Accessibility and Inclusion

Our Studios

Each studio is wheelchair accessible and offers gender-neutral restrooms. Both studios are easily accessible via public transit and have free parking surrounding each building. All doors have either handles or nobs but no automatic openers. All of our exhibitions are free to the public unless otherwise noted. For assistance, questions, or to inquire about additional accommodations, please contact info@artsoflife.org or 312-829-2787

Person First Language

Arts of Life recognizes that the disability community is rapidly evolving to use identity-first rather than person-first language. We respect this movement and want to acknowledge their view that disability is a core component of identity, like race and gender. Often, what is true for the broader disability community does not represent people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. To clarify the preferences of our artists, Arts of Life engaged Upgrade Accessibility to develop and implement a series of conversations and surveys around identity. Through that process, we learned that many Arts of Life community members, including our artists, prefer person-first language.  We value each artist’s decision on language, and to that end, we will use these terms interchangeably in our continued commitment to our artists and equity. 

Accessibility

Arts of Life’s commitment to accessibility extends to our website. We continue to improve our pages and media to be as accessible as possible to all visitors, including people with disabilities and visual, hearing, and motor accessibility needs.

In our ongoing efforts toward improved accessibility, we invite you to let us know by alerting us by email at IT@artsoflife.org.

In the meantime, in our efforts to provide a warm welcome to all of our users, we:

• Work to follow universal design principles, making the site adaptable to different users’ needs or preferences and accessible through various other technologies, including mobile and assistive devices.
• Follow WebAIM’s Principles of Accessible Design and try to help improve the accessibility of our website for users with disabilities. Wherever possible, the templeshalom.net website will adhere to level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0).