This report shares learning from the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts. It explores the opportunities digital presents for making the arts more accessible.
Accessibility
The UK has a long and proud history of supporting and producing work by disabled artists and those artists and organisations are constantly evolving their practice in response to what new technology can offer.
Over the years there have also been advances in support of audiences with access needs, providing them with additional services such as audio description, captioning and signed performances. These services to date have generally tended to be bolted on to existing performances rather than natively designed and built into the overall experience. This is one of the opportunities that digital presents - new ways of using technology to support both artists and audiences in as seamless, convenient and authentic way as possible.
Accessibility is one of the major learning themes from the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts. The accessibility work across the R&D Fund projects has mainly been focused specifically on improvements for disabled people. But as the projects have reported, improving access for a targeted section of an audience often improves it for all. The user testing that makes a better product for disabled people in an audience has benefits for everyone.
In this guide you will find five articles which each explore a key principle to making accessibility work.
Download the guide to read more:
Making Digital Work: Accessibility (PDF)
