Disability Justice

LUX Scotland was founded with equality at the heart of its vision and accessibility has been central to our work since our first activities in 2015. We recognise that we live in an ableist society and we regularly review our work from an anti-ableist perspective to identify areas for improvement.

In 2018, we undertook a pilot project to improve access for D/​deaf, blind & visually impaired and disabled audiences as part of AMIF and produced closed captions (CC) and live captions (CART) for the festival. In 2019 we increased this offer to include British Sign Language (BSL) performance and interpretation, hearing loop, audio flashcards, subpacs and Audio Description (AD) for many events.

From 2019 to 2022 we worked in partnership with BBC Arts and Screen Scotland to commission 40 new artworks for BBC platforms, all of which were captioned and audio described.

In 2020 we committed to captioning all newly commissioned artworks, and from 2021 we committed to captioning all the works we present in our public programme. In 2022 we committed to audio describing all newly commissioned artworks, and in 2023 we committed to providing live captions for all online and in-person events.

In 2022 we secured funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to undertake a three-year project with DCA and Collective which includes commissioning, research and organisational development. The project focuses on questioning the institutional ableism in the Scottish visual arts sector and imagining a future in which disabled artists and arts professionals have increased access to opportunities, are visible, and their expertise and experiences are truly valued.

Accessibility

We are committed to making our programme and website as accessible as possible. If you have any questions, or would like to offer feedback, please contact us on email hidden; JavaScript is required or call /​text +44 (0)7394 042 450.

Our current access measures include:

  • CC for all works we commission and present
  • CART for all online and in person events
  • AD for all works we commission
  • BSL videos interpretation of calls for opportunities
  • Access costs for the application, selection and commissioning process for the MTC and MTR
  • Sufficient time to allow those with disabilities to participate equally
  • Accessible venues for all in-person screenings
  • Content notes provided for events

  • Access information provided about venues for in-person events

  • Image descriptions are provided throughout our website and on our social media channels

  • Audio recordings of writing commissions and learning resources

  • BSL interpretation provided upon request

  • The majority of our programme is free to attend

We are currently working towards delivering the following access measures:

  • BSL interpretation as a regular part of our programme

  • AD as a regular part of our programme

Across the website, you will see access symbols to indicate what access measures are available. When events are held in person, information about access for each venue is provided.

We work with external consultants, such as Collective Text, captioner Valery Tough, and Quiplash, to inform our approach to accessibility and devise and deliver access measures for our programme.

Website

To help us make the LUX Scotland website a positive place for everyone, we are using the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. These guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible for people with disabilities, and user-friendly for everyone. The guidelines have three levels of accessibility (A, AA and AAA). We’ve chosen Level AA as the target for the LUX Scotland website. We monitor the website regularly to maintain this, but if you do find any problems, please get in touch.

This site is fully accessible for users without CSS or JavaScript. A text-based alternative is provided where images are used to show relevant text content.

All pages on the site use structured, semantic HTML5. Visual styling is provided by Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and enhanced user interaction is provided by JavaScript.

Font sizes: modern browsers support either text resizing or page zooming, to allow users to increase the size of essential page content. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 does not support W3C standards with regard to text sizing. It is recommended that users with text resizing upgrade to a standards-compliant browser which provides text resizing or zooming.