How — And Where — to Park in Pittsburgh's Cultural District

Pittsburgh Magazine: Don’t let the fear of where to park stop you from experiencing the Cultural District’s many wonders. From world-class symphonies and Broadway shows to inventive dining experiences, Downtown has a lot to offer to those willing to venture out. Here are four tips that will make navigating Downtown’s parking situation a breeze.

How to Embrace the Dramaturgy of Creative Caption Design

HowlRound Theatre Commons: Captions play an important role in the accessibility of theatrical productions for all audience members, particularly those who are d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHOH), neurodivergent, and/or living with sensory processing disorders. Secondary to their use as an accessibility tool, captions are an important visual element of a theatrical production and should be approached with the same thought, artistry, and attention as design elements like lighting and projections. This is where the concept of creative captions come in.

Every show should be captioned for deaf audiences, petition demands

www.thestage.co.uk: Theatre owners ATG Entertainment, Delfont Mackintosh Theatres and LW Theatres are being urged to ensure every performance at their venues has captions in order to be accessible for deaf audiences

The Super Bowl Will Test New Device for Blind Fans Who Want to Enjoy the Big Game

gizmodo.com: For years, blind and low-vision sports fans have been limited to audio play-by-play commentary to follow their favorite teams. But that isn’t always ideal. Audio feeds can lag behind the action, miss key moments, leaving fans having to repeatedly ask friends or family for clarification on what’s going on the field or court.

“I Can Do All Things”: How One Church Technician Redefined Disability and Ministry

Church Production Magazine: Until 2015, Paul Frazier was living a relatively normal teenage existence. An 18-year-old with an interest in audio and IT thanks to his father’s work experience, Paul was not only actively working in the tech industry but also regularly involved at his home church, Mt. Vernon Church, a small congregation about an hour northeast of Charlotte, NC, helping his dad with the tech team.

Talented High School Students Interpret 'Hamilton' Songs Into American Sign Language

laughingsquid.com: The talented high school students at ASL Theater in Florida impressively interpreted select songs from the now-iconic Lin-Manuel Miranda play Hamilton into American Sign Language, perfectly synchronizing with the audio of the original soundtrack.

Navigating Noise Sensitivity in Audio

SoundGirls.org: As an autistic person, I experience various sensory differences. I can’t cope with bright, flashing lights. I’m highly sensitive to temperature changes. Certain fabrics and clothing seams/tags make my skin itch. But the biggest one is my sound sensitivity, and yet… I work with sound.

Lincoln Center to offer free programming in NYC and online

DC Metro Theater Arts: To make the arts more accessible to everyone, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts has announced an exciting spring season of free and choose-what-you-pay programming, beginning on Sunday, February 27, and running through Wednesday, June 15. The extensive roster will feature both in-person and virtual performances, discussions, and civic activations, bringing together dozens of arts organizations and artists from across NYC and beyond to explore the intersection of culture, civic engagement, and community-building through vibrant and varied weekly programming.

Captioning the Stream: Accessibility and Inclusion in Zoom Theatre

Intermission: Rainbow-hued block letters flashed across the screen to the thumping beat of electronic music. “We’re grateful to have viewers from all over Turtle Island. This feels appropriate, considering these new works were made by artists across Canada.” Listing the many Indigenous territories inhabited by the settler artists collaborating on the series, the land acknowledgement opening the second double-bill of The Stream You Step In asked us to reflect on the technology facilitating our digital gathering.

Illuminating the Careers of Disabled Lighting Designers

HowlRound Theatre Commons: Annie Wiegand is the first, and maybe the only, professional Deaf lighting designer in the theatre industry in the United States. She has been working as a freelance designer in New York City for a decade and is also a professor in the theatre and dance program at Gallaudet University, the only university in the world for Deaf students. Michael Maag is a lighting and projection designer who acquired his disability in a car versus bicycle accident in 2003 and became a T-9 paraplegic. He is the resident lighting designer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and a founding member of Kinetic Light, a disability arts ensemble.

