Toronto accessibility advocate gets role in TIFF opener 'Being Heumann'

Taylor Lindsay-Noel, known online as Access by Tay, has landed a role in "Being Heumann," the opening film of the Toronto International Film Festival premiering Thursday, September 10, at Roy Thomson Hall. The film, directed and written by Academy Award winner Siân Heder, is a biopic of American disability rights activist Judith Heumann.

Lindsay-Noel, 32, was born and raised in Toronto. She is