Advocates hope digital map makes Toronto art more accessible

Adam Cohoon says he's always made it a point to look at how accessible art in Toronto is to people with disabilities. 

As someone who uses a power wheelchair, accessibility has influenced how he makes and experiences art. That's why he joined a group of advocates behind Artmap, a community digital mapping project that will not only mark where outdoor installations are in the city, but assess how accessible they are for people with different disabilities.

"People don't understand the problem," he said. "When they create, they just assume that ... everybody can use it in the way they can," he said. 

"The goal is to both raise awareness and education on the accessibility of public art and make it more useful for everyone."

Community researchers and advocates with the umbrella group AccessArt are ranking public installations in each city across the country. After three years of work, they hope the progress they've made so far helps people with disabilities to not only navigate Toronto — where they've catalogued the most pieces — but also guide artists to create more inclusive installations and encourage the public to think more deeply about the importance of accessibility.

The project is funded by groups such as the Canada Council for the Arts and the City of Toronto. The map is available for the public to access despite being in its beta stages, with the next major update coming this fall. A mobile app for community researchers looking to contribute is also in the works.

Anika Abdullah, a member of the City of Toronto's accessibility advisory committee with a background in architecture, helped create the group's ranking criteria, which scores everything from height and texture to visibility and how navigable a given installation is. 

She says the map can help people understand what accessibility means to people from the disability community, outside of the "loosely defined" definition that's used inconsistently across government legislation. 

"We've really worked to make it as easy as possible to use," she said.

"You don't need to have an architecture background or an activist background. We want it to be similar to how you would do a review for a restaurant when you jump on an app."

Emily Gillespie, a researcher and auditor with the group, says most art pieces they assess rank poorly on accessibility. She said the group hopes to help lead by example by putting together their own "best practices" art pieces, which they hope to see in Toronto in the years to come. 

"Public art is like the heart of Toronto," she said.

"It's something that you can walk by with your coffee. You don't have to pay to get into. You often aren't even looking for it, you just come across it. So what does it mean when disabled folks aren't included?"