Explore accessible events!

How to use the calendar

Filter events by typing keywords into the search field below, or click on a keyword in an event to filter all events by that category.

Select "Submit an Event" to have your cultural organization's accessible event added to the Access Calendar.  

submit an event

Access Events Search and Views Navigation

Access Event Views Navigation

Filters

Changing any of the form inputs will cause the list of events to refresh with the filtered results.

Today

Michael Ondaatje: Memory and the Act of Looking Back at First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple

First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple 77 W Washington St, Chicago

Michael Ondaatje is one of the most influential writers of his generation. He won the Booker Prize for his successful 1992 novel The English Patient, which was made into the nine-time Academy Award-winning film, including for Best Picture. Critically respected for testing the limits of the genre of poetry with playful experimentation, Ondaatje makes a […]

  • Assistive Listening Devices
  • In Person
  • Open Captions
  • Wheelchair Accessible

PURPOSE at Steppenwolf Theatre Company

Steppenwolf Theatre Company 1650 N. Halsted Street, Chicago

For decades, the influential Jasper family has been a pillar of Black American Politics: civil rights leaders, pastors and congressmen. But like all families, there are cracks and secrets just under the surface. When the youngest son Nazareth returns home to Illinois with an uninvited friend in tow, the family is forced into a reckoning […]

  • Open Captions

The Verge AI Sessions: Art Creator or Thief? at School of the Art Institute of Chicago

School of the Art Institute of Chicago 112 S Michigan Ave, Chicago

What guardrails do artists need in a new age of artificial intelligence? As artists voice concerns about AI replacing their work or using their creative intellectual property to train AI models without proper consent or compensation, lawmakers are beginning to take notice. The essence of this debate — what artists seek and how regulations should […]

  • Assistive Listening Devices
  • In Person
  • Open Captions
  • Wheelchair Accessible

The Verge AI Sessions: AI and Humans at School of the Art Institute of Chicago

School of the Art Institute of Chicago 112 S Michigan Ave, Chicago

The proliferation of artificial intelligence tools has created a flood of AI-generated content online, much of it spammy, inaccurate, or even abusive. In her coverage, The Verge reporter Mia Sato documents how generative AI is being used to accelerate the production of junk online and entrench existing disparities around art and labor. She’ll offer primers […]

  • Assistive Listening Devices
  • In Person
  • Open Captions
  • Wheelchair Accessible

Joy-Ann Reid at First United Methodist Church

First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple 77 W Washington St, Chicago

Joy-Ann Reid, host of MSNBC’s The ReidOut and best-selling author, chronicles the lives of civil rights icons Medgar and Myrlie Evers. Myrlie Louise Beasley met Medgar Evers in college, forging an instant connection that culminated in marriage a year later, prompting her to leave school to prioritize their growing family. Medgar, an NAACP field secretary, […]

  • Assistive Listening Devices
  • In Person
  • Open Captions
  • Wheelchair Accessible

Judith Butler: Who’s Afraid of Gender? at Music Box Theatre

Music Box Theatre 3733 N Southport Ave, Chicago

Judith Butler’s groundbreaking work, and their theory of gender performativity, has had a vast influence on contemporary scholarship in feminism and gender studies. In Butler’s latest work, Who’s Afraid of Gender?, they tackle the global rise of right-wing movements that seek to nullify reproductive justice, undermine protections against sexual and gender violence and strip trans […]

  • Assistive Listening Devices
  • In Person
  • Open Captions
  • Wheelchair Accessible

Politics of Poetics: CAConrad

Museum of Contemporary Art 220 E Chicago Ave, Chicago
Event Series Puerto Rican Archives: Preserving Community Memory

About the Event Join us for a reading with poet CAConrad in celebration of the new series Politics of Poetics. ASL and CART captioning are provided. About the Series Politics of Poetics is a new quarterly program series held in the MCA’s Edlis Neeson Theater that highlights today’s leading poets whose practices traverse the political […]

  • ASL Interpreted
  • Captioning
  • Spanish captioning
  • Wheelchair Accessible

Dance Residency Open Studio Series with Helen Lee / Momentum Sensorium at Chicago Cultural Center

Chicago Cultural Center 78 E. Washington St., Chicago

Curiosities of Wellness in Bodies of Grief and Joy Glimpse into the rehearsal process of building choreography in the round for 7 dancers. While this work currently has several sections from 2 previous iterations, this open rehearsal (with possible audience participation) will focus on a new section. Join us as we stumble along together to […]

  • Free Event
  • In Person

Play For All at Chicago Children’s Museum

Chicago Children's Museum 700 E. Grand Ave., Chicago

Chicago Children's Museum's Play for All initiative creates a community where play and learning connect for visitors of all abilities. Play for All invites children and families with disabilities to come and experience CCM's inclusive, multisensory exhibits and programs. The museum will open at 10 a.m. for pre-registered children and families with disabilities and CCM […]

  • All Gender Restrooms
  • Assistive Listening Devices
  • Free Event
  • In Person
  • Open Captions
  • Quiet Spaces
  • Wheelchair Accessible

“This Living Earth – Our Shared Gaia” exhibition showcase at Beverly Arts Center

Beverly Arts Center 2407 W. 111th Street, Chicago

WHO: Beverly Arts Center in partnership with the Beverly Area Arts Alliance – https://www.thebeverlyartscenter.com | https://beverlyarts.org/ WHAT: “This Living Earth – Our Shared Gaia” Exhibition WHEN: April 5 - 27, 2024 WHERE: Beverly Arts Center, Simmerling 2nd Floor Gallery, 2407 W. 111th St, Chicago, IL 60655 ARTISTS’ RECEPTION “This Living Earth — Our Shared Gaia” […]

  • Free Event
  • Wheelchair Accessible

PURPOSE at Steppenwolf Theatre Company

Steppenwolf Theatre Company 1650 N. Halsted Street, Chicago

For decades, the influential Jasper family has been a pillar of Black American Politics: civil rights leaders, pastors and congressmen. But like all families, there are cracks and secrets just under the surface. When the youngest son Nazareth returns home to Illinois with an uninvited friend in tow, the family is forced into a reckoning […]

  • Open Captions

David Lamelas: This Is My Place

Gene Siskel Film Center 164 N State St, Chicago

About the Event This Is My Place is a fictional documentary about the itinerant life and conceptual artwork of artist David Lamelas, whose sculpture Situacíon de cuatro placas de aluminio (Four Changeable Plaques) (1966), is currently on view in Endless. Commissioned by the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), the film features Lamelas […]

  • ASL Interpreted

Justice Stephen Breyer at Francis W. Parker School

Francis W. Parker School 330 W Webster Ave, IL

Honorably serving for twenty-eight years as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer challenges the textualist philosophy of the court’s supermajority with insightful analysis and arguments for a more nuanced view of Constitutional interpretation. Emphasizing the consequential impacts of major legal decisions, Breyer upends the prevailing textualism approach as outlined in his book Reading the Constitution: […]

  • ASL Interpreted
  • Assistive Listening Devices
  • In Person
  • Open Captions
  • Wheelchair Accessible

The Penelopiad at Goodman Theatre

Goodman Theatre 170 N Dearborn St, Chicago

An unexpected remix of Homer’s The Odyssey, told by the celebrated and subversive author Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale). It’s her turn. Penelope has waited 20 years for her husband to return from the Trojan War. Now, as authorial control shifts to Odysseus’ long-suffering wife—and the 12 faithful maids who have long tended to her—we […]

  • Open Captions

Sensory-Friendly Morning

Museum of Contemporary Art 220 E Chicago Ave, Chicago

Sensory-Friendly Morning is a free program for all people who benefit from visiting the MCA without large crowds and other sensitive environmental elements. This includes visitors with sensory sensitivities, disabilities, autism, PTSD, dementia, and more. On these mornings, lighting at the museum is dimmed, sounds from artworks and environmental noise is kept at a minimum, […]

  • All Gender Restrooms
  • ASL Interpreted
  • Captioning
  • Closed Captions
  • Free Event
  • Hybrid Program
  • Low Lighting
  • Quiet Spaces
  • Sensory Friendly

Sensory-Friendly Morning at Museum of Contemporary Art

Museum of Contemporary Art 220 E Chicago Ave, Chicago

Sensory-Friendly Morning is a free program for all people who benefit from visiting the MCA without large crowds and other sensitive environmental elements. This includes visitors with sensory sensitivities, disabilities, autism, PTSD, dementia, and more. On these mornings, lighting at the museum is dimmed, sounds from artworks and environmental noise is kept at a minimum, […]

  • All Gender Restrooms
  • Free Event
  • Low Lighting
  • Quiet Spaces
  • Sensory Friendly
  • Wheelchair Accessible

FORCE! An Opera in Three Acts at the Museum of Contemporary Art

Museum of Contemporary Art 220 E Chicago Ave, Chicago

This is an opera, but what is an opera? If opera is defined simply as “big work,” what could be blacker? FORCE! features a live band that blends gospel, folk, pop, and jazz, with experimental dance, song, and the spoken word. As the work unfolds, characters reveal layered interiors creating a strange sisterhood with the […]

  • Audio Description
  • Captioning