum. We remind security that the group is hard of hearing. We start off with a traditional welcoming in our museum, which includes reminding students of the proper behavior and introduces what we are going to see on the exhibit and on the tour. We also take a moment, again, communicating with staff, to let them know what age level is coming and to see if they would be available to talk with the students. The image that you're looking at is during a gallery reinstallation. These particular students were in the upper grades of the school, so there was an opportunity to talk about art careers. So this day, they met our curatorial staff. They took time to learn about the responsibilities of a registrar. They got to meet the curator who talked about the selection of the work. This particular group also was able to meet with the director and have conversations with him on his role at the museum. I do want to take a moment here to emphasize that the students are very much a part of the experience and they give each one of the staff members that they meet a sign name and that’s just another avenue for them to explore that ASL vocabulary and how it's practically applied and the real world experience for them. To insure the growth of the program, what we do is we make sure that the content applies to the Sunshine State Standards and, of course, now in Florida, we're going through the Common Core connection, making sure there are opportunities to align with the Common Core Standards. But we also emphasize the importance of reflection. We ask the students to craft with their teachers at the school, the end of the year performance that offers an opportunity to communicate what they have learned and what was the most memorable or most meaningful part of the tour for them. During this reception -- excuse me, at this reception, we have staff members, we have volunteers. We, of course, have sponsors that have participated and contributing to the program. We definitely contact our marketing and public relation folks here on our staff. So some quick stories of success with that as a result. Last year, we were able to get out a press release and a local news channel decided to do a special interest on the program, so they came to the museum and to the school, which was great because, you know, both organizations are involved. And then they get to know the students as well. So having a reception is definitely a nice way to wrap up the program and continue to gain the interests and build momentum and excitement for what you do. Some of the observations that we've made throughout the program is that students are communicating their likes more and more. Five years ago, when this program started, it was between the Museum of Fine Arts and Blossom Montessori. The students started to express an interest in the Dali. So the Dali museum is located approximately a half mile from our location and now the students communicate between the Dali of Fine Arts and our museum. And communicating that affinity for a cultural experience and having them take ownership in what they are wanting to see through that expression of their life. We also noticed the students began to use their ASL vocabulary with much more confidence. For example, at the beginning of the school year, students would sign very close to their bodies. They often would look at the ground. They wouldn't, you know, look at me or the interpreter or the educator, the other educator that would be on the tour. By the end of the year, they were using more of their vocabulary and expressing with confidence. The image that you're looking at here is a result of communicating with the teacher before hand, asking her what was going on in the classroom. For example, they were studying explorers, and they were working on their literacy skills as well. So what we had them do, they each became an explorer. They had to lead their group through the museum, based on certain clues. Find an artwork in one of the galleries, again, based on those clues, read a discussion on that piece of work and then have a student record what was the most important part of that discussion in the gallery. Then, at the conclusion, we would go into the museum's classroom, create an art activity. In this case, it was a handmade journal, where the students created drawings on what they saw in the galleries, and then also included one of the most important aspects of the tour to them. And then some tips for success: definitely use a professional interpreter as you're going through the galleries, it seems a bit of a statement of the obvious. I can't emphasize this enough; you really do need to use a professional ASL interpreter. You want to meet with the interpreter before hand to give them a heads-up on what you plan on doing and talking about. You want to very much allow those students to take ownership of this tour. We laugh about meeting with the interpreter beforehand. But, again, because we're working with a Montessori school, I learned very quickly I could plan and plan my route through the museum, but if a student's interest takes them someplace else, then you follow the student's interest and you just go with it, and you're prepared for that, and you reap the benefits of their enthusiasm for being in your collection. Again, a reception at the museum, you can definitely participate in a follow-up activity at the school, and then just communicate with the staff, both at your museum and at the school. Thank you!

>> Maureen: Thank you so much, Anna. This is Maureen McKloski. Next, we have Terry Galloway of the Mickey Faust Club. She is here and she will be speaking in the speaker phone. If we have any problem hearing her, please let us know through the chat box. We will try to accommodate you.

