“I feel like I’m living rather than existing”: how accessibility changes can enhance live events

Suzanne Bull’s been an active participant in the world of live music since she was 13 years old, whether by going to gigs or playing in bands – she’s cycled through post-punk, punk, goth and African drumming groups. But it wasn’t until she found herself pinned against a security barrier in her wheelchair at the 1990 Glastonbury Festival that she knew she had to challenge the status quo of the live event ecosystem.

Suzanne founded UK-based organisation Attitude is Everything (AiE) in 2000 as a one-year pilot programme aimed at making live events more accessible, which it continues to do primarily via the Live Events Access Charter – a step-by-step process designed to help venues and promoters build disability equality into their work from the ground up. The team works with a wide range of spaces, from grassroots venues to massive festivals, and in 2017, the UK government and UK Music’s Live Events Group adopted it as the best practice standards in access.

AiE has helped over 200,000 people access the arts over the past 23 years, as well as training 10,000 creative professionals. And in a full-circle moment, AiE started working with Glastonbury in 2005, tripling the number of disabled festival-goers in five years. The festival has now achieved a Gold ranking according to AiE’s Live Events Access Charter: an accessible bus goes around the campsite, there’s a zone where Deaf people can find communication information and interpreters, and disabled artists are always represented on the lineup.

In the years since, AiE has also launched initiatives that support disabled artists and industry professionals. Even with this widening scope, Suzanne says that AiE’s central mission has remained the same: “What we facilitate is disabled people leading the change, and industry professionals learning from real-life experiences and expertise. We identify the barriers, remove them, and celebrate and reward best practices.”

Attitude is Everything isn’t the only group working towards these goals. In the US, Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities (RAMPD) is expanding on the foundations that AiE has built – and the two organisations have an ongoing relationship. Cofounded in 2021 by New York City-based artist Lachi, and Minnesota-based folk singer-songwriter Gaelynn Lea, RAMPD’s global network of vocalists, songwriters, sound engineers, producers, musicologists and more are working to amplify disability culture and break down the barriers to entry into the music industry. You might have noticed the team’s work at the Grammy Awards the past two years: there’s now ramp access to the stage, American Sign Language interpreters on the red carpet, and live captioning and audio description accompanying the video content. 

RAMPD stems as much from Lachi’s work as a cultural activist – she serves on several DEI committees within the music industry and is the Grammys’ DEI ambassador – as her personal experiences within the field. Lachi is a songwriter and producer, working mainly within the EDM-sphere, and as she began moving up in the industry, she realised she was usually the only person present with a disability (Lachi is legally blind).

“I had no community,” she says. “Every time I asked for accommodations, people felt uncomfortable. So I decided – let’s come together and make this network, and not just make something for ourselves, but for the world.

“We want to be the place, not just for professional musicians to find a home, but the place for organisations, companies, NGOs, universities to start talking to folks about disability culture, inclusion and belonging in the music industry at their level, and on a pop-culture scale.” 

Below, Suzanne and Lachi have shared insights into actionable ways that venues can do their part to ensure a more equitable and accessible industry.

Lachi: If folks who have disabilities are the type that like to go out, they’re also the type to check a venue’s website beforehand – and that’s the starting point for establishing a sense of belonging. Something as small as having an accessibility tab and an email to ask accessibility questions can make a big difference. Just the fact that they have an acknowledgement there – a nod to let people with disabilities know that they’re welcome if they decide to come – that is such low-hanging fruit, but it makes you feel, even at step one, that somebody cares.

Suzanne: Venues are often quite surprised at how cost effective it is to make disability equality a priority. Providing honest access information is really important, as is training the staff so that they’re welcoming. And even just acquiring a temporary ramp, which is anything from £90-£150, is not actually that costly. Neither is making the space for an accessible toilet, nor roping off a designated accessible area, nor making one of the bars lower. 

In the UK, the narrative is about disabled people on benefits taking money out of the system; but in 2019, we looked at the live events economy, and found that £9.3 million was spent by disabled people and their family and friends in our charter venues that year alone. And when you look at the entire economy and consider what we call walk-away sales, or walk-away customers – people who can’t access a service so they don’t end up participating – the UK economy is missing out on an additional £420.3 million. So making simple adjustments to welcome disabled fans into a venue is not just inclusive, it also has a clear cost benefit.

Suzanne: Being accessible doesn’t always have to be about physical changes to a space. Exchange in Bristol, for example, is trialling a series of relaxed performances called Go Gentle to support people with sensory issues, and to accommodate fans who are apprehensive about returning to busy venues after the pandemic. The shows – which feature acoustic and spoken word performances – are cosy: there’s a reduced capacity, comfortable furniture to sit on, the volume is lowered, and flashing lights or strobe effects are avoided. Fans are encouraged to express themselves however they like, so if you want to move around or be noisy, that’s fine; or you can spread out or lie down – and staff are always on hand to help. There’s also captioning that accompanies the event’s livestreams.

Lachi: In the US, one of the things that a lot of venues worry about is being sued for not being ADA-compliant, which refers to the Americans with Disabilities Act Standards for Accessible Design. But the bigger issue is being accommodating and creating a sense of belonging, because if you’re willing to accommodate someone, then generally, you’re actually being compliant. For instance, if somebody comes in and they’re in a wheelchair and you don't have an ADA-compliant bathroom, but you’ve worked it out with the place next door so that anybody can use their bathroom, that’s all you need to have put in place. You don’t need to spend money if you have a workaround – and that’s all that really matters, legally.

A lot of venues don’t know about accommodation over strict ADA-compliance because they’re so used to a fear-based approach to having these conversations, and this is the kind of thing that RAMPD is trying to dismantle. I would call upon my disabled folks to try to work with venues instead of working with lawyers, because those settlements don’t necessarily lead to a change in accessibility for the venues

Suzanne: I think what’s surprised me about the work that Attitude is Everything has done is the number of disabled people we’ve helped, and how we’ve empowered them. There’s a quote on our website: “Being at an accessible live event gives me a sense of solidarity and togetherness – I feel like I’m living rather than existing.” And that’s so important to us.

When it comes to our disabled steward community (who aid other disabled people at live events), 74% of them said that when they’ve volunteered for us, it’s the first time in their life that they’ve ever felt useful. When we launched the Next Stage initiative to empower disabled artists, 96% of them said they wanted disabled artists to be more visible, and to speak about the issues they faced to improve disability representation so they didn’t feel alone. So, we’re uncovering quite a lot of societal issues and negative perceptions of barriers that I think go much, much further than music and live events.