Acting with Autism

Bitter Gertrude: I invited actor and playwright Cameron McNary to write a guest blog about being a theatremaker who’s on the Autism Spectrum. I wish I had read this piece 20 years ago. Every theatremaker should read this piece! I learned so much I wish I could apply retroactively to my work.

Accessibility in the Time of Corona: An Overview

The Theatre Times: There’s no denying that COVID-19 has been a financial and connectivity nightmare for artists. Theatre, in particular, thrives off of that human-to-human connection: it’s what brings in theatre lovers and theatre newbies alike, performance after performance, and allows artists in the theatre to make a living. With the majority of theatres worldwide closed to the public, both physical interaction and financial stability have been altered or, at worst, stopped entirely. It’s a frightening time for the theatrical community, as we search for support in a moment when simply living feels radical. There is no denying that very real fear.

How Can Blind Audiences Get a Complete Dance Experience?

Dance Magazine: While you might think of dance as a primarily visual art form, performances engage us on multiple levels. Our ears take in the score, the artists' breathing patterns, fellow audience members' reactions, and the physical percussion made by the dancers' footfalls and partnering. All of this information is available to audience members with limited to no vision, and when it comes to providing them with the rest, there are multiple approaches being refined by experts in the field generally referred to as "audience accessibility."

In ‘Year of Chicago Theatre,’ small Chicagoland companies take major steps to be more inclusive, generous and accessible

www.chicagolandmusicaltheatre.com: In this 2019 Year of Chicago Theatre, small theatres across Chicago are taking major steps to be more inclusive, generous and accessible, reaffirming Chicago’s growing reputation as the epicenter of storefront theatre in the United States. Many small theatres are evolving their company thanks in part to the Chicago-based Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation (the Foundation), which supports more than 50 Chicago small theatre companies with annual budgets below $1 million, to help theatres strengthen operations and focus on producing works and furthering initiatives that are relevant to both the artists and their neighborhood audiences.

Models and Mentors: A History of the Wry Crips Disabled Women’s Theatre Group by Michaela Goldhaber as told by the Company’s Founders

WIT journal: For thirty-four years, Wry Crips Disabled Women’s Theatre Group in Berkeley, California, has been helping women with disabilities find their voices and create performances. In its first twenty years, Wry Crips put together a new performance almost every other year, each one with seven or eight women reading their own writing about their experiences as disabled women. Wry Crips slowed it’s pace in the next decade, but is going strong now with five dedicated members working on Wry Crips Occupy, a historical play about the 504 protest in 1977 when disabled activists took over the federal building in San Francisco.

GUEST BLOG: Get Woke to Three Accessibility Initiatives! By Lisa Carling

The Producer's Perspective: When I was 16 years old, I told my father (who was a Boston physician) that I wanted to be a doctor. “No,” he said, “a woman’s place is not in medical school!” I rebelled, naturally, and went into theatre, acting, divorce, raising a child and TDF where I’ve been happy for over 30 years working in the accessibility field.

Photo Gallery: Magic Wheelchair's Epic Star Wars Fan Experience at Comic-Con 2018!

Tested: One of our favorite activities at Comic-Con is Magic Wheelchair's reveal of costumes to their "kiddos." Last year, the theme was Justice League; this year, it was Star Wars. Well, naturally Adam was all over THAT.

Making 'Children of a Lesser God' Accessible Onstage and Backstage

Theatre Development Fund – TDF: Lauren Ridloff was two years old when the original production of Children of a Lesser God debuted on Broadway in 1980, and eight when her parents brought her to see the movie version starring Marlee Matlin, an actress who is deaf, playing a woman named Sarah. It was the first time Ridloff had ever seen a character who was deaf onscreen, let alone one so assertive and assured. "I was inspired," she says, or rather signs, her two hands traveling up her body until her fingers spread out across her shoulders like ten exclamation points which means "inspired" in American Sign Language (ASL.)