>> Terry: Okay. Hi. This is Terry Galloway. And I just want to say -- thank Anna and Brian, because I love what you guys are doing. Just listening to what you're saying, I found it very exciting and heartening. Okay. I am coming at this discussion both as a profoundly hard of hearing person and as a person who has been working creatively in theater with the wider community of people with disabilities for many years. Also, I'm coming at this from an adult perspective. Very little of my work has been done with children and people with disabilities and hard of hearing and deaf. Some of whom do not consider themselves to be part of the larger disabled community. I'm interested in getting all those people creating theater on stage, not just sitting in the audience admiring. Now, although I have been profoundly hard of hearing since the age of 9, I was mainstreamed, that is, I was encouraged to lip-read. I was not taught to sign. I was sent to, putting this in air quotes, regular public schools. I was naturally an expert lip reader. Over three years ago, I received a cochlear implant. I'm hearing the world again for the first time in 54 years. My experience with accommodation for deaf and hard of hearing then is my own. But tempered by what I have learned from 40 years of working with other people with disabilities, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing. I have a passion for all kinds of performance, but especially for theater, ever since I was a child. After my deafness was diagnosed, I was lucky to have wonderful speech teachers, teachers like Anna, who taught me to enunciate, inflect, project. All those things I could not as a hard of hearing child able to do. They taught me these skills through the art of performance through both oral performance and through theater. That's what made those hard lessons of pure joy. As an A student in high school, I thought all my hard work and that of my teachers had paid off, after I won a state university interscholastic award for acting and for the performance of poetry. The first prize was a scholarship to the University Of Texas Austin Drama Department. But that same year, when I went in to be advised by our high school guidance counselor, he, who had given all of my friends brochures to Princeton, Harvard, the University of Texas, he gave me a brochure that read errors and ah, factory work make good job for deaf. A year later, when I showed up at the UT Drama Department, scholarship in hand, they took one look at my hearing aid and said, as if I didn't already know it, you're deaf. I was told I would not be allowed on stage but should think of enrolling in one of the backstage skills like costuming. That was in 1968. So I have been confronting and thinking about inaccessibility in the arts for a long, long time. Just as I was born with the markings of my disability, I was born with a natural affinity for the arts and one that grew throughout my life and to the conviction that the arts engendered some of our most passionate and reliable dialogue with ourselves about ourselves. For me, the arts, theater in particular, it's my refuge, the true measure of my own meaningfulness and has been a stepping stone for the creation of the many communities of people that I love. So I am also deeply devoted to the arts. I am just as devoted to examining the ways the culture of arts can become more inclusive to people more like me. People, despite their passion, talent and skills, have been shut out, especially because in my long experience, I have found accommodating people with disabilities, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing isn't all that damn hard. Nor does it have to be expensive. Nor does it have to be a pain in the butt. I know, because theaters have been accommodating me all my professional life. And not only I, but they benefitted greatly from doing so. Shakespeare, sponsored by the English department now called the Shakespeare Institute, was where I found my first accommodation. After I was turned away from the Drama Department because of my then hard of hearingness and then my lateral lisp, which since has become -- my speech has since changed since my cochlear implant, but then I had a profound lateral lisp. The director of Winedale welcomed me despite or rather because of my imperfect speech. He thought my passion and love of Shakespeare was more important than perfection. And it was he who told me that in this place of learning and study, I had as much right as any to be up on that stage performing the language of Shakespeare. It was he who put me up there and gave me the roles that he thought suited my soul. It was he and other students who helped me struggle through the doing. They gave me physical cues. They'd stamp a foot, wave a hand, and make a huge gesture so that I could get the spoken cues. They would stand in the back of the theater and give me hand signals, letting me know when I was and was not projecting. They told me, frankly, when my speech would become too muddied and worked with me on techniques to make it clearer. I became a fixture at Winedale, becoming known there and in Austin, Texas, for my cross-dressing comic performance of Shakespeare and I was known for physical falling down steps and slopping in the mud. After graduation, I joined with my Winedale friends to start Ester's Follies a popular comic cabaret. There the same principles of comic applied. My colleagues at Ester's just applied the lessons we learned at Winedale. They took pains to include me in the same simple practices, physical cues, hand signals, cueing me as to when I was or was not being understood. And again, it paid off for them and for me. Ester's Follies was a true community epiphany. As one of its founders, headliners and primary director and one of its most popular performers, I was acknowledged by the Austin states Chronicle Monthly as a critical part of that epiphany for which the city of Austin and the Governor Ann Richards later rewarded our theater for