WHY ACCESSIBILITY SHOULD BE PART OF TORONTO’S MUSIC CITY STRATEGY

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Accessibility should be a top priority to make Toronto a Music City.

Absent from the city-council-approved Toronto Music Strategy is a plan to address the widespread inaccessibility of our live music venues. And that’s putting pressure on the creative and disability communities to come up with solutions on their own, a burden neither should have to bear.

Universal Design (UD) is an approach to design that increases the potential for developing a better quality of life for a wide range of individuals. It is a design process that enables and empowers a diverse population by improving human performance, health and wellness, and social participation (Steinfeld and Maisel, 2012). It creates products, systems, and environments to be as usable as possible by as many people as possible regardless of age, ability or situation.