In addition to focused support for specific artistic needs, we’ve also funded an equipment loan program designed to help Chicago theatres and other cultural organizations make their events accessible to patrons with disabilities.
The Accessible Equipment Loan Program
The equipment loan program is under the auspices of the Cultural Access Collaborative (“Collab,” previously Chicago Cultural Accessibility Consortium) and provides Chicago cultural organizations with short-term free-of-charge use of equipment to improve performance and program accessibility for visitors with disabilities. On its website, Collab hosts a cultural access calendar that enables patrons wanting to attend an accessible event to determine the schedule and type of accommodation available. Collab also has a page describing the equipment loan program, with links for equipment check out.
Adding sights and sounds
Theatre (like most cultural events) is a multi-faceted experience that involves dialog, non-verbal sounds, scenery, props, costumes, movement, and more. So how does assistive equipment help convey the words and other sounds of a play to people who are deaf or hard of hearing? And how does assistive equipment make a person who is blind or has low vision aware of movement, props, and scenery—or why the audience just laughed in response to a sight gag? The Accessible Equipment Loan Program helps in several ways …
Captioning equipment (the projector and the screens or monitors on which the captions are projected) helps audience members who are deaf or hard of hearing. The captions themselves can be generated in-house (usually as PowerPoint slides with a live operator to advance the slides) or by engaging professional captioning services. The equipment in the loan program facilitates open captioning, visible to all (or large sections) of the audience and universally accessible to everyone (as opposed to closed captioning, which can be seen only by those with special equipment).
For venues with sound amplification, a stationary audio transmitter and personal receivers used by audience members help people with hearing loss. The receivers can work with hearing aids, cochlear implants, or headsets to deliver amplified dialog and on-stage sounds effectively.
For venues without sound amplification, or for events that involve multiple locations (such as a tour), a portable transmitter, lapel mics, and sets of headphones provide capabilities similar to those of the stationary transmitter system to help people with hearing loss.
Audio description equipment (consisting of a microphone and a small FM transmitter) provides audio descriptions through headsets to people who are blind or have low vision. A trained audio describer conveys the visual aspects of the performance as they unfold on stage. (See NewCity’s excellent 2022 article The Audio Describer: Bringing Live Theater to Those with Vision Problems for a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how this is done.) Increasingly, theatres are enriching the experience further by providing pre-show touch tours, where audience members meet the actors (and learn how they sound and which characters they play) and also go on stage to touch the set pieces and get a feel for the environment and spatial relationships.
Sustainability
The Loan Program provides ongoing maintenance and protective cases for the equipment, plus replacement as needed. The goal is to provide a continuing resource that cultural organizations and their patrons can depend on.
