Agency News

What is Access?


	Access Symbols

The Maine Arts Commission strives to provide arts access for everyone. Therefore, work is ongoing to ensure that meetings, programs, events and facilities are fully accessible to people with disabilities. All agency meetings are open to the public and are fully accessible, and all grant programs must also be fully accessible. The Maine Arts Commission is eager to find solutions and remove barriers, making the arts more enjoyable for everyone.

In life, everyone is "temporarily-abled." At some point, everyone will be faced with a disability or know someone with a disability. In a perfect world, everything would be designed using Universal Design - ensuring that everything is accessible to all people, regardless of disability. For instance, people might use assistive listening systems in conference rooms or large meetings spaces, not only to allow someone with hearing loss to participate fully but also to allow everyone to participate fully. Unfortunately, Universal Design is not yet widespread. In the meantime, the Maine Arts Commission is working to raise awareness and provide Maine's art community with information about accessibility.

According to the 2000 United States census:

of the 69.6 million families in the United States, 20.3 million families had at least one member with a disability.
the total number of Maine residents (age five and older) who identified as a person with a disability was 237,910 or roughly 18 percent of the population.
more than half of the population over the age of 65 had a disability (14.4 percent of Maine residents were over age 65 as of 2000).
people with disabilities spend on average 20 hours per week on the Internet and 48 percent say that the Internet has significantly improved their quality of life.

The numbers speak volumes when it comes to providing full access. If 20 percent of Maine's population has some type of disability, adopting Universal Access principles whenever possible would give approximately 255,000 Maine residents new access to arts events.

Through the Governor's Awards for Arts Accessibility, the Maine Arts Commission is working with some of the state's largest arts institutions to improve accessibility. For more information about this and other agency programs or to request an accommodation, please contact Bryan W. Knicely, assistant director & accessibility coordinator, at 207/287-2714 (voice), 207/287-2360 (TTY), by e-mail at bryan.knicely@maine.gov or at Nextalk.net - user ID: bryanknicely.