Several cases implemented in different countries were evoked, for instance, the way accessibility became a necessary condition to apply to the public grant in Edinburgh, Scotland. Further, an award for “access in the art” was created in New Zealand and Australia to encourage practitioners to introduce the notion and implement systems to host disabled people. These cases demonstrate the possibility we may have to raise a visibility of the needs of the accessibility support through large public events.
Then we argued the accessibility in cinemas. Mr Shintaro Fujii referred to France where most of DVDs offer provide French subtitles for the people having difficulty with hearing. As this is a not common practice in Japan, the TA-net has been working on the case, advocating and creating a dialogue with film industries to provide Japanese subtitles for the movies at the movie theatre, but the results are not yet tangible. The motivation from the film industry remains quite low as to provide subtitles takes more cost and effort. Particularly in the movie theatre, the biggest problem they face to have these Japanese subtitles is the fear to decrease the other audience members who don’t need it.
This led to the question of how the art can secure the accessibility support for everyone, and how the people who don't need the accessibility support could accept it. For instance, many types of the social engaged art exist in Japan today, they attempt to involve every participant in it, however the risk to exclude a part of participants unintentionally remain. We need to have a more critical point of view about the fact that the participatory artistic practice might discriminate a part of people.
Mr Naoya Fujita made an opinion and indeed it considers as difficult and uneasy to include people who can not stay quiet during the artistic practice. Hirokawa objected that there were several options and referred to the "relax performance day" implemented in the UK allowing punctually to enjoy the performance with children or disabled individuals who can not stay quiet. This initiative has begun in Japan recently too. This event-based approach could be a starting point of mediation, a way to examine how the artistic practice includes these people and their reactions.
Referring to the social model of the disability, MS Barbara Lisicki, a trainer of Shape Arts in the UK used the argument that when people complained that an exceptional dealing with the disabled people in art can be a reverse discrimination, we have to think that it is much more problematic if they are not allowed to access to art at all.
In Japan, we can note that social progress has to be done and be further dealt with and amongst people who have to change their set of mind, maybe to be more generous to share the space and time with the others who need a different type of support and help. We could consider artistic practice itself to be a trigger to change the situation.