helping to change the face of Austin, Texas cultural life. Now, accommodation in both places was treated as a natural extension of friendship, of shared interest of community and it was recognized by the popularity by the wider community as such. Now, while still working at Esters I was cast as the title character of "Khan Du" in a PBS show that centered around role models for children. One centered around a profoundly deaf child who signed. As we were rehearsing, I realized this child didn't have typical deaf behavior. He wasn't looking attentive in a way many deaf children do. He wasn't looking for clues in people's bodies, or other physical behaviors. I expressed my concern to the director, who said, “Oh, yeah, we decided it was just too hard to cast a real deaf kid in a role.” I was a hot head and rather than stay and fight and articulate to the director why that was wrong in so many ways, I walked off the set. But when production resumed, but I had been hurt, but when production resumed there was a new director and I was one of two head writers and for every episode we used children with disabilities who could act not just as actors, children with disabilities who could act, not just actors playing at being, because it turned out it wasn't really all that hard to accommodate children with disabilities who wanted to act. You just had to be willing to learn what needed to be done and have the patience, the imagination and the wit to do it. All along my career I have found the same thing to be true, that accommodation, rather than being an onerous debt of do- gooding on the part of reluctant participants could actually be a joyful undertaking that added something new and exciting to performance. It was similar in many ways to my experience doing theater in New York, not just when performing on the lower eastside or Wow, Limbo Lounge or PS22, but the more risk taking theaters like the Women's Project. My friends and I all outcasts, queers and those performing with disabilities; we were performing in those places because they could afford to be inclusive and unfamiliar because they were not looking at themselves primarily as businesses but as sights of inclusion. But even these sights of inclusion in New York were not including enough people with disabilities. As an artist representative to the board of the National Performance Network, I would look around the ballroom at one of conferences thinking, where are all the other cripples?! As I was touring nationally and internationally around the country, I encountered theatrical organizations that considered accommodation a thorn in the side: cost innovations for “those people” foisted upon those by governmental mandates. When they did make changes they made minimal changes to theater box offices and bathrooms and make the audience spaces minimally accessible or giving little thought to disabled performers. When I moved from New York to Tallahassee in 1986 to follow my lover when she took a job at FSU, I figured I had nothing to lose. Donna, my partner, agreed with me. We found we were determined from the very first was be a performance site of inclusion. The Mickey Faust Academy for the really dramatic arts also known as the Mickey Faust Club is the oldest LBGT theater alternative of disability in the south. We call ourselves “a community theater for the weird and queer community.” But even our theater, with me, profoundly hard of hearing woman, well versed in disability at the helm; even we had to evolve our thinking about disability. Faust was a freewheeling alternative, in your face, but when we first started, I was the only cripple up on that stage. Faust became wildly popular and the publicity detailed not just our performances, but our LBGT status and my own status as a hard of hearing person. That publicity in which we highlighted our inclusiveness, our yearning to be inclusive, like- minded actors, lighters, directors, some with disabilities helped attract like minded actors, writers directors- some with disabilities. The involvement of more people with disabilities led us to discover how we could make appropriate accommodations. When a woman with neurofibromatosis and wicked sense of humor wanted to join us we realized in order to get her on our stage or get her into the Warehouse bar where we were doing our performances we'd need a ramp. It hadn't occurred to us before. We didn't use wheelchairs and didn't know other people who did. She did. The warehouse spaces we were using to perform didn't have a ramp and refused to build one. This was in the early '80s and you could still get away with that. We protested and threatened to leave. We were bringing them a lot of money so they relented, built a ramp to the warehouse and we built our own lamp to the stage. We found out that we liked the inventiveness disability brought to the table. It requires us to think in new ways about staging, lighting, directing, and performing. Although Faust was and still is an all volunteer company and no paid staff and budget under $25,000, we believed we could do a great deal to accommodate and incorporate disability into our theater. But we realized our first step was to build real ongoing relationships with disabled audiences and artists, so that accommodation could occur as a dialogue among all of us as we worked towards the same goal, which was to involve more people with disabilities in the wider cultural community. We sought to cultivate those new performers, writers and directors with disabilities by sponsoring writing and performance workshops geared towards people with disability who were deaf and hard of hearing. In the course of those workshops we learned even more about accommodation. Here is what we did with what we learned. We made our stages, not just our theater itself accessible to people with disabilities. We captioned all of our Cabaret performances, not just for the deaf and hard of hearing audiences, but so our actors with difficult speech could be understood. When we