SFU Galleries Digital Needs Assessment, 2023

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When a file is needed, a staff member should be able to quickly find out whether a template exists or if they need to create something new. If templates exist, they should be easy to find and identify. File duplication happens because of the need to work around the physical server and due to simple human error; therefore, the administration must schedule file maintenance each year. The initial process will require more labour and time set aside, but once it has been created and practiced, subsequent years will require less time.

Establishing file naming and folder standards helps staff quickly identify duplicate files. It also builds accessibility. When things follow simple naming conventions, it becomes more intuitive for screen reader users, English as additional language users, and those with cognitive challenges to find files themselves or seek assistance.

Note: This recommendation is for files on the shared server. This recommendation may also apply to collections; however, this author acknowledges that library systems and archives may employ their own file naming to work within the existing collections database and at the discretion of the Collections Manager.

Specific action items for this project have been added to 2.11 Action Items for Internal Systems

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All staff have a Microsoft Office account associated with their SFU Galleries email and login. It is now rare for someone to enter the workforce without a rudimentary understanding of word processors, spreadsheets, presentation slides, or email, and while it may be a minimum requirement to work at SFU Galleries, it is up to the employee to maintain a working understanding of these tools during their lifetime.

Microsoft is a large company that works to prioritize and add accessibility tools to its productivity suite. Still, many non-Disabled and "pro users" are unaware of the available tools for users and consumers.

It is recommended that all staff be provided with a professional development budget specific to updating their knowledge of the Microsoft Office Suite within the context of their current needs and becoming familiar with the accessibility tools available to them. The easiest first step would be to review the accesibility tools built into the current Microsoft 365 suite.

It is worth considering additional licenses for current staff, as new versions of Microsoft Office can be used on Screen Reader devices, laptops and mobile devices, and home computers that may more easily run a local copy than a virtual copy through the VPN.

While Microsoft Office is used, Skype and Teams (truth?) is not (see video conferencing).

Specific action items for this project have been added to 2.11 Action Items for Internal Systems

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The SFU IT department has set up Zoom Education accounts for all faculty, staff, and students for teaching, meetings, and learning. An SFU Computing ID and password is required. SFU Zoom offers Live streaming on third-party applications (e.g. YouTube Live or Facebook Live). This feature is only available for public events, i.e., events including non-SFU members, such as Convocation and StreetFest. Classes or internal events at SFU are NOT eligible for using live streaming. Russell: Are SFU Galleries able to use this service/have you used this service? Are their procedures around staff signing up for this?

It is recommended that all staff use SFU Zoom to generate meeting URLS and to ensure that this information is included in Calendar Events (digital calendars) or emails as a plain URL.

Some consideration on whether or not to use Zoom as a meeting or webinar should be given before hosting public events, as webinars restrict access to access workers such as signed language interpreters. While restricting access to the chat provides accessibility to those using screen readers, it limits the ability for others to ask questions, get technical support, or reach out for information clarification.

The list is hardly exhaustive and only gives some potential challenges and opportunities that may arise when hosting online sessions. It also highlights the potential access conflicts that pop up when different audiences come together simultaneously. With a digital videoconference, more opportunities and potential challenges exist. Review the current procedures around video conferencing for meetings and public events to ensure you prioritize inclusion. If you cannot support specific groups, consider making this explicit in your event listings, meeting invitations, and planning sessions.

It is recommended that a template is created for SFU Galleries video and teleconferencing that identifies priority groups, what access supports and methods will be employed, and when using VOIP (video and voice over internet), so help those using these technologies know what the current minimum standard of access SFU Galleries is striving to accomplish each year. For example, in year one, SFU Galleries may only be able to prioritize hearing English as their primary and target language users. The goal for that year is to incorporate non-visual communication in their gathering procedures as they are currently engaged with some Blind or non-visual community members or staff. During 2023, SFU Galleries will strive to include visual descriptions of participants or presenters and to describe any shared screens, regardless of the stated visual acuity (or assumptions about their audience). They acknowledge the way the chat can both support and challenge their primary and target audiences, and so have developed a script at the start of sessions to explain how the chat will be used and have committed to always having two staff members in hosted sessions so that one person can be monitoring chat, and waiting for or prompting pauses when things are added to the chat. There is no commitment to make events or meetings available afterwards unless requested and confirmed before the event, nor is there a goal to edit or transcribe events in the archive. A wish list could be generated in future years, with new target groups identified and added to the digital strategy.

Recorded sessions on Zoom are saved to the SFU Zoom cloud account and must be downloaded manually by staff (or a request from the ???). Are downloaded sessions, edited or not, stored on the physical server for all staff?

If video or audio from a video or teleconference is recorded to be shared with an external participant, consent is collected by SFU Galleries in writing or live during the meeting through a unanimous showing of hands or other agreed upon, accessible communication.

Specific action items for this project have been added to 2.11 Action Items for Internal Systems

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This chapter is not designed to analyze the current Staff Meeting structure but to suggest ways digital tools and a commitment to hybrid staff meetings can provide more equitable access to all team members. Regardless of who is in the room, having tools that prioritize accessibility and transparency can promote wellness and efficiency. By providing alternative ways that staff can participate and access staff meeting information, SFU Galleries allows its team agency to make decisions based on their daily dynamic needs and reduces the reactive accommodation scramble that may need to happen when a guest or distanced participant needs to attend. Arguably, having systems for staff meetings meant to empower those in the room can also help break up power imbalances (whether acknowledged or unacknowledged) and give those in attendance more authority to speak up and respond when they previously could not. The goal is to keep the length of staff meetings the same. Still, it is worth noting that when introducing new procedures into systems that have previously prioritized non-Disabled hearing participation and efficiency, things will slow down as people practice, make mistakes, and are confronted with their own internalized ableism!

The simplest way to practice hybrid staff meetings is to invite Zoom into all staff meetings, regardless of whether they are held in person or online. Schedule a Zoom meeting event for each staff meeting and set up a speakerphone, microphone/laptop for all in-person meetings.

Specific action items for this project have been added to 2.11 Action Items for Internal Systems

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While manuals are important for onboarding, they are also a staff resource for important but irregular tasks. Additionally, manuals can provide an alternative way for various learners to access information. It establishes a best practice and consistent way of doing things to help troubleshoot errors quicker, and it can help workers identify or overcome assumptions and biases. In a manual, best practices can be explained or written out so that staff can focus on consistently providing what is needed for their audiences and customers in most cases and not need to strategize a solution live every time. Certainly, manuals should be regularly reviewed, critiqued, and renewed. Still, a systems or procedures manual can help keep things consistent and give staff agency to answer process questions consistent with institutional values and not subject to the whims of the internet or their assumptions.

Two manuals were provided to the report's author to review for this needs assessment.

• SFU Galleries Website Manual
• SFU Galleries Campaigner (Email/Newsletter) Manual

These manuals have been consulted to generate feedback for Chapter 4 (website) and Chapter 2.8 Email.

This chapter is focused on recommendations for the format of these manuals, how to make these digital assets more accessible, and how to recommend a project to generate or review written documentation for processes that are either known only to current staff or whose formal process documents require an update.

Specific action items for this project have been added to 2.11 Action Items for Internal Systems

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This chapter encourages resource sharing and co-learning opportunities between SFU Galleries staff and SFU students. All staff are responsible for staying up to date with software features or access information, but it is easier when it is scheduled, done as a team, and when space is made to share what is learned. Below are a few co-learning opportunity projects suggested for the coming year.

Specific action items for this project have been added to 2.11 Action Items for Internal Systems

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Contracts and agreements are documents that many now expect to be able to handle digitally. Through signing software such as Adobe Acrobat, Dropbox Sign, or Docusign, draft contracts can be provided for review and signed without needing a printer, fax machine, or in-person meeting. SFU Galleries maintains an Adobe Cloud subscription for all staff, which includes Adobe Sign. There would be no additional cost to standardize this use, and a manual should be created for onboarding and consistent use across departments. However, Adobe Sign is not always accessible to all, especially those who are Blind or have older technology incompatible with Adobe programs. It is recommended that a program such as DocuSign be considered either as the primary tool or backup for accessibility.

SFU Galleries has existing templates for Supplier Contracts, which Simon Fraser University has approved; that is to say, they follow current national and provincial laws. These contracts were designed for commercial services and were written with the understanding that SFU cannot be held liable. There is no space to shift within the current contract for a worker to confirm accessibility and to ensure that harm also does not come to the worker by SFU and its network. While this does not have an easy solution, conversations around equity and inclusion within the current boilerplate began when the author of this report was brought into this project. While contract audits and reviews are a larger project and fall outside of a digital needs assessment, it is worth being involved in this discussion, especially as SFU and other Universities across British Columbia complete their Accessibility Plans associated with the new Accessible British Columbia Act. Having digital access to contracts, centring bodies who may require digital access for payment, communication, and file sharing, and updating these agreements to be accessible (providing simple word explanations to inform and promote fairness, not to confuse with inaccessible language), would be a worthy project to pursue.

For accessible digital contracts, ensure that all draft contracts are created in Microsoft Office and then pass an Accessibility Check. A well-structured digital contract will be more easily navigated through assistive technology. Avoid PDFs unless they meet ISO standards, and even then, it is best to send drafts as Microsoft Office or plain text files for review.

Draft plain language summary documents to go with larger, common contracts to create a place for artists and contractors to ask questions. These are not legally binding documents, but they give both the SFU Gallery staff and external signing partners a chance to confirm they understand what is being agreed to honestly and to recognize that legal language represents a barrier to anyone not regularly engaged in the legal process. These work summaries are not agreements but an accessibility tool (this must be stated specifically).

Agreements made specifically between SFU Galleries and contractors may allow for more flexibility; however, SFU Galleries is still connected to the university, and agreements must be acceptable to SFU legal before an agreement can be made. SFU Galleries handles contracts between the Institution, artists, and arts workers within their budgets and administration. These contracts are managed and ultimately signed by the director. Changes to the SFU Gallery contract template are reviewed by SFU procurement.Kim - please confirm

2.7.1. SFU Galleries payments, e-Transfer.

It has been documented a few times that attempts to have e-transfers set up by SFU have failed, and physical cheques have been mailed. This creates a barrier for those with physical challenges and those for whom getting to a bank incurs a cost. Consider, for example, a Blind artist or Disabled contractor who must be driven to a bank to deposit a cheque physically. This requires them to pay someone to be able to be paid. This note is to flag the confusion around how to set up eTransfers with SFU properly, and a review of this process, followed by the creation of a procedures manual which can be shared with external contractors, is highly recommended.

