Lesson #3: Accountability & Next Steps

In my last (and first) blog post in December, I promised to continue recounting the five lessons I’ve learned since 2018 when I first met Christine Karzca (through Luminato) and began understanding “accessibility” in a more profound way.

As someone who really tries to  not  make people feel bad, I’m so excited (read: terrified) to share with you some of the hurtful and embarrassing mistakes I’ve made. I will not get into ALL of them, but let’s start with the most recent:  my last blog post. 

My blog post was a classic example of stepping on someone else’s light, which can also be called  erasure . On a day that was specifically designed to spotlight the voices and talents of the international Disabled community, I chose to share  my  story about  my  learning. I was called in for that, and rightly so. I cannot undo that action or magically repair the hurt that I caused, but I can (and did) apologize, make small edits to reframe the article so it leads with names and voices of Luminato’s Disabled staff, contractors, and artists, and keep my article online ( with Instagram link included ) so as to not rewrite history (AKA pretend I didn’t cause this harm). 

Unfortunately, making mistakes is going to happen. The fear of making mistakes can be so overwhelming it can lead to avoidance…such as “I just won’t write this blog,” which then sparks a whole series of justifications of why not writing the blog would be the “right thing to do.”

But if I just avoided writing this blog, then I have not done what I’ve been asked to do which is to share what I’ve learnt, which is simply – missteps are going to happen. The goal is to learn from them. And, as one advisory member said in another context, “The point is to not make the same mistake again.”

This leads me to another situation back in the fall of 2020, during our second Advisory meeting, when I posed the question along the lines of , “If you had the opportunity, how would you approach programming the festival?” I cannot remember if I used those exact words. In my mind, I thought I was asking those with programming knowledge how they approached accessibility when planning. But the way I phrased it, people thought I was asking either for specific program ideas, and even more offensively, asking them how they prioritize access. At that point, I had been using the idea of increasing Luminato’s access to “60%”, that the majority of all programs would be accessible in multiple ways. But I soon learned that the very idea of creating metrics like that is offensive and against the idea of inclusion. Inclusion is 100% or it just isn’t inclusive.  

Based on that Advisory meeting, the new goal was 100% access – all productions would have a Visual Story, captions and/or transcripts, ASL interpretation or ASL summaries for non-verbal programs, and Audio Described performances. There would be a series of Access programs curated, created, and featuring Deaf and Disabled artists, predominantly IBPOC artists. That meeting was instrumental in shifting my entire approach. As the advisory made clear: there is no hierarchy, everyone deserves the same level of consideration and respect. 

Now, as we prepare for 2022, which hopefully will be in person, we will aim to push our commitment to Accessibility even further. So, without that mistake, Luminato would still be thinking too small.

Next month, we’ll delve into my fourth lesson: How to Collaborate.

– Cathy Gordon

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