were unable to caption performances, we provided large print scripts. We gave people who are disabled discounted tickets. We sponsored more workshops in performance specifically for people with disabilities who are deaf and hard of hearing. Most of our budget went to transportation, getting those people who could not drive because of their disabilities, to rehearsal workshops and performances. We sponsored community conversations usually with wine, to which we invited our patrons and artists with disabilities to talk with us about how we could better accommodate them. We admitted to ourselves what we had the resources to do and what we did not have the resources to do and we made hard choices accordingly. Please remember, we did all of this with an all volunteer organization, no paid staff and the space we rented but did not own and all with a budget under $25,000. But our most important discovery about our relationship to disabilities was that we had to develop an ethic of accommodation. This ethic is a particular practice of inclusion that requires a willingness to make changes to core beliefs, practice and aesthetics. This ethic is tied to disability, politics, which seeks to incorporate differences rather than merely tolerate them or seek to smooth out their rough edges. It's rooted in a concept of justice and means more than passive non-discrimination. It is a concept that implies action. A requirement to make significant changes to both attitudes and architecture. You can break down this affect in four key components. At its core, it means the majority doesn't rule. It means everyone who wants to participate gets to participate, even if it necessitates the majority making difficult changes to its practiced environment. The ethics includes the politic of listening as well as the politics of speaking. Okay. Also, I will also say this. The ethic of accommodation inspires creative esthetic choices, casting choreography and costuming and enhances theatrical practice. But I want to say you do not have to accommodate all at once. There are simple easy things you and your organizations can do to accommodate people who are deaf, hard of hearing with other disabilities. If you don't have a budget to accommodate everyone, just do it in increments. Start with volunteers and work those accommodations into your future budgets. If you do have a budget, think about building an accommodation, even though it may not at the time seem to be serving any. And make accommodation an exercise in creativity and pleasure so it doesn't become dutiful and grim and admit what you are and are not equipped to take on. We have found at Faust, particularly with our deaf and hard of hearing community, we, because we could not afford expensive captioning devices or listening devices, that we do realtime captioning, and we simply set up a computer, we train company volunteers in the art of following the dialogue on the stage. One of our volunteers sits in the balcony and hits return at every line uttered. It was the best solution for Faust, because it served not only our audiences but our performers. Some of our performers with disabilities have difficult speech and captioning allowed them to speak for themselves and be understood by the audience. Faust isn't perfect but the one perfect thing we do is that we practice the ethic of accommodation as best we can and every opportunity.

>> Maureen: Thank you, Terry. This is Maureen McKloski. We have come to realize our Webinars are -- limiting them to an hour is very difficult but we want to give you as much information as possible. The Power Point that is included at the end of this presentation is mine. It includes 50 pages of material and resources that you can access, along with some amazing statistics. Basically, we're really trying to have everyone think about how we can extend an invitation for partnership between our organizations and our patrons, or future patrons with hearing impairment. This is the important key. This is all we're trying to do today. The statistics will give you the ammo that you need for your Board members and your media. We give instructions and guidelines for communications. We give -- okay. Now, we have the statistics starting. We gave you everything from the children to hearing impairments statistics in Florida. We gave you the reasons for hearing loss. We also included information about the resources that you can apply, that you can get more access, more information from -- we have the definitions of everything from captioning to CART and some of the other services that we provide. Again, I'm very sorry; we cannot go through all this material. There's a lot here for you. I'll be happy to answer any questions in the future. Again, we would like to thank Tim. There's one question, “As a late-deafened adult and as a student doing an internship work in accessibility, I have experienced the deaf community can be unresponsive to outreach attempts. Have you had similar issues and how did you work through them?”

>> Terry: Yeah.

>> Maureen: Terry, right now we have just a minute. We will forward this question to each one of our panelists and have everybody send an e-mail regarding this. And then please do sign up for future Webinars which will address specific disability topics in depth. Our next free Webinar is April 24th at 12:00 p.m. it is entitled "How to plan a successful visit for patrons with sight impairment." We are also sending you a survey after each Webinar. Please help us by completing it so we may better serve you. On our website you can sign up for e-mail announcements and our resource page. Please check them out. We have a new fast track grant perfect for applying for funding for resources to provide these services. If you have any questions about our Webinars or grant programs, please again feel free to call me or e-mail me at [email protected]. Thank you, Vicki and Tess, Tim, Marian Winters, Brian Hersh, Anna Glenn, and Terry Galloway. We appreciate everything you do.