Specific action items for this project have been added to 2.11 Action Items for Internal Systems

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SFU Galleries staff have mostly consistent email footers. All footers contain three upcoming exhibitions or projects and a link to the sfugalleries.ca website. There is some inconsistency around the contact information, and footers use tiny fonts with a low contrast colour (fig 2.8a), except for one staff (see Fig 2.8a-1 and Fig 2.8a-4), which uses black for contact information and blue links. It is recommended that all staff shift to this format. Any grey text should be replaced with black or moved to grey with a 1:7 contrast ratio. It is also recommended that the font size be a minimum of 12 for all footers. Remove all underlined text that is not a link (see Fig 2.8c for recommended format).

Fig 2.8a: 4 email footers from 3 SFU Staff across four months.

Some staff have begun to adopt the addition of personal pronouns, but there needs to be a consistent placement. The option to add personal pronouns will be a decision made by the staff or as an act of allyship by the Institution, but the position should be consistent. It is recommended that it directly follows the name and post-nominal letters. The option to include the label "pronoun" is optional (but should be consistent across all profiles that indicate their pronouns (fig 2.8b).

It is recommended that a clean version of the email template be created with static links, as some of the source code within current email footers contains old links. Remove capitals, and use full abbreviations for dates (i.e., Sept, not Sep). Ensure location links (outside the contact.html page) are current and go to contact pages with addresses or emails. When a landing page is not available for an external location, link to a map (see fig 2.8c, Belzberg library)

SFU Galleries uses Microsoft Outlook on their desktops. There needs to be more consistent use of Outlook on mobile devices. Many employees use the default mail browser on their phones. It is recommended that the Microsoft Outlook tool be downloaded onto mobile devices used for SFU Galleries work (whether on personal devices or an institutional asset). This will allow for consistent message appearances, a separation from work and personal messages, and accessibility tools available within Microsoft Office. In particular, all staff should turn on and familiarize themselves with the Accessibility Checker within Outlook.

Specific action items for this project have been added to 2.11 Action Items for Internal Systems

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SFU Galleries has multiple office locations and scheduled work-from-home days through VPN. Its staff supports artists through community events, studio and gallery visits, co-learning opportunities and more. SFU Galleries also maintains and activates off-site public artwork. Additionally, staff have some casual flexibility to work away from office locations when health and wellness are a concern.

Working off-site is now so different than during the pre-mobile or web era or even before 2021. Adjacent to considerations around physical location is the ability to switch between and use mobile devices owned by the Institution or the staff. Formalized agreements, procedures, and inventory associated with working off-site and through mobile devices are things to be considered in future digital strategy and operations planning. Without a formal procedure or policy related to working off-site, the burden of planning and coverage is subject to the fluctuating capacity of staff, it puts the burden of managing safety, health and wellness on employees, and it is only sustainable while the current staff is employed and "well". It represents a risk to productivity and capacity as staff must rely on something other than an impermanent system subject to the current administrative staff makeup.

Cellphones are now ubiquitous in office culture and are used by SFU Galleries employees to do their work, including emails. While still being informally considered as extra or up to an employee, they are now common enough to examine how these tools are being used, move beyond assumptions, and document how much cellphone and personal device use is happening and the cost. It has been identified by multiple staff that their cell phones are essential for their jobs, from documenting and installation to artist visits and off-site meetings. In particular, the SFU Collections is stored in a vault where staff are required to go down a set of stairs, often solo, with no cell reception and a single phone that does not dial out.

Without a policy or formalized set of procedures, personal device use poses a potential security risk, requires employees to be self-motivated and update or upgrade their phone for minimum security (i.e., OS updates,) and unjustly benefits employees with more opportunity and privilege. To assume all employees could afford a cell phone is not advised. However, it is worth considering how an employee with access to a cell phone might be more efficient, mobile, reachable, and rewardable when reviewing output.

The author does not recommend SFU Gallery prohibit personal device use from the office, nor to punish or disrupt those who have integrated their phones into the productivity and safety systems, but to conduct a deeper investigation into personal device use. It may reveal that mobile or other personal digital devices are, in fact, essential for work now conducted at SFU Galleries (i.e., website and app development, conferencing, file transfer, testing, photography) and should be considered within operations.

A cellphone and personal device use survey of current employees would be a good first step to get a picture of the tech requirements and cost of maintenance that is held by staff, and how cellphones are being used such that it is more convenient to use personal assets than ones provided by SFU Galleries.

Adding cellphone processes to operations manuals and policy helps manage security and expectations for all staff, and updating contracts to confirm that cellphone use is the choice of the employee also minimizes risk when it comes to privacy and scams that many small businesses do not consider until they are threatened.

If cellphone use proves considerable, a security audit and a use policy should be created. It may be worth having all SFU Galleries hardware and cellular data for staff bundled into the same agreement with current internet service providers. Working off-site comes with risks and opportunities to consider outside the scope of a digital assessment, but working off-site is no longer analog. It will only become more feasible with the ever-growing IoT (Internet of Things).

Specific action items for this project have been added to 2.11 Action Items for Internal Systems

Practice accessible and consistent file and folder naming. Rename files, find duplicates, and return errant files to the server.

Microsoft Office has many accessibility features. SFU Galleries staff must regularly update their knowledge of the new tools. Host a professional development event.

Make video conferences accessible. Generate assets for asynchronous access.

Staff meetings are more accessible with digital agendas. Incorporate transcription and auto-caption tools.

Manuals are important. They keep processes consistent. Written documentation reduces risk. Keep manuals up to date.

Engage students and seasonal workers in content writing projects.

Subscribe to a readability tool to help ensure language is accessible.

Leverage content writing assistants to help write concise, simple language based on existing documents.

Generate simple language explanations for contracts. Use an accessible tool for digital contract signing.

Update the internal email footer.

Create a formal working off-site policy. Enforce tech and internet allowances. Incorporate mobile devices into the digital strategy.

The following checklist are some action items that can be addressed directly through quick fixes, focused projects, or policy changes. The checklist does not store anything within this report, but if you feel good checking something off when it's done, check the box!

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Exhibitions at SFU Galleries are presented by physical location and contained within a single landing page. Each exhibition has one main image, a date range, an abstract, and artist information. A manual list of upcoming events is included if event information is available when the exhibition information is published.

There are many avenues to explore digital interactivity within modern Exhibitions. The possibilities are numerous, from the visitor's own mobile devices to technology available in the Gallery for loan or by exhibition, to digital explorations within the exhibition itself conceived by the artists or collective to digital alternatives created by gallery staff.

SFU Galleries must consider their exhibition goals through a calendar year or multi-year program so that digital interactivity complements rather than overwhelms. Consistency is important, and it's important to remember that not all technology or opportunities will be immediately adopted by all visitors and that some will require time and promotion before they are noticed and used.

The digital exhibition is something that many galleries and museums were forced to consider during the early pandemic era. For some, photographing the exhibition with more didactic notes was enough. For others, immersive 360 tours, augmented and virtual environments, and online audio-visual participation allowed galleries and museums to radically change how they connected with local and international visitors. As distancing regulations and restrictions were lighted, it was up to the institution to find the capacity to continue their new digital programming or sometimes abandon the temporary online spaces altogether to prioritize the physical and local visitors. The past few years have shaken up expectations around what is possible in public presentation spaces, whether due to capacity and resources or attitudes toward the value of in-person versus online offerings.

The following is a list of opportunities for the SFU Galleries staff to consider for exhibitions moving forward and ways to incorporate digital participation in exhibitions offsite and online.

Introduce digital items to exhibitions one at a time and make them a consistent part of all forthcoming programs. Once the curatorial and visitor teams feel confident with a digital feature and it is featured and promoted to visitors consistently, consider adding something new.

Specific action items for this project have been added to 3.5 Action Items for Programming

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This chapter is related to SFU Art Collection works, which are permanently and publically installed and referred to as SFU Public Art. While there are works from the SFU Art Collection that are installed across SFU campuses, this chapter focuses specifically on works installed at the SFU Burnaby campus.

The primary way to access this work digitally is through a free PDF guide on the SFU galleries website. The PDF is not interactive but is keyword-searchable. The PDF is not listed anywhere else on the SFU.ca website, although it is called the SFU Art Collection. It may be a resource that needs to be shared and promoted to other SFU departments that take care of visitor and student services, especially school tours that may wish to access the resources and whose point of contact is not the SFU Galleries.

While the PDF may be accessible to sighted users on a desktop, the PDF is a resource that needs to be accessible through a mobile device and screen reader, especially if a visitor comes upon a work while at the SFU Burnaby campus, and not on wifi. It is recommended that the SFU Public Art Guide be translated into a plain text or webpage equivalent, with the PDF being an alternate, downloadable resource. This translation will make the content more searchable and accessible across devices and translation accounts. The styled art guide is beautiful but is styled to limit the content per work to a single page and doesn't have room for accessibility content. A webpage could also allow an interactive map to be downloaded as a walking tour.

It is recommended that the PDF map be converted into text data. First, an address or landmark description of the location should be added to each item listing (see Fig 3.2a) so that those who cannot access a visual map have more details to share with SFU Burnaby campus staff or students to find their way. Second, specific geographic coordinates of the works allow users to place this into a map service without a specific address. Third, this text alternative also provides a space for visual description, allowing both sighted and low-vision or non-sighted visitors to engage with the work and draw attention to specifics that might be overlooked.

As this work invites solo public engagement, a text version of the art guide also gives a place for curators and gallery staff to include questions to visitors to deepen their experience with the works further.

Fig 3.2a: an example of Geert Mass Listing as a text listing.

Geert Maas(1)

Location (2): Blussen Hall, SFU Burnaby. The work is installed outdoors in the Blussen Hall courtyard. Wheelchair accessible. Click for google maps, coordinates 49°16'46.1"N 122°54'45.4"W.

Visual Description (3): This bronze sculpture depicts five sunbathers arranged as a family. It is installed on a square of marble 2ft high plinth in the centre of the walkway.

About: Multiple patinas were used to achieve the unique textures of swimsuits, hair, and skin. In 2002, Maas installed a similar sculpture in downtown Kelowna.

Biography: Geert Maas (1944–) was born in The Netherlands, where he attended the Academies of Art in The Hague. Mass moved to Kelowna, British Columbia, with his family in 1979. With his wife Elly, Maas created the Geert Maas Sculpture Gardens and Gallery (Kelowna, BC), which features one of the largest collections of bronze sculptures in Canada and a diverse selection of other works. Geert Maas is an internationally renowned artist who works in two and three dimensions in a variety of media. His disciplines include sculpture, painting, reliefs, and metallic art. His works have been shown in numerous exhibitions and are represented in prestigious public, corporate, and private art collections worldwide.

Critical thinking: (4) Would this piece work inside, or does it need to be installed outdoors? If you were to copy this sculpture into another medium, how would you do it?

Author changes of note: (1)The Artist's name is not in all caps, (2) Landmark, address, or coordinate description, (3) Description of the image provided, (4) Critical thinking questions.

Many community interviews revealed that it would be a challenge to find a specific piece of public art without wifi or access to the PDF. A few people stated that they would ask admissions or campus security. Have other SFU visitor services departments been updated on SFU Public Art, and how do they help people with different needs arrive at their desired destination?

Specific action items for this project have been added to 3.5 Action Items for Programming

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Events and Special Projects are separated and duplicated inconsistently across the current website. Events are mostly contained within the events calendar section and widget but are also sometimes written out in detail at the bottom of exhibition pages or special projects. Special projects have their section within the navigation menu but contain both events, news or blog-type events that are otherwise hosted on other websites or are associated with publications and editions, screenings, or media.

It is recommended that Special Projects become a content tag. For projects that are programs of a similar scale to exhibitions but are separate from a gallery show or specific location, having a landing page within the chronology of the gallery section makes sense. Examples of these would be the Listening to Pictures Projects, or Witnessing Tsēmā Igharas: Hughadēsłēł — give it all away. For special projects with single programs or external programs in partnership with SFU Galleries or local communities, these should be articles listed within News or Updates (a consolidated category of news, blogs, and media). Any project with an event where the public is specifically invited should be in the events section and link back to landing pages (and vice versa), but should never exist isolated from the events page.

Specific action items for this project have been added to 3.5 Action Items for Programming

3.3.2 Social Media

Social media engagement will constantly be shifting and changing, and is no longer a small part of any communications plan and requires considerable staff commitment. In this department, having access to a mobile device or camera is not just nice but necessary. It reinforces the recommendation that SFU Galleries have a tech budget to supply staff either with company mobile devices or an internet and tech allowance. Having devices that run the most up-to-date software allows staff to record, document, and engage with their communities as peers and in real-time without the risk of accidentally using their personal accounts or data while engaged with professional work.

In the community interviews, Instagram and Facebook were visited with varying success levels. Some users were very familiar with the platforms, but their personal access barriers kept them from being engaged or able to understand the posted content. However, it is worth mentioning that recent social media posts on both Facebook and Instagram have included auto-captions, image descriptions, and camelCase hashtags. This work is being done, and now the next step is to move some of this work back into the main SFU galleries website.

Fig 3.3.2a: Tai G. shows an example of a social media post within Facebook that referenced a user name that was inaccessible to him using his screen reader. "@r0n___7r4n ) drives my screenreader nuts." Tai also mentions that the media caption language inviting people to tap an image within Facebook is difficult for blind users.

Specific action items for this project have been added to 3.5 Action Items for Programming

De-silo exhibition content by physical location. Present Exhibitions and Special Projects together.

Integrate digital within the physical Gallery with mobile engagement.

Share printed and physical assets available in the Gallery online. Take visitors on virtual walks before they enter the Gallery. Develop audio tours.

Create a non-PDF version of the public art guide.

Expand event information and keep it on the events page. Link to event listings from other pages. External events are blogs or news posts.

Social media content is well done.

The following checklist are some action items that can be addressed directly through quick fixes, focused projects, or policy changes. The checklist does not store anything within this report, but if you feel good checking something off when it's done, check the box!

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The contact page is one of the most important static contact pages for any site serving an audience. It's a place to get answers, connect, inform, and get help. It should be easy to find and intuitively laid out.

SFU Galleries has 3 locations and a fair number of staff listed on the contact page. The goal for this page should be to minimize the stress that an already confused or frustrated visitor may have and to move people from this page feeling satisfied with an answer.

For visitors who do not know who they want to contact, they will contact the top listing. The current page shows the director at the top, who is not the one to field general inquiries. There is a general inquiries email, but it is listed at the bottom of the first column, below the site listing information. This placement is not intuitive for screen reader users (see Tai's interview) or for people with low vision. The information becomes conflated with the Teck Gallery listing. Move this listing to the top of the Staff column. All three galleries have a separate email address on the Collection site - either repeat this on the contact page or update the Collection site to match.

This page has two content sections in 2 columns, so it deserves two headings. Adding a header to the staff column allows a screen reader or keyboard navigation user to move between headings and access staff details more easily. Consider putting a skip jump link to the staff column that appears for mobile media breaks.

A repeated note to consider removing capitals from the headings, especially since they are already bolded.

Accessibility information about each physical site should live on this page and be accessible through a hyperlink. Under the three sections, a link to information about events and the minimum access provided would also be useful (such as all events having sanitizer and gender-neutral washrooms and the email address where to request specific access tools and support). Accessibility is oddly represented on this page, with two staff members listed as working in accessibility, but neither has an email address or way to contact them. To those who live with a disability, there is an easy assumption to be made that disability services are not a priority and are listed as lip service. If this is true, that is fine, but if accessibility is important and something visitors can access SFU Galleries about, consider allowing for direct contact with these staff or specifically stating where people can get help.

Since details about each site are also listed on the About Us page, once the contact page links to accessibility information, similar links from the About page should also direct visitors there.

There is a sudden jump when the Contact Us page loads, which takes the visual focus down to the email newsletter sign-up (Fig 4.1a). Regardless of whether or not this is the SFU Gallery goal for the page, this isn't very clear for visitors who need more time to read or who have found the information they need for the page to have it suddenly jump down. For visitors who are already frustrated and seeking to contact staff for help, this is not a page where you want unexpected behaviour.

Since the newsletter sign-up is a contact form only available on the Contact Us page, this needs to be clarified for any English as an additional language user or those with cognitive challenges. Consider adding an icon to this section to provide more clarity. It might also be worth placing this content on its page with details on what users might expect, the frequency of messages, links to the most recent newsletters and or accessible versions of newsletters, or to explain what Post Mail lists are.

4.1.1 How-to content:

This content could inform visitors of two columns or point out the general inquiries email. Direct visitors to accessibility information. If the newsletter sign-up field is to remain on the contact page, some details about these forms could also be added.

Specific action items for this project have been added to 4.9 Action Items for Website

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The search functionality on SFU.ca/galleries is not intuitive. It breaks with the site's style, is jarring to sighted visitors, and lists minimal results. Next to the search is an A-Z directory unrelated to the gallery and extremely confusing for those for whom English is an additional language or anyone who thinks they can navigate the gallery site by keyword. It is recommended that the A-Z directory be hidden on sfu.ca/gallery pages as it removes someone from the site and can easily be used by clicking the SFU icon in the upper right-hand corner. This act has more intention to move within the larger SFU website.

It has been named by a few SFU Galleries staff and witnessed within the community engagement project that external search is the primary way people navigate the website. This strongly implies that navigation through the website is not intuitive for staff and visitors. While the search engine navigation is not wrong (and maybe more accessible in general to users with disabilities), it is more important that cross-linking and consistent information that may be found on another page be easily accessible through search results. For example, navigating to an Exhibition page with a manual text listing for upcoming events is more likely to contain errors or be outdated than a link listing all events or via a dynamic list of upcoming events tagged similarly to the active article or page.

If possible, the search results page must be styled to match the rest of the site.

4.2.1 How-to content:

A visual description of the page or information about how content is served would be helpful. Point out how a visitor might accidentally search the entire SFU.ca website and how to change that.

Specific action items for this project have been added to 4.9 Action Items for Website

Navigation tags: SFUGartsWorkers, SFUGaudience, SFUGnetwork

SFU Galleries can't be everything to everyone. While universities need to strive for universal access due to the large population and cross-section of demographics they serve, SFU Galleries should focus on their primary audiences and be clear about whom they are serving and their capacity.

If SFU Galleries are not going to invest in ASL resources, then they don't serve the Deaf community, which is OK because it is the truth. If SFU Galleries identifies the Deaf community as a target audience they want to serve, they must authentically commit to it. A relationship with cultural groups not represented on staff or without considerable work and consideration will always have a higher chance of harm and misunderstanding, even when the goal is to be inclusive. Once SFU Galleries knows who they want to serve, consider the needs of these groups. Get it right with these audiences first, and then, when the goal is to build relationships and accessibility for more visitors, address each of these communities with a focus and care that allows for feedback. Building capacity within the staff is also essential to consistently serving communities- something essential to those who live with barriers and who must constantly adapt to move within a non-Disabled, hearing world.

This isn't to say that SFU Galleries should assume that their current visitor or artist community are non-Disabled, hearing, and without access needs. Instead, consider the cultural groups and communities with whom SFU Galleries has an ongoing relationship, and consider those who are struggling or least served by current processes here first.

Don't do things part ways. Don't offer ASL for workshops or talks if the rest of your site is inaccessible to Deaf communities. Consider co-hosting events with another group in a relationship with those communities you want to serve rather than positioning yourself as ready to hold a relationship you cannot or cannot serve.

Specific action items for this project have been added to 4.9 Action Items for Website

Navigation tags: SFUGaudience, SFUGnetwork

Providing visitors with information about what to expect when they visit SFU galleries can be a great comfort to visitors, job applicants, and artists. For visitors, knowing if their access needs will be met, if they experience any sensory challenges, what they should wear, etc., can give visitors a sense of belonging. Consider that many visitors to contemporary spaces, even practicing artists, can feel intimidated by galleries. Not knowing where to look, what to touch, or where to leave their things are common things that docents will report as challenges for the average gallery visitor. For artists, knowing more about the potential audiences they might reach can also help shape an exhibition proposal, or it could be a place to send visitors interested in their work and want to visit.

Centralize the accessibility information. To help avoid inconsistent updates for each exhibition, create one place specific to site accessibility and link to this within each exhibition page. For exhibition-specific information, such as sounds or lights, place these consistently throughout all exhibition posts.

If there are exhibition programs or write-ups, provide a link to text-only versions within exhibition pages so that people without data or who use screen readers can preload assets before arriving on-site. By making the didactic text available in exhibitions online, this can also be accessed by voiceover technology or provided by the gallery through the use of a text-to-speech app, such as Speechify and can be provided as a link for both digital and physical visitors. More information about the Speechify tool can be found in recommended tools in Chapter 7.

Specific action items for this project have been added to 4.9 Action Items for Website

Navigation tags: SFUGartsWorkers, SFUGaudience, SFUGnetwork

Social media is now the repository for most post-event content, especially for visitors. Unfortunately, that creates more work for companies interested in following up on how a visit went or learning from the observations of their audiences. The burden of keeping track across the wide web often falls to communications teams and their capacity to do more than react to things that are posted, tagged, or linked back in easily detectable ways.

Collecting information on a visit can provide insight into how to improve pre-visit information online. However, a balance needs to be struck when requesting, receiving, and using feedback. Not all feedback is equally convertible into action, nor should it be, but receiving feedback is a gift and deserves a place of respect within the digital landscape.

The web allows for anonymous interactivity, which can lower a user's inhibitions. In face-to-face conversations, it's easier to see the people you are speaking with. Although the screen still creates distance in an email, you are directing your feedback to a specific person. In a form, feedback can be hostile or a place for people to leave emotional and less than constructive comments. It's also worth noting that people who live with chronic illness, Disability or who are disabled by society are often frustrated - with few places to get help. Emotions can make it difficult to express constructive feedback in a way that can be understood or used by teams inexperienced at moderating and distancing themselves from the content, so care and patience must be practiced. Sometimes, feedback cannot be used. Sometimes, feedback is harmful. Sometimes, feedback is uncomfortable. All three of these are different, and having a digital risk plan to deal with feedback is a tool that helps a team make decisions quickly in volatile situations and also makes a plan to support team members who may be subject to harm, intensional or not.

Set aside space within newsletters to ask for feedback if someone has visited a show or performance. Make it easy to find where people can and should provide feedback. The contact page is where people will contact the galleries, so state that people can provide post-visit feedback here. Newsletters should link back to this page or invite people to respond directly to the email.

One way to encourage post-visit feedback is with an online survey; however, these passive surveys are only used by a very small visitor population and tend to invite critical or negative feedback rather than a place to discuss or share positive experiences. Unless the SFU Galleries has a specific request to ask of visitors and subscribers, a generic survey is not recommended. Additionally, surveys and forms are difficult to make accessible, creating another avenue for spam.

Specific action items for this project have been added to 4.9 Action Items for Website

Navigation tags: SFUGaudience, SFUGnetwork

When coming to the SFU Galleries website after receiving an external communication, such as a newsletter, prompt from a social media post, or link from an article, the user must be directed to the most relevant content page. No external link, unless the communication is to invite exploration, should ever lead to the main landing page. This is especially important because the current website's main page does not have a menu and relies on an inaccessible carousel that requires 3 to 4 pieces of content to answer every visitor's need.

On a few occasions, specifically within the community feedback interviews, event data tied to an exhibition was found on the Events page but not listed on the exhibition landing page. It was also up to the visitor to click Events from the side menu when looking at an Exhibition rather than being served event data within that page. Consider users who have low vision or other cognitive barriers, including language barriers, who will not instinctively click on events to find out if there are any associated events with an exhibition. Serve data rather than require users to make intuitive leaps.

Keep event data in one place and link to the event from relevant exhibitions and projects.

If possible, within the events listings (within the events section), it would be excellent to have more information here rather than requiring users to click to other websites or pages elsewhere on the web by link name only.

For example, a screen reader user clicking on an upcoming event where the event information is listed as a raw link, such as the example in fig 4.6a (image) and 4.6b (sound file), requires a user to understand that they are going to an external website, and may require them to listen to each character spelled out or a computer attempting to make sense of the words within the URL. This listing shows the location information as "Room 4365 (SCA Sound Stage) – SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 W. Hastings Street," but does not link to a map or access information. This is likely due to the limitations of the event software on the current site, which does not allow for more information to be listed. It is another reason to consider moving away from the current CMS to a system with more modern and integrated events listings within the site hierarchy with prioritized access.

Within the main navigation menu are Events, Special Projects, News, Media, and Blog sections. The number of options caused confusion and frustration during staff interviews and community feedback sessions. As this report recommends moving towards a site hierarchy that prioritizes a timeline rather than site-specific categories, it is also recommended that some of these categories (which can remain as tags for cross-linking and navigation) be collapsed into one category, News or Outreach. Here, visitors can expect to find anything in order by date that is not specifically an Exhibition listing, an Event (although this information also being served here would not be unwelcome), or a Publication. Tag blog articles or tag news articles to maintain a specific voice, but do not require users to visit different places on the website to get the information they seek.

It is recommended that old events be moved out of this section (and menu) and instead placed as articles within the website's chronology or cross-linked to exhibitions. Users will not click on 2017 menu data for events, creating more content to tab for screen readers. The Events menu should link to the most recent events, and the events page should show the upcoming events. All other past events can be found within the blog/news/article timeline or by searching the website. This recommendation is designed to streamline the visitor experience.

4.6.1 How-to content:

An explanation of how to use the events page would be helpful. Describe how the calendar works and how it links to other pages. Make a note about leaving the site for tickets, and create an easy-to-find link to get help with events. Detail how people can get event information into their calendars.

Specific action items for this project have been added to 4.9 Action Items for Website

Navigation tags: SFUGnetwork

The SFU Galleries Collections is the institution's permanent art acquisitions and archives. It comprises a few different collections, is managed by the Collections Manager and uses PastPerfect as its database. It does not archive SFU Galleries exhibitions or assets generated by special projects, and there is a major disconnect between the current curatorial projects and the physical art collection owned by SFU. To access the database from the SFU Galleries website, a user must first click on Collections in the side menu and then again in an expanded menu called Collection Online. If a user misses the expanded menu, they must intuit to click an image with a hidden-link caption that reads Collection Online (not unlined) below a paragraph describing the SFU Art Collection. The expanded menu also links to recent acquisitions, which keeps the user on the sfu.ca/galleries site. This can also be navigated to by an image of a phone with an image caption link (not underlined) called Recent Acquisitions.

There is a major opportunity for the Collections database to archive projects by the gallery. By archiving current and past exhibitions and creating creator/artist records that include bios linked to objects from the exhibition and the collection, the Collections database would become a major content asset for the sfugalleries.ca website. It would make the Collections content more interesting for a gallery visitor to browse. Currently, the database is a manifest of objects owned by SFU, with an uncompelling presentation to the casual browser, requiring a visitor to know exactly what to search for.

In community interviews, a few people made assumptions about what kind of Collections and Exhibition data they could find within the website but never made it to the Collections database. The two who made it to Collections found the site difficult to navigate or not helpful due to its sparse forward-facing object listings on the initial landing pages and linked collections.

It is recommended that menu navigation be simplified to a single link to the Collections landing page on sfu.ca/galleries.

Aquisitions have not been updated since 2022 due to the new hire within the Collections department. Recent acquisitions should be linked by a tag that allows for the dynamic display of all acquisitions but should be listed individually as chronological content that can be seen within the News or Updates feed.

In conversations with the new Collections Manager, there is a hesitation to immediately move away from the PastPerfect Database and instead focus on updating listings with more robust descriptions. However, a research project is proposed where the Collections Manager and Communications Manager could explore options through interviews with other institutions and get a sense of the available options. Following this research and discovery phase, with the object records continuing to be updated, conversations around the future of the database would be more welcome.

Specific action items for this project have been added to 4.9 Action Items for Website

It is easy to end up on SFU.ca pages. Navigation is confusing.

Conduct a site architecture and asset audit.

Decide the scope of the Collection database. Decide if the Collection database can include exhibitions and its assets. Research and explore options for the Collection database. Update collection Object Records fields to link common Object Names and Medium.

Review other CMS after establishing site goals. Prioritize the visitor. Display exhibitions and special projects content chronologically. Use tags and categories to cross-link content. Consolidate the navigation menu and categories.

Create how-to pages or paragraphs. Write accessibility information about physical sites. Determine priority audiences. Make an annual accessibility goal and commit to it. Don't overcommit to being accessible to all communities before you serve your primary audiences right.

Update the contact page.

Put a menu on the front page. Get rid of the carousel.

Update the newsletter for mobile devices.

Start a description writing project. Leverage content writing assistant tools like chatGPT and use readability tools to help keep descriptions clear and understandable.

The following checklist are some action items that can be addressed directly through quick fixes, focused projects, or policy changes. The checklist does not store anything within this report, but if you feel good checking something off when it's done, check the box!

Each participant was provided links to the SFU Galleries website, the collection page direct link, and the instagram and facebook (including linktree) pages.

If requested, the questions were also sent in advance.

Preceeding the main interview, each participant was asked the following grounding questions:

• Question 1: What are some facts you know about the SFU Gallery?
• Question 2: Have you ever been to SFU Galleries?
• Question 3: Have you ever had a discussion about SFU Galleries with your friends or other artists?
• Question 4: Do you think SFU Galleries is accessible to you as an artist?*
• Question 5: Do you think SFU Galleries is accessible to you as an immigrant or BIPOC artist and visitor?
• Question 6 (if queer): Do you think SFU Galleries is a safe place for you to visit as a Queer Deaf artist?

Edited transcripts can be fully revealed within each case study by clicking the view transcript button.

The main interview consisted of questions from the list below. The questions were altered to allow for specificity as it related to the participant's abilities and identities, and some questions were either not asked or not included for all participants due to time, permission, or relevance.

Main interview questions were pulled from the following list:

• Question 1: Your friend told you about a new show at the SFU Gallery in Burnaby. They don't really remember the details, but when they learned about the show, they knew you would be interested. What is the first thing you do?
• Question 2: You and a friend are going to meet at SFU in Burnaby later today. You are headed there by taxi. Your friend was texting you and said "Let's meet at the Geert Maas sculpture" and then they stopped texting you. Now your texts are not being answered. Your friend always forgets to charge their phone, so you decide you will meet them there. How do you find the Geert Maas sculpture?
• Question 3: You are working on a new print project and curatorial proposal. One of the artists you are interested in is a Salish artist named lessLIE, who mentioned they had worked with SFU galleries in the past. How do you find out more about their work?
• Question 4: You recently found out about a improv dance workshop that focuses on the awareness of bodies. Your friend posted an Instagram online and said "I can't wait for this workshop". They didn't give any more details and you want to sign up. They aren't responding to DMs. What do you do?
• Question 5: There is an upcoming workshop with artist Guadalupe Martinez that your friend is interested in attending. You want to learn more about it and see if it is accessible. How do you find out more? What steps do you need to take to see if it's accessible to you?
• Question 6: One of the arts newsletters you receive said that SFU galleries is getting a new location. Where do you go to find out more? Can you find out more?
• Question 7: You want to email the SFU galleries curator to ask if you can submit one of your pieces for consideration in an exhibition. What do you do?
• Question 8: What is happening in this video?
• Question 9: Who is this person? Why would you ever need to contact them?
• Question 10: Why would you go to SFU Gallery? Is there any reason?
• Question 11: Do you know where the SFU Gallery is?
• Question 12: You want to propose a project to work with SFU Gallery. How do you contact them? Who do you contact?

Case Studies Transcripts and Summaries

5.2. Tai G.

Tai (He, Him) is a Blind, partially deaf martial arts instructor, singer, songwriter, therapist, filmmaker and founder of Night Strike Self Defense for the Blind. Tai works with tactile drawings and raised etchings which allow non-visual patrons to feel shapes and designs (both abstract and representational). Instead of employing colour as a means of delineating form, Tai uses various textured lines and blocks to convey depth, materials and elements. The subject matter of the pieces themselves are rather eclectic in nature and range from everyday personal experiences, the natural realm and traditional Chinese folklore.

Self-identity keywords: Blind, Hard of Hearing, English as Additional Language, Immigrant, BIPOC, Tactile, Emerging Artist, Outsider Artist, Musician, Consultant, Community Programmer.

Summary, Tai

Tai: "When I take on projects like this one, I try to put myself in the position of a newly Blind person; someone who is just not very comfortable with using their technology and how that read. For someone like me, I browse the internet daily, and I do a lot of online work so (the website) is usable, but from the perspective of someone who is less techie, less comfortable with finding out different ways to do things...yeah, it needs a lot of a lot more work."

As Tai mentions, he has considerable tech skill and enjoys coming up with ways to find the answers he is looking for. With a stubborness, and desire to push through barriers, Tai is keen to work with institutions to figure out how to include community members who have never even considered that they would be welcome into the conversation.

Transcript, Tai

Click the hide transcript button to hide the edited transcript and easily navigate to the support materials from the conversation between Tai and Kay Slater.

Hide Transcript

Conversation between Kay and Tai, August 7th, 2023

Establishing Questions: Johnny

[Kay:] Establishing Question 1: What are some facts you know about the SFU Gallery?

[Tai:] Prior to you sending me on this adventure, I knew pretty much nothing - I knew they existed. When I attended school, I went to UBC and so I know next to nothing about SFU, although I have done a few research projects for SFU in the past but nothing to do with art. So I literally knew nothing until I was engaged for this project. But now I know they have an Instagram page. I know they have a Facebook page. I know they have three campuses. I know that they have quite a few different websites that have different functions and one of those website houses a whole bunch of - basically a collection of images and objects for their collection, which could definitely be very cool for future references, if that was tightened up and streamlined a little bit and descriptions definitely need a lot of work. This is the extent of my knowledge about SFU gallery.

[Kay:] Establishing Question 2: Have you ever been to SFU Galleries?

[Tai:] Off the top of my head I'm inclined to say no but like I said, I have done work for SFU in the past so it is possible that I have been through the gallery. I've been to SFU but I have never actually interacted with the SFU galleries.

[Kay:] Establishing Question 3: Have you ever had a discussion about SFU Galleries with your friends or other artists?

[Tai:] Prior to this project? No.

[Kay:] Establishing Question 4: Do you think SFU Galleries is accessible to you as a low vision/Blind artist?

[Tai:] Are we specifically talking about the physical location or are we talking about the websites?

[Kay:] That's the question. Answer however you would like but specifically as an artist - as a low vision or Blind artist. Do you do you feel that the galleries are accessible whether digital or in person... it's up to you?

[Tai:] Seeing that I have no memory of actually having been to one of the physical locations, I can't really speak for that. As far as the website go, "Is it accessible?" I would say not really. The bare bone structure is there. It's a lot better than a lot of websites out there but once you actually start to try and enjoy what's there, then it become a very frustrating experience - I say that as a person who was browsing the website and not really as an artist, because I have not interacted with SFU in an art capacity. But just off of what I've seen on the website and how things are laid out, I'm going to say probably not accessible.

Kay's notes and observations: This is another moment where I feel like knowing who SFU's primary audience is would be helpful. You can't have 2 primary audiences with different access and communication needs, although you can have a secondary, and tertiary audience to keep in mind and try and include them - but it gets too confusing to be everything to everyone. Does SFU want to appeal to the general public (non-arts background) with a goal for universal access, a fine arts audience (access to education) with a goal to ensure that content can be accessed by that audience, or an academic fine arts audience with access to education, and academic interest/knowlege with the desire to be an access leader within a category that has traditionally been physically inaccessible to students and other academics?

[Kay:] Establishing Question 5: Do you think SFU Galleries is accessible to you as an immigrant or BIPOC artist and visitor?

[Tai:] Honestly some of the stuff that was written on the website and the way it was worded - even being a fluent English speaker - it's still hard for me to understand. So it's gonna be really hard for an immigrant person. I would say no.

Use Case Questions: Tai

[Kay:] Question 1: Your friend told you about a new show at the SFU Gallery in Burnaby. They don't really remember the details, but when they learned about the show, they knew you would be interested. What is the first thing you do?

[Tai:] As is often the case, the first thing I do is let that information sit in my head for about two days before I finally say, "let's go check it out."" I sit at a computer and type into Google SFU Burnaby gallery and then see what pops up there. And then I follow the lead from there on to see if I can spot what my friends talking about.

[Kay:] Google is your search engine of choice? Does your search engine tell you when links are sponsored or not? And if something's a sponsored link, do you click on it? Do you care? Or do you go to the first non sponsored link?

[Tai:] Because I'm a little bit of a rebel, even through Google tells me sponsored links and recommended links, I usually just blow right past those and go to the first most normal looking link that I can find. For sponsored links, I assume it's probably full of advertisements and it is trying to sell me something, so I tend to just ignore those right off the bat.

In addition to Google, if I am out and about, I might just use AI on my phone. I might just ask Siri, "Hey, what's the website for the SFU Burnaby gallery?" and do it that way as well. But if I can sit down, I generally just open a search engine and it will either be Google or Bing. It is usually Google

[Kay:] Do you use Bing because the AI brings it up or like do you actually have Bing as a shortcut on your computer and you would choose Bing over Google?

[Tai:] I use Bing sometimes because I like to occassionally step away from Google to see what other search engines are gonna show me because I don't want to fall into that trap where what Google shows is all there is. When you use a different search engine, it will give you a fresh perspective; however, I do tend to stick to Google just because of how accessible Google is. When I jump over to Yahoo or Bing or other search engines, sometimes there's a little bit of a frustration like, "where it's a bloody search field?" ( laughs ).

[Kay:] I am curious what browsers you use.

[Tai:] Generally on the PC, I stick to Google Chrome. I was an avid Internet Explorer, and stuck with it for its entire lifespan until it was no longer supported and finally went over to Google Chrome. On the iPhone, I stick to using Safari just because that's what's comes with the phone. Although I did download the Google app onto my iPhone just in case because there are times when Safari will glitch and refuse to open some websites. That's when I pull out the secondary browser.

This is what I was talking about earlier. For someone like me who's been kicking around the tech world for a good part of 20-25 years, it's a no brainer to troubleshoot and download this app or install another tool, but for a lot of people like my girlfriend for example, she would just end up getting so frustrated and want to throw her phone across the room. I think it's something to always keep in mind when we assess websites to remember the people like your (Kay's) father, my girlfriend, and other people who will just get frustrated and they'll leave. They'll quit.

Kay's notes and observations: For the reader, Tai's girlfriend is also Blind and is not an aritst Kay's father uses hearing aids and is very keen to explore tech - until it's new tech that replaces tech they are familiar with. This conversation talks about aging away from technology, even when it is assistive technology, as well as the need to consider that the newest tech is not always the tech that is available those a general Disabled population.

[Kay:] Question 2: You and a friend are going to meet at SFU in Burnaby later today. You are headed there by taxi. Your friend was texting you and said "Let's meet at the Geert Maas sculpture" and then they stopped texting you. Now your texts are not being answered. Your friend always forgets to charge their phone, so you decide you will meet them there. How do you find the Geert Maas sculpture?

[Tai:] This is an interesting one because things like this happen to me all the bloody time with some of my friends and it is - especially a totally blind person who is not very familiar with SFU...anything...not just galery... I'm not really familiar with SFU in general...( trails off )

( Tai continues thoughtfully ) I would probably look at that text like three or four times and I would spent the next ten minutes cursing, saying very nasty things about my friend, and finally after I got my temper under control, I would ask the driver, "Do you know this sculpture?", and I am pretty certain that most of the drivers won't and would say "what sculpture?" so that's not going to be helpful.

So the next thing I would most likely do since I'm already in the taxi, I would ask the driver to take me to the administrative building or the front office, wherever that may be.

I would ask people from there and if that does not result in anything, then I also have a data plan on my phone so I would find a quiet place to sit down, text my friend some more and pull up Safari or Google. I would type, "Where is this sculpture?" Or I'd try to find a description so I can tell the taxi driver to take me there. That would be my plan of attack.

[Kay:] I want to explore some things here. So the taxi driver takes you to the Administrative Office, and someone there says, "Oh, that's public art. We have a we have a map that we can give you." What do you do?

[Tai:] If I was in the US, I would bring out the ADA but unfortunately, and I want this on record, we don't have that here in Canada - we really do need it - guaranteed service for disabled people in these places. But I'm usually very vocal, so if they say they have a map, I would tell them, "This is my first time here. I'm totally blind. I have no idea where I'm going. I don't want to risk getting injured while exploring or falling down stairs you know - like that would usually result in negative publicity and lawsuit - you guys understand what I'm talking about. So maybe it will be a lot easier for you guys and for me if someone can give me a hand getting there and just guide me there." That would be how I go about it.

[Kay:] One of the things that I am going to be talking about in my report is the newly minted a BCAC, which is the Accessible British Columbia Act, which is in its infancy and came from the Accessible Canada Act which only came into being four years ago, and which doesn't have any jurisdiction over provincially funded universities. So because this is the year that this newly minted Accessible British Columbia Act is being enforced, universities are now required to submit to the province what their accessibility plan is.

I have deaf students who reach out to me sometimes and ask, "What can I do?" and I have a template that I usually send back and say you don't actually have any rights beyond...if somebody has hurt you and you go to court, and then you have the right for an interpreter. You have the right for an interpreter in a medical situation, but that doesn't mean you're going to be treated well, and that we just really don't had any laws in place. It's wild how many people believe that the ADA applies in Canada. So unfortunately, this comes on the backs of you, your friends, me, anyone who has ever tried to succeed by paying in blood or who has dropped out because life's too short to fight institutions who wield their ableism with a side of capitalism. Now that laws are coming into play that force universities to do sometimes, my hope is the work goes beyond liability or fines, and there is a chance to really spotlight how inaccessible things have been and that they can make a change for the better.

[Tai:] Yeah, I hope this will eventually extend to high schools and private schools and that something like this will hopefully open up more job opportunities because when you want accessibility, you need to hire some Disabled people to assess things for everybody involved.

[Kay:] I have a huge grin on my face. I am agreeing. All right. I'm gonna go on to question three unless you would like to ask Siri about the Gert Maas sculpture? Are you interested in doing that?

[Tai:] I can't use Siri while we're on Zoom, but I am typing that into Google. Let's let's see what it gives us. And that's a G-E-E-R-T.

[Kay:] Yep. M-A-A-S

[Tai:] That's not how voiceover on my screen reader pronounced it. It says "G-urt".

[Kay:] You know what? That could actually be how it's pronounced because I haven't heard it spoken aloud. I believe it's German.

[Tai:] I mean this is a good exercise because I can just assume that the text my friend sent me is mistyped because a lot of time that's something I have to content with.

The first result came up with a PDF.

I've been hammering at this one for years and years - PDF document no good for Blind people. Anytime people stick a PDF document on the website, it an F-U to Blind people right there. It's extremely hard for Blind people to navigate. There are ways I can probably get it to work after about two hours of messing around, but it's frustrating. It's very hard.

[Kay:] I have a question about PDFs. If the university had gone through the work to make that PDF OCR, so wtih had open character recognition, and it had image descriptions in it, would you even bother clicking or at this point, you see PDF as an extension and you don't even bother.

[Tai:] If I had seen some good examples of that working, then that might restore my faith because I'll tell you this - when PDF first came out, I was a strong supporter of it because I saw this cool, more concise and organized and universal format than Microsoft Word. So when when I first read about it, I was like "sold!" and I was so looking forward to it. And then it came out, and it didn't work for Blind users and I was still hopeful. You know, maybe screen readers just needed a couple of years to catch up. You know, it's normal. But 20 years later, it still doesn't work so yeah, I don't know. I think it's going to take some very strong examples to restore my faith in PDF. It also depends on the screen reader you use. For my device, you hit ENTER in a PDF, and it will freeze or glitch and you won't be able to read what's going on it. It will get stuck on the loading screen and I have to hard reboot. So when I see PDF, I just automatically will bypass it because I don't want to go through that glitch nonsense,

[Kay:] Okay, excellent. What would be an accessible way for them to serve you the public art map that you would click on?

[Tai:] I have mentioned this in my report as well that any map unless it's a tactile map is just not going to be all that easy or accessible for Blind people. For example, if I know SFU campus really well, then on the map you can say, "Okay, go from main entrance to this place, to that place, turn left from this building." But if I don't know the campus, or the gallery, that's just gibberish. I have a similar experience where I go to a shopping center. I walk into a shopping center and the first thing I do is go to the Help Desk. I'll say, "Where do I go to the body shop?" They'll reply, "Oh, Body Shop is down the hallway, turn right, then left, and it's across the hallway from White Spot." My response is to ask "How far turn right and if it's only one intersection, and how far do I walk before I get to the White Spot?" This information is a no brainer to a sighted person, but for a Blind person, it's a lot of confusion. I will say that for the Blind traveler, the labour is all on us because we need to do our homework ahead of time to learn a little bit about the lay of the land but sometimes, like in this scenario, my friends sends me a text in the middle of my trip, and I'm already on my way, so I don't have a prep time. In cases like this, the best thing to do for me is to be able to open that map and stick it in front of the taxi driver.

[Kay:] That was my instinct as well. At the end of the day if you're going to create assets for sighted people, then you better make it easy for the person who is Blind to be able to show it to a sighted person, whatever that is. And if you've just put up all these barriers that you can't even bring it up on the phone to get assistance then you've basically said, to quote you, "Fuck you you're not invited." Awesome. Well, I think we have figured out that I am never to ask you to meet at SFU at the Geert Maas sculpture. ( Kay and Tai laugh )

Kay's notes and observations: In this conversation, Tai mentions that he would ask a Taxi driver to take him to the "administrative office" at SFU to get more information. It's worth considering this within the context of a digital assessment especially since the website is still so tied to the SFU site. Is SFU administration or Student Union or Security able to help someone to SFU Galleries or to one of the Public Arts works? When considering the risk and opportuniites of bringing people to visit the public artwork, how is SFU working to get visitors to the gallery?

Tai also mentions having a dataplan on his phone. When visitors arrive on campus, can they access free wifi? Can they access SFU Gallery content through that wifi?

Tai says that a PDF is going to break his screen reader. How can you have a PDF asset that is still helpful for a sighted visitor that won't break this assistive technology? What else can you do to help a non-visual audience member get to the Public Art?

[Kay:] Question 3: You are working on a new tactile project. One of the artists you interviewed, Keimi Nakashima-Ochoa, referred to a tactile artist named Sue Gruel, who did a weaving purchased by SFU galleries in 1969? How do you find out more about that piece?

[Tai:] I type into Google "Sue Gruel, weaving, 1969" and let's see what we get. I'm pretty sure Siri wouldn't have this information. A lot of people don't realize that not all AIs are built equal and Siri is good at some stuff, like Siri is made for navigation. Amazon Alexa is made for games and fun and mostly it gets you to buy things from Amazon. What do we get here? Yes. It looks like there's not many good matches. And that's not a good sign.

Not many great matches. ( Tai reads some of the titles from Google ) I'm pretty sure that not it.

Ohio State law and Title and Title. Okay let's let's try this. We will add SFU art, artist

Yeah, search didn't match anything. So I am totally out of luck there. So in that case, if I'm really really interested, I would reach out to the campus. I would probably go to the campus website and then send them an email and say, "Hey, my friend mentioned to me that you have a piece of weaving by this artist and I am tactile artists myself and my friend said that I would be interested in. What can you tell me about it?" That would be my next follow up to not finding anything on Google.

[Kay:] Can you pretend like you were really excited and show me where you would find the contact information? You don't have to send it but I'm interested in the path you would take to get to somebody who you could ask. Are you okay doing that?

[Tai:] So we go SFU Art Gallery. Ah, that looks promising. Collections...oh, that's a search field right here. We try to type in the artist name. No results for that last name? Okay, so much for that.

Contact us. This is wonky. Gallery open during the campus hours, that doesn't tell me anything. Nope. So generally, I am guessing we where we go...oh, that's a list of staff! I'm guessing the curator would actually be the right person to speak to in this case. So what we do is, we copy this and why isn't it copying ( cursing ) There we go. I'll open a new message pasted in there. Perfect

This is the draft email that Tai would have sent:

Subject Line: inquary about sue gruhl art

Hello there; I am a totally blind tactile artist in Richmond. My friend Keimi mentioned to me that you have a piece of art by an artist named Sue Gruhl that I would be interested in. Can you possibly give me more info about that or direct me to where I can read up about the piece. Is it possible I can come in in person to check it out? Thanks

Kay's notes and observations: From a sighted perspective, it was paintful to watch Tai try to navigate the contact us page. He had to navigate through the three locations addresses first, which were in a left column (tab order) and then I wasn't sure if he was going to make it to the staff list. This page would benefit from having a jump link at the top. And since he didn't google the site, but tried to navigate the site, getting to the contact page, both from the menu or footer wasn't intuative at all. Tai mentioned that he had spent a good 45 minutes before our interview to try and get a sense of the page first because he was worried it would slow down our conversation. 45 minutes of pre-work, and then still more than 5 minutes to get to an email.

I got Tai to send a version of the email he would write to the curator to get more information about the artwork. Would it be taken seriously? Would it make it through the spam? What are the steps that SFU Galleries takes when getting inquiries from the public?

[Kay:] Question 4: You recently found out about a improv dance workshop that focuses on the awareness of bodies. Your friend posted an Instagram online and said "I can't wait for this workshop". They didn't give any more details and you want to sign up. They aren't responding to DMs. What do you do?

[Tai:] Back to Google. Typing "SFU new gallery location news" and let's see what it pulls up. New art museum... Burnaby campus opening 2025...

Kay's notes and observations: Tai was able to find this because his instinct was to go to Google. In other interviews, this question has been long to be answered (or not at all) because it can't be found on the SFU Galleries website via search or news.

One of the things we discussed in relation to this question was how boring the artile was and how this article and news was obviously not for a high art consumer - so why was the language still so inaccessible. It is worth noting that press releases benefit from having summaries or simple language summaries to preface articles to help those who have to do more labour reading to be served before scanning through a long winded article that may or may not be worth their time. In response to that, Tai sent an audio clip [KAY LINK HERE AND PUT IN SUPPORT MATERIALS] to give an idea why something like this can be super tedious for a blind person to read/skim. It's an entirely different when you have to listen to your synthetic voice for a half hour to get the news.

[Kay:] Question 5: What is happening in this video?

[Tai:] So because it's Instagram, so it's already glitching the hell out of the screen reader. That's really the one thing for screen reader users to know is that you have to constantly refresh your page, on Instagram, for your screen reader to be able to load properly.

( the video plays )

Wait, I'll go to original audio to see what's the image description is - that doesn't help me.

Finally, let's see what is playing...I can barely hear - it sounds like voices. Music, but everything is super super faint. Almost like it's recorded from a different room. and that's that.

So what happened in this video? I have no idea. You know, it took a bit of finagling to just to find that audio, and then you can barely hear it and it doesn't really tell you anything. Now if I was to just go by his description...

Some moments of performance invitation to breathe - yadda yadda yadda together on June 24 SFU gallery. So you know if I have to just draw references from that I would just say it's video probably showing some of their performances, but as to what the performances were doing? No idea.

Kay's notes and observations: I wanted to share Tai's struggles with instagram, and show that the descriptions are more than a place to just drop or copy/paste text. They are places of possibility to bring in more understanding to those who don't have access to all of the pieces of media. Hannah and I couldn't hear the sound, but we could see the performances. They were ...interesting? but this post was more as archive than anything. For Tai, he eventually understood that it was archive, and probably not for him, but he had to do so much labour to figure that out. In summary, if this was the first instagram post for someone who wasn't at that workshop - the account doesn't seem like something worth following for someone who needs to fight with accessible tools native to social media. In marketing terms, each post can make or break a subscription, so no post can just be a "throw away" if numbers and subscriptions are the goal.

[Kay:] Question 6: Who is this person? Why would you ever need to contact them?

[Tai:] Stephanie Leigh is the new collections manager...has...Anthropology experience in handling ancient materials - that sounds cool.

Why would I ever need to contact them? I guess if I had questions about a specific piece in the collection. I see again that the article here is a bit wordy especially when it comes to this quote here: "Our inaugural collections manager blah blah blah."" Actually, when I was just quickly scanning through this article, everything made sense up until this quote. It makes me do a double take and I have to read it two or three times. Why is this here? I know because I'm reading about [ Sidney ] and suddenly you pop out with a quote about "our inaugural Collection Manager Christina - I don't even know how to pronounce that name - ( tries to pronounce ). So you know this quote kind of throws me off a little bit. But I guess going by what I quickly read is Sydney is their new collections manager and we contact her if we have questions regarding the collection.

Kay's notes and observations: - I decided to keep in some of the conversation here regarding the instagram post because Tai talks a bit about visual description.

I confirm that Sidney is the person that Tai would talk to. I also go on to talk about how SFU Galleries has a challenge, especially in social media, because their voice needs to balance academia and the average gallery viewer (which most galleries in town talk above anyways) but social media is not academic. So what balance do they strike? Who are they talking to online? I also talk about the pressures that people working in or adjacent to academic have when being quoted - they want to sound smart - so then it's up to the communications team to consider whether or not the quote will do what the quote is supposed to. If the goal is "sounding smart" then great - but if that ultimately distances their audience, that works at cross purposes.

I do have one other follow up. Do you know what Sydney looks like? Is there any kind of visual description anywhere in this post

[Tai:] So far, all we have is her academic achievements. Very impressive. There's no description of any kind.

[Kay:] Is there any alt text provided in this post and do you know where to find it?

[Tai:] It just says frame with picture yeah. I will say on the iPhone - my iPhone is customized to give an attempted AI generated description of a photo - so sometimes that will come through but even that usually is something very rudimentary like "photo, blonde woman, chair, gray background," something like that. So not really all that interesting.

[Kay:] Perfect. ( kay describes Sydney ) Sydney is a medium build woman with sandy hair wearing a floral blouse. She is a white woman and she is on a beach and there's a pier behind her. I don't know if you really got anything else out of my description other than knowing that she is a white woman, probably in her 20s, but does that change something for you, knowing that description? Were you any more inclined or less inclined to reach out to her as the collective or collections manager?

[Tai:] I don't really get influenced by what people look like or how they are described, but you know what? I'm a water person. I love beaches and piers, the ocean, so you know that in that description, that she is standing on the pier kind of makes me mentally want to focus more towards the pier and the beach in the background. Her being a white female in her 20s? No, I mean, I'm sure if you make it interesting and tell me she was really good looking and stuff like that, that might perk my interest more but now as it stands, the beach is more interesting than her.

[Kay:] I mean, beauty is subjective, so that's why I don't tend to say that in my descriptions, but I agree. I think you knowing - especially now that I know that water and beaches are something that appeals to you - it also gives you this chance to connect if you were ever to reach out or to meet them at a party. You could be like "hey, the picture you posted on Instagram, was it a beach? What Beach is it?" Or "why were you on that pier or why did you pick that picture?" So I felt like describing where the picture was was important, but that insight is really appreciate it.

Kay's additional notes and observations: This is a conversation around information gathering and sighted priviledge. We might not think that it's important to describe an image, but we picked an image to go with the words. When I described the image to Tai, he was interested in the background. In a social content, which I talk about above, I would have an advantage when I meet Sidney, knowing that she was at a beach. I have an entry point into the conversation - and social media is a conversation. Adding visual details to give people all the information regardless of their abilities, allows them to equally participate.

[Kay:] Question 8: Why would you go to SFU Gallery? Is there any reason?

[Tai:] Good question. Right now, I have no reason to go to any of them, and because the collection page descriptions are so shoddy, I have nothing that interests me enough to want to go there. However, as is the case with most galleries, I don't know what's going to happen in the future. Maybe a few months down the road they will have something accessibility focused, or some kind of show or event that's accessibility focused and that will definite perk my interest. So, as of now, no. In the future, who knows?

Kay's notes and observations: If SFU wanted to invite Tai and other non-visual artists to visit the gallery - how would they go about inviting them? Which networks? What language?

General Questions, Tai

[Kay:] What is the hardest thing about being a Blind artist in the GVRD (Greater Vancouver Regional District)?

[Tai:] I think the hardest thing about bringing a blind artist is you produce something that tactilely feels good to you, but you have very little reference as in whether it looks okay. And depending on your goal, or your practice, that might not matter. For me, I just do art for myself, and I don't care what other people think it looks like. Now that's great. Nothing wrong with that. But because I need to try to pay rent and I, like many disabled people, struggle just below the poverty line, I also need to try to sell my artwork. I unfortunately, have to try to be a little bit more commercial about it. And that means I constantly fight an uphill battle to produce something that I like and something that can be visually captivating or appealing or even, I hate to say this but even visually understandable, comprehensible. It's a bit of a challenge sometimes. So I think as a Blind artist, for me, that's it's the biggest challenge. How to do things that are (visually) comprehensible and enjoyable.

[Kay:] Are there any other comments you want to share about this process about the galleries about the digital space, or any other kind of pieces of wisdom or criticism?

[Tai:] I think I mentioned this in the report, but I really believe that where they have the list of collections - there was over 3000 of them catalog! That's pretty cool, but it's not useful right now. The bare bones structure is there, but when you look at these collections, it lists things by artists names, but it doesn't tell you what it is until you click on it. And for Blind and visually impaired people, the fewer things we have to click on, the better. If I want to go in there I have to deal with really bad AI generated descriptions of... circles surrounded by white dots with a line on the bottom. Blue, yellow, green, black. That's that's supposed to mean? You know it is not enjoyable. It doesn't convey anything. So I think if the gallery is serious in wanting this to be enjoyable for Blind and visually impaired people, these descriptions need to be written out by someone. That's a real person. So yeah, hire Kay to do it.

[Kay:] I think you mean hire Kay and Tai to do it ( laughs ).

[Tai:] I won't say no to that. I mean the bottom line is you need people that can actually write these descriptions and make them, even if it's not that "pleasing". We always want them to be meaningful because there's no point for me to read about a piece of art if I just walk away, and when my friend asks me "what was that?", I respond with "I don't know! Some random art by some guy I never heard of before that made a circle and some dots." That's not a good impression.

Yeah, there's still a drive to hire sighted people to do visual description and then no follow up afterwards with non-visual arts consumers. There's a bit of a self congratulatory action happening adjacent to the visual description that happens without ever going and talking to the people who it's supposed to serve. Yes, it was labor. Congratulations! But does it actually help who you want it to help? So you have to go and and be critical of this thing that you did.

Going back to the Accessible BC Act is that hopefully, what this does is, it generates jobs so that you can actually hire Blind, low vision, Deaf, Disabled, and Mad artists to come in and give critique on the things that are designed for inclusion and accessibility. Participation right? That's going to be at the core of the report that that I write, but it can't just be me saying it. It has to be all of us, you know, invested in it.

End of edited transcript of conversation with Tai.

Support Materials, Tai

Google Drive folder of video screenshots for Kay's responses to Main Questions 1-9

Question 1 - mp4

Question 2 - mp4

Question 3 - mp4

Question 4 - mp4

Question 5 - mp4

Question 6 - mp4

Question 7 - mp4

link to Tai's report

Hannah C. (She, Her) is a Hard of Hearing printmaker and emerging curator based in Vancouver, BC. Her artistic practice seamlessly blends in themes of utopia and dreams with silkscreen print media and projection installation. Hannah has been working as an arts worker for over a decade with an academic focus of museum curation and accessible programming.

Self-identity keywords: Hard of Hearing, BIPOC, Curator, Emerging Artist.

Amari B. (Sha-von/Sio/They/She) is of a stolen people living in solidarity on the stolen, unceded, and ancestral land of the Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish, Musqueam, Hwlitsum, Katzie, Kwantlen, Kwikwetlem, Matsqui, Qayqayt, Semiahmoo, Tsawwassen, and Stó:lō Nations. Sio is a published, nationally recognized, bilingual, equity and accessibility consultant also sought as a spokesperson, storyteller, and community organizer. Amari B. is an Unlearning Dramaturgy, S.E.A.R.A., Start the Wave, and Bankability Awards recipient. Sio advocates recognizing the impact of intersectionalities in moving toward equity, decolonizing practices, and collective liberation. As a non-binary person, of mixed ancestry, living with disability, they recognize and value the intersection of identities that inform disability justice, artistic practice, change-making, and honouring ancestral teachings.

Self-identity keywords: Queer, BIPOC, Disabled, Established Artist, Storyteller.

A more fulsome bio about Kay Slater, author of this report, can be found in the supprt materials.

Self-identity keywords: Queer, Mad, Hard of Hearing, Established Artist, Arts Worker, Access Consultant and Activist.

Chris (He, Him) is a Black, non-Disabled man in his twenties, enrolled as a student at SFU in 2023. He is currently contracted by SFU Galleries as an Engagement Assistant.

Self-identity keywords: International student, English as Additional Language, BIPOC, Emerging Artist, SFU Staff.

Otter.ai (automated transcription) is recommended as a multi-purpose tool. Digital transcription allows for a text translation of real-time and recorded conversations and audio. The Otter.ai tool has the added benefit of creating draft captions from edited transcripts. While captions require some edits after their auto-generation, the pre-work is reduced.

Otter.ai has the advantage of being a note-taker, summarizer, and equalizer in meeting and live event spaces. With the transcription tool in the room, speakers and participants should be mindful of speaking slowly and clearly and not practicing over-talk. The best transcripts are generated when there is a single, active speaker. This tool can cement respectful meeting and conversation practices, requiring speakers to be allowed to complete their thoughts before being interrupted by other speakers. The tool also identifies how much time speakers are taking up as a percentage of the entire meeting, which is helpful for governance and administrative teams looking to see who is being neglected in group settings and who may benefit from taking a listening role in upcoming sessions. It is an essential tool for asynchronous access, allowing staff more control over their time. It allows for health and wellness or emergencies to be prioritized over live attendance as the data is available to be listened to or read after the fact. Finally, auto transcription provides accountability through documentation, much like email. Transcription is not a monitoring tool; it simply records what is given. By establishing agreements and procedures for accessible meetings and gatherings, staff and event participants will know the scope of what is acceptable and respectful when transcription is turned on. Transcripts can still be generated or offered as an access tool for private conversations but must be deleted following private meetings. When text access is not required or requested, it can be turned off. Using tools like live transcription, transcripts or emails to create a permanent record of conversations is a mechanism to promote responsible and respectful behaviour, ensuring a traceable, documented record of interactions and decisions. When interpersonal conflict or unbalanced power dynamics are identified in a workplace, transcripts can help illustrate the importance of being mindful of words and actions and encourage people to be accountable for what they say.

There will be a learning curve as it is integrated within SFU Galleries processes; the AI will initially be unfamiliar with industry and site-specific words, spelling, and names and is most accurate at transcribing Western, English, educated speakers with enunciated speech. It creates an excellent draft resource that can then be revised by a human editor to annotate and correct errors and to add a visual description for transcripts published without visuals or original audio for access to Blind and low-vision readers.

Action:

Subscribe for one year to otter.ai (business pricing) for communications or programs department. Use the tool for transcripts, captions, live meeting summaries, and to record meetings for archive, asynchronous use, and to hold staff at all levels accountable and mindful of power dynamics when gathering.

A content writing assistant, such as ChatGPT, can help translate complex language to plainer and more accessible language. While ChatGPT is not a content-writing tool, it can assist in the content-writing, translation, and summary process. ChatGPT will be particularly useful in the coming year in creating language summary keys such as estimated reading times key summaries from complex or lengthy abstracts or in helping to shorten content to fit word, and character counts when writing for the web or social media.

While not widely available or dependable, the technology to translate visuals into text is coming. However, most of this work is done by sighted content writers who are often required to exert considerable creative and cognitive labour to translate what is seen, what is contextually essential, and what is enough without being too much.

For more complex or complicated visuals, initial draft descriptions could be generated through newer free tools such as Seeing AI (apple app store, google play store), which Blind and low-vision mobile users use but are still unreliable and long-winded. Using ChatGPT, longer access descriptions can be condensed and more effectively written.

The communications and curatorial teams and artists remain the content writers and contextual experts. AI content assistance from services like ChatGPT quickly cuts down and summarizes these in-depth texts for broader online audiences or audiences with specific needs. For stills pulled from video or where a transcript exists, this text can be summarized to create video descriptions that allow visitors to quickly understand what they will experience in a video or find content from the adjacent media summary through search.

ChatGPT works well as a co-pilot when writing code or troubleshooting errors. SFU Galleries employs a small team with a tech-savvy and proficient communications manager keen to explore and try new technology to connect with SFU Galleries' audiences. Coding solo is possible, but it is more efficient to work in a team, and this AI tool has shown to be an excellent resource for the solo developer who wears multiple hats in a small organization.

This recommendation was initially written by the report's author, after which they asked ChatGPT if this was accurate and whether or not it could be written more clearly or concisely. ChatGPT responded with: "Your recommendation for using ChatGPT at SFU Galleries is quite comprehensive and well-thought-out. However, to enhance clarity and conciseness, consider focusing on the key benefits and applications of ChatGPT in your context. Here's a revised version:"

ChatGPT condensed the original recommendation from 340 words to 193 words.

Action:

Subscribe for one year to chatGPT for communications department. Use tool content writing assistance, summaries, and reading keys, and provide a digital teammate to tech-savvy accessibility and communication writers.

Readability measures how easy a text is to read. While academic language is used to explain complex ideas, it is not always the most accessible. Readable.com is a tool that can help SFU Content writers improve their readability for a broader audience when calling to visit the gallery or engage with public programs. When people understand, making a positive emotional connection is also easier. For staff who write for external communication, it is recommended that texts be checked on a readability service such as readable.com or the free Hemingway App. It is recommended that all SFU Galleries staff use this tool when writing manuals and documenting processes. Process documentation must employ simple language, as consistent and clear understanding is the most important goal.

Readability.com can also be used for academic or audience-specific writing as the tool scales to different reading levels. Readability tools are excellent when translating teaching resources for different grade levels and can be used by program managers, artists, and communications writers.

Action:

Subscribe for one year to https://readable.com/pro/ (contentPro) for communications department. It can be used for free for casual use by all staff. Use to ensure communications and marketing content are accessible. Use to check the reading level of content designed for younger audiences. Employ across departments when writing documentation.

Speechify is recommended as an accessibility tool for SFU Galleries staff. It allows access for those who need an audio accompaniment for long texts or are best served by consuming text data in an audio format. It gives freedom to hearing individuals to leave their desks and listen to reports or to have their writing read back to them in a more natural voice than a voice-over or screen reader text. When communicating with artists, staff, or academics with cognitive challenges such as dyslexia, emails can be translated for additional support.

Speechify voice-over is an additional add-on that is a powerful tool for generating audio content. The AI voice-over tool can create an audio file of text that can be added online. It can also be used to create clips with voices from different cultural and language communities, allow for names and places to be read phonetically for pronunciation assistance and in anticipation of conflicts with assistive technologies such as screen readers.

For exhibition texts and didactics, audio of these files can be generated and provided to visitors by scanning, serving both sighted and non-sighted audiences who benefit from having the audible text.

Video clips for social media can easily have visual descriptions generated as audio and embedded into files so that the AD or audio description can be listened to along with the video rather than only being available as a text caption or description.

Action:

Subscribe for one year to SpeechifyVoice-Over (studio) and Text-To-Speech Services (premium) for communications department. Use it to have documents read out to team members and to facilitate comprehension. Use it to generate clips, exhibit didactic audio, and create social media voice-overs.

Grammarly is a cloud-based typing assistant that reviews English text for spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement, and delivery mistakes. It also allows users to customize their style, tone, and context-specific language, which is desirable for SFU Galleries and must satisfy both the academic community and the public. This tool is excellent for concise writing and can ensure that writing done by specific departments remains consistent in tone for its intended audience.

Grammarly allows users to choose from MLA, Chicago, and APA stylebooks. The SFU Galleries communications department follows the Chicago Manual Style (per 2020 manuals), and the SFU Department of English follows the MLA style. Neither the School for Contemporary Art handbook nor the program pages state what the SCA uses; therefore, it is assumed that it varies by course and professor.

Note: This resource is softly recommended to SFU Galleries as it does involve sharing data via the cloud. SFU Galleries also subscribes to the Microsoft Office suite, which gives access to Microsoft Editor. While an inferior service, it is still a powerful tool, and when employed alongside readability tools and content writing assistants like chatGPT, it will suffice. It is also important to acknowledge that any automation tool serving the English-speaking and writing community will still prioritize colonial and medical English and may not represent non-English words, names, or places or suggest oppressive or incorrect language suggestions for Indigenous and Disabled community keywords. None of these tools should be used without attention, and all work still requires a careful human eye.

Action:

Consider subscribing for one year to Grammarly (Business) for communications, curatorial, and programs departments. Review use, and be clear on what files it can access on a system and within which programs. Alternatively, use Microsoft Editor with readability tools and ensure each department is clear on tone and which writing styles to follow.

Kay Slater is an arts worker and multidisciplinary artist focused on access and inclusion. They have worked as a developer, accessibility consultant, and community-engaged arts programmer for the past few decades. Kay is queer, white, middle-aged, and hard of hearing. They grew up as fourth-generation Canadian settlers and have lived most of their professional life as an uninvited guest on Coast Salish land. They identify as mad, both angry at ableism and a survivor of mental illness. They cannot hear you in busy spaces and prefer to communicate in writing. Kay subscribes to the New Sincerity philosophy, a philosophy or trend that tries to expand upon and break away from concepts of postmodernist irony. It also strives to "be more awesome."

Kay was the primary writer, researcher, and designer of the 2023 Needs Assessment Report.

Kay's Website

Russell Gordon is an artist and administrator. Russell was the primary SFU Galleries staff contact and support for the 2023 Needs Assessment Report.

Christoper was the SFU student researcher on the 2023 Needs Assessment Report, joining the project in September 2023.