Arts Accessibility

The California Arts Council is committed to making all its services and programs open and accessible to people with and without disabilities.

To that end, the California Arts Council:

  • reaches out and nurtures its relationship with the disability community,
  • conducts technical assistance workshops,
  • supports disability accommodations through the Arts and Disability Technical Assistance Program (Grants program currently suspended.)
  • has collaborated with VSA Arts of California (http://www.vsarts.org/x292.xml) and the National Arts and Disability Center (NADC) (http://nadc.ucla.edu/) to conduct focus groups throughout California,
  • has conducted two Careers in the Arts conferences for artists with disabilities using the focus groups' insights, and
  • was instrumental in helping to establish an Arts and Disability Network, which has become one of the CAC's Infrastructure groups.

Opening Doors to Arts and Accessiblity

 

The CAC consults and collaborates with Dr. Olivia Raynor, the Director of the UCLA-based National Arts and Disability Center (NADC) ( http://nadc.ucla.edu/), regarding access issues for artists and audiences with disabilities in California. The current 3-year CAC Arts and Disability Plan has strategies, methods, and programs for educating the field on issues of disability and the arts. It was created in tandem with those overall organizational strategies established by the California Arts Council and reflects the agency's mission and goals. These goals include:

  1. To inform the general public, constituents and CAC staff about the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) in order to ensure that access is incorporated throughout all of our services.
  2. To plan regional technical assistance workshops for CAC grantees on physical and programmatic accessibility to the arts.
  3. To work with other state agencies to create opportunities for artists with disabilities and to achieve arts accessibility throughout the state.
  4. To continue supporting the ADA Professional Development and Technical Assistance Program.

A new plan will be developed by June 2005 for fiscal years June 2005 through June 2008.

Federal Compliance

Federal law requires that services and benefits that are administered, authorized and participated in by the CAC, its grantees, delegated agencies, contractors, providers or others shall comply with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. The California Arts Council, a state agency, is accountable under Title II of the ADA.

The CAC must assure itself that organizations with which it contracts agree to conduct their programs, activities and services in such a manner as to allow the Title II agency to meet its obligations under the ADA. The CAC includes compliance language in its contracts to assure that grantees know their obligations to meet the ADA requirements under the law and to have a designated ADA/504 Officer.