Dreaming Accessibility: Disability Justice, Film Policy, and the Struggle for Inclusive Cinema in Canada

Abstract

This Major Research Paper (MRP) offers a narrative autoethnographic exploration of cinematic accessibility through the lens of Disability Justice. Anchored in my lived experiences navigating movie theatres in the Niagara region of Ontario, I reflect on the challenges of accessing closed captioning technology as someone situated at the intersections of disability, English as a second language (ESL), transnational identity, and studenthood. Through a poetic yet critically engaged approach, I weave together personal vignettes and theoretical insights, drawing on six core principles of Disability Justice to map how access is imagined, denied, or redefined in cinematic spaces. This research situates assistive technologies like CaptiView within broader Canadian and U.S. histories of ableism, arguing that access is not merely technical but deeply relational, political, and cultural. Rather than treating access as a checklist, I advocate reimagining it as a shared, collective, and transformative practice rooted in love, care, and creative interdependence. This work is a call to action: to make cinema truly inclusive, we must centre the voices of those most impacted and reframe accessibility as an act of justice.