Film Festival Accessibility to Be Assessed in New Scorecard Initiative (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Manori Ravindran International EditorA new “Accessibility Scorecard” launched this summer will aim to help U.S. and international film festivals assess and improve their accessibility measures, Variety can reveal.Developed by filmmaker and former International Documentary Association executive Cassidy Dimon in conjunction with the Film Festival Alliance and FWD-Doc, a collective of documentary filmmakers with disabilities, the Accessibility Scorecard will gather data from festival participants (such as speakers and filmmakers) and attendees that will be fed back to organizers in order to increase their awareness of how accessible their events are.“Right now, the burden is on the filmmaker or attendee to provide feedback and go to a festival and tell them what’s wrong or right — they can’t just [focus on] their job,” explains Dimon. “Part of this initiative is about making it as easy as possible for people to provide feedback without giving so much of their time and labor, which they’ve already given so much of.” The Scorecard will take the shape of an online questionnaire that’s sent to participating festivals and members of the Film Festival Alliance and FWD-Doc, respectively. (Festivals that aren’t part of the former group, such as Cannes, can also request the resulting feedback, which will be collected whether a festival is part of the alliance or not.)The questionnaire, which is largely multiple choice-based, will span a variety of relevant areas, such as website accessibility; in-person venue accessibility; in-person film, panel and Q&A accessibility; virtual event accessibility; and overall event interaction.Amanda Upson, interim director at FWD-Doc, who first conceived of the idea, told Variety: “Our hope is that.