Enabling Artists and Audience Members with Disabilities
Session Description:
This interactive and multi-media session will focus on how artists and audiences with disabilities can be more meaningfully included in arts programming. Suzanne Richard will offer examples and her seasoned perspective as the director of Open Circle Theatre, the Montgomery County-based, disability-focused professional theater company. Dr. Snyder will demonstrate how accommodations for audience members with disabilities can represent aesthetic innovations. At the conclusion of the session, participants will be able to: – assess the degree to which their programs accommodate people with disabilities; identify ways in which artists and audience members with disabilities can be more meaningfully included in arts programming; – discover more effective means of outreach to artists and audience members with disabilities.
Presenter: Joel Snyder, PhD
Joel Snyder, PhD–Dr. Joel Snyder is known internationally as one of the world’s first “audio describers,”a pioneer in the field of Audio Description, a translation of visual images to vivid language for the benefit, primarily, of people who are blind or have a vision impairment. Since 1981, Dr. Snyder has introduced audio description techniques in over 40 states and 65 countries and has made thousands of live events, media projects and museums accessible. Most recently, Dr. Snyder was named a Fulbright Scholar to train audio describers in Greece and Ukraine over a four-week period. In 2014, the American Council of the Blind published Dr. Snyder’s book, The Visual Made Verbal–A Comprehensive Training Manual and Guide to the History and Applications of Audio Description, available as an audio book, in Braille, in screen reader accessible formats, and in English, Polish, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Chinese print editions.
Presenter: Suzanne Richard
Suzanne Richard- Ms. Richard received her BA in Dramatic Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is Artistic Director of Open Circle Theatre, dedicated to increasing employment of artists where she received a Helen Hayes nomination for Outstanding Direction and Outstanding Production of a Resident Musical. Currently working as a professional actress in the DC area where she performed most recently at Washington Shakespeare Company. She has also performed at, Folger, Fords, and Studio Theatre, The Kennedy Center and Imagination Stage. And she dances with Liz Lerman’s Dance Exchange. As a Master Teaching Artist with Story Tapestries, she focuses on making Arts Integration programs inclusive for students with disabilities. In the past, she has been the Outreach Coordinator for the U.S. International Council on Disabilities, and the Accessibility Specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts.
Date, Time, and Location
Tuesday June 17th
Breakout Session 1: 10:30 am – 11:30 am
Room: CPA 215