Why Are There Still Disability Barriers at the Toronto International Film Festival?

Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance Update

United for a Barrier-Free Ontario for All People with Disabilities

Website: www.aodaalliance.org

Email: aodafeedback@gmail.com

Twitter: @aodaalliance

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/aodaalliance

 

Why Are There Still Disability Barriers at the Toronto International Film Festival?

 

August 31, 2024

 

SUMMARY

 

It is absurd that in 2024, people with disabilities can still experience disability barriers at the Toronto International Film Festival (“TIFF”). On August 30, 2024, CBC News published a revealing report about the problems with ensuring that films shown at TIFF will have closed captioning. We invite you to read that article below.

 

TIFF wants to be seen as a truly “international” event. TIFF should have done a much better job when it comes to accessibility. This is certainly not the first time people with disabilities have had to raise accessibility concerns with TIFF:

 

• A guest column in the September 17, 2023 edition of the University of Toronto’s Varsity publication included a report on disability barriers at TIFF last year. This is set out in the November 3, 2023 AODA Alliance Update.
• The May 13, 2015 AODA Alliance Update honoured the memory of the late Barb Turnbull, a tremendous and tenacious advocate for disability accessibility. She fought long and hard to get TIFF to make sure that she had the same choices for films to view at TIFF that people without disabilities enjoyed.

 

Our thanks go to Michael McNeely for raising this disability barrier, and to CBC for covering this issue.

 

This is yet more proof that the Ontario Government’s failing to effectively implement and enforce the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act has left this province replete with entirely preventable disability barriers. Disability barriers at TIFF hurt Torontonians with disabilities who want to enjoy this film festival, and tourists from elsewhere with disabilities who want to do the same.

 

What You Can Do to Help

 

Write your member of the Ontario Legislature. Tell them there’s no excuse why TIFF is not fully accessible in 2024.

 

MORE DETAILS

 

CBC News August 30, 2024

 

Originally posted at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/tiff-accessibility-concerns-1.7308288

 

TIFF needs to start requiring captions for all films: advocates

 

Film festival could help make major change if it makes captions a requirement: advocate

 

Lane Harrison CBC News

 

A large red logo reading TIFF stands in the middle of a street.

 

The Toronto International Film Festival runs from Sept. 5-15 in downtown Toronto. (Michael Wilson/CBC)

 

The Toronto International Film Festival is one of the most prestigious events on the city’s cultural calendar, but according to one critic, accessibility issues prevent it from being something every movie lover can fully enjoy.

 

Michael McNeely has been attending the festival since 2010 and is an accredited critic who reviews films for Accessible Media Inc. McNeely is deaf-blind but can read large text, meaning he needs captions to do his favourite thing: watch movies.

 

TIFF runs from Sept. 5 to 15, but when McNeely went to buy tickets for this year’s festival in late August, he says there was no information about which English-language films would have captioning. He received an initial list from TIFF, but it doesn’t include some of the festival’s highest profile entries, like The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis or the Saturday Night Live biopic Saturday Night.

 

“I don’t understand why we’re still having this conversation,” said McNeely, who first spoke to CBC Toronto about accessibility issues at TIFF in 2016.

 

“It’s frustrating to me. It’s frustrating that people with disabilities are being ignored and being relegated to the side.”

 

A man with glasses and a plaid shirt.

 

Michael McNeely has been attending the festival since 2010 and is an accredited critic reviewing films for Accessible Media Inc. (CBC)

 

Some high-profile entries like Nightbitch, starring Amy Adams, and Conclave, from Oscar-winning director Edward Berger, will be available with captioning. But McNeely wants to see captions become a prerequisite for a film being admitted into the festival.

 

He also wants to be able to know if a movie will have captions when he buys the ticket, instead of having to wait to hear from TIFF.

 

“I can get refunded later for any movie that is not captioned. But that still is not giving me the dignity of being treated as a customer making an informed decision of what is available to me,” he said.

 

TIFF did not provide CBC Toronto with a response to McNeely’s concerns.

 

Captioning should be prerequisite for TIFF: advocate

 

Steen Starr, a consultant and advocate for accessibility at film festivals, said while festivals should try to provide as much accessible content as they can, the onus of actually captioning films rests with the people and companies who make them.

 

Still, Starr said a festival like TIFF could play a significant role in getting films captioned by making it a requirement.

 

“I think once a major film festival like TIFF takes a role like that, that’s going to start, potentially, a sort of movement towards it at other major festivals,” she said.

 

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David Lepofsky, chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance, said with modern technology it’s easier than ever for a film to have captions. And TIFF has the prestige to mandate them, he said.

 

“It’s not the Toronto International Film Festival for people without disabilities. It’s a Toronto International Film Festival for everyone,” he said.

 

This year, for films being shown at the TIFF Lightbox (one of several venues for screenings during the festival) there are new captioning devices available for those who need them.

 

Two men kick out a rolled up red carpet in front of a sign that says TIFF

 

This year, for films being shown at the TIFF Lightbox (one of several venues for screenings during the festival) there are new captioning devices available for those who need them. (Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press)

 

Captioning devices allow individual viewers to see captions at their seat, instead of everybody seeing them on the screen. With TIFF viewers being no strangers to on-screen text — foreign-language films, of which there are many, screen with subtitles — McNeely wants every English-language film to have captions on-screen.

 

“[The devices] make disability a private experience, meaning that if I had any problems with the machine, I’m the only one that has problems with the machine,” he said.

 

If everyone can see the captions and they stop working, everyone will know there’s an issue, he said.

 

Despite being the film lover that he is, McNeely’s experiences with TIFF make him hesitant to travel to another festival around the world.

 

“TIFF is supposed to have been a leader of film festivals,” he said. “If it is the leader, then that means other film festivals are probably falling behind.”

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

Lane Harrison

Reporter

 

Lane Harrison is a journalist with CBC Toronto. Born and raised in Toronto, he previously worked for CBC New Brunswick in Saint John. You can reach him at lane.harrison@cbc.ca