Accessibility in the performing arts is not just about a wheelchair ramp to a building.
At Kinetic Light, we focus on equity in every part of an artistic experience, starting with the moment you decide to see a show. We strive for accessible communication in our newsletters and social media platforms, and we work with venues to make sure the process of buying a ticket is accessible. We partner with presenters to think through equitable pricing, and local disabled people to figure out the best accessible ways to get to our show.
Once you arrive at the theater, we strive to host you as if you were visiting our home. We work with our venues to make sure there are enough seats for everyone to sit with their beloveds and friends.
We treat accessibility as an aesthetic of the work and an integral part of the creative process. If you stop by one of our rehearsals, you may well find us discussing choreography in relationship to access for nonvisual, low sensory, or Deaf audiences. Access is not a retroactive accommodation. We want you to experience the art, not a description of it.
Kinetic Light has gathered together an amazing team of disabled artists and culture-makers, describers, ASL interpreters, and disability aesthetic experts who work with us to create the many entry points into our work.
Access is not a checklist of things to do; it is a way of making art and being in relationship with you, our audience, our community. Access is a process. We recognize that we will never get it “right,” because access is not a product or a checklist, and sometimes different kinds of access interact with each other. Access is a conversation, a growing together. If something is not working for you, please let us know and we will continue the conversation.
Each of our performances has multiple forms of access and ways of experiencing the work. The access is developed as part of and alongside each work, and often continues to develop as we move into touring and receive feedback from our audiences. For each performance, we work with presenters and venues to state up front what is offered. Learn more about our approach to access for our newest work, Wired.
Our online relationship with you is as important as our in-person experience. We make all of our materials accessible in artistic and functional ways.
On our website and in our social media, you will find creative image descriptions that demonstrate that description can also be artistic content. We have chosen to make these descriptions intentional parts of the design rather than only using alt-text that is visible solely to screen readers.
Kinetic Light believes in transparency, dialogue, and in influencing by example. Please contact us with any questions, feedback, or stories related to your experience of access on this website, at our events, or at our performances.
ALLways is the distillation of our understanding and creation of access that we share with the broader arts community. This curriculum is grounded in transformative personal and organizational work: exploration and development of principles and techniques to create equity and hospitality across your art, events, programs, and organizations.
Learn more about the curriculum and register for workshops
Kinetic Light is engaged in ongoing research and development of new ways to embody, experience, and engage with art. Our approach is to work with and to center communities of impairment and practice to innovate new technology and practice and deliver rich aesthetic experiences.
Current projects include ongoing with with Audimance, our app for rich multichannel audio description, haptic interpretation, visual augmentation, sensory modulation, and other projects. Reach out to Artist-Engineer Laurel Lawson if you're interested in getting involved, learning more, or supporting these projects.
LAB is an online community that offers a series of monthly gatherings for disabled artists and creatives. Our community is made up of and welcomes anyone who experiences disability, including but not limited to those who identify as chronically ill, neurodivergent, with learning or intellectual disabilities, MAD, Deaf/deaf/HOH, Blind, low vision and more. We welcome all who are unsure or who might not yet identify with disability to this cross-disability space. Find out more about LAB events and programming