Research Stream: Social Lives
Author: Hilary Hooks, Project Manager, Protecting the Right to Culture of Persons with Disabilities and Enhancing Cultural Diversity in EU Law: Exploring New Paths (DANCING) Project
The DANCING project, led by Principal Investigator (PI) Professor Delia Ferri, aims to investigate participation in culture by persons with disabilities. Access is a critical issue in all areas of life for people with disabilities. This includes the area of culture, and concerns people with disabilities who are (or who wish to be) involved at all levels, including as artists, arts-professionals, and audiences.
Accessibility is also one of the general principles of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), included in Article 3, and elaborated upon especially in Article 9 (as well as in other provisions). In Article 9, the CRPD sets out an obligation on States parties to the Convention to ensure access to persons with disabilities, on an equal basis with others, to the physical environment, information and communications, and to other facilities and services open or provided to the public.
The DANCING project aims to challenge the cultural exclusion often faced by people with disabilities and to contribute to the creation of a more inclusive society. In the DANCING project, we, therefore, consider accessibility as intrinsic to all aspects of our work and have articulated this in our Accessibility Strategy. This includes seeking to be accessible in our information provision and communications as well as attending to issues such as physical access for meetings and performances.
In this post, we share some of our experience in developing an accessible survey which was designed to be completed by audience members who attended an event in Dublin in February 2023, when we hosted the first sharing of an inclusive piece of dance choreography. The choreography has been commissioned by DANCING and is being developed by Stopgap company (you can find out more about this performance here ‘Lived Fiction’ – First sharing of Inclusive Contemporary Dance Choreography within the DANCING Project). After the performance, we conducted a survey with the audience members to hear their reactions and to gauge how accessible and inclusive they found the performance. This was in order to receive feedback that could inform the further development of the choreography, leading to a further staging in 2024, when the world premiere will take place in Ireland in April. We not only wanted to make sure that all aspects of the venue and performance were accessible for dancers and audience members, but also, we wanted to ensure that the survey itself was accessible, specifically for people who are blind or visually impaired. We share some of our experience below, in relation to what we learned about making the survey as accessible as possible and we also share some resources that may be useful to others. We do so in part because we know from our research that people often lack knowledge about how to make their offerings accessible to a wide range of people with disabilities.
There are many different platforms and technologies for creating surveys. However, these platforms often remain problematic and present different accessibility issues for some people with disabilities and/or for use in the context of research. For this reason, we decided on ‘going back to basics’ and using Microsoft Word, which incorporates many accessibility features, and also gave us the option of experimenting with different formats for each question. We created a version of the survey using text and tables (this was the non-accessible version that we printed for respondents without visual impairment). We then tested the document with two different screen-readers (Microsoft Narrator and NVDA) and by navigating the survey using only cursor keys, and we revised it accordingly, creating an e-survey.
Creating an Accessible e-Survey
As we do with all our documents, we used the accessibility checker, and the accessibility features built-in to Microsoft Word to make our survey accessible generally to screen readers. For example, we used the heading styles in Microsoft Word, which help people using screen readers to navigate the structure in a text. We also had to find a way to make the various questions accessible to screen readers. Here is how we adapted versions of three types of questions to be accessible to people who are blind or experience visual impairment.
Multiple choice/ Yes-No Questions
Inaccessible: Checkboxes or small tables into which people are to mark an X are difficult to navigate using cursor keys.
Accessible: The question followed by the responses on separate lines, together with the direction, ‘Put an X next to the response that you choose.’
Likert Scales
Inaccessible: Conventional visual representation of a horizontal line with five points ranging from ‘strongly agree’ to strongly disagree’ are difficult to navigate using cursor keys.
Accessible: The question followed by the responses on separate lines going down the page, together with the direction, ‘Put an X next to the response that you choose.’
Open-ended Questions
Inaccessible: When a question is followed by a box into which the response is to be inserted, this is difficult for the respondent to know where to put the answer when using a screen-reader.
Accessible: A blank space following the question, along with the text ‘insert answer here’ works well.
Creating a Survey in Braille
The audience had the option to complete the survey on laptops on the day, but we also offered a braille option. While there are methods of filling in a braille form, for example, braille voting slips, we were advised that this was far from the norm. The INBAF (Irish National Braille and Alternative Formats Association) transcribed and embossed the text of the survey for us. While our respondents were unable to fill in the survey in braille on the day, it did give them immediate access to the information and questions, and, if respondents were agreeable, scribes were available to note down the responses. We used the accessible e-survey as the version to translate into braille, as the text-only format of the questions was more conducive to braille than using tables, boxes and so on.
Other Formats of the Survey
In addition to the accessible electronic and braille versions, we also created a large-print version of the survey. We used the original non-accessible version and enlarged the text to 18 points (the average font size for the body of a printed document is 12 points).
We developed an easy-to-read version using the document provided by Inclusion Ireland ‘Make it Easy: A guide to preparing Easy to Read information’.
On the day of the survey, we offered printed, electronic and braille versions along with scribes for anyone who required one.
Overall, we continue to learn about accessibility issues, and are always open to feedback as to how we can be even more accessible.
Links to resources that may be useful:
Inclusion Ireland have published a Guide to producing Easy to Read publications.
The European Blind Union has published a guide to Making Information Accessible for All.
The National Disability Authority has published a Customer Communications Toolkit for Services to the Public, which includes guidance on communications that are written, spoken and signed and also digital.
Microsoft have a video guide on how to make accessible documents using Microsoft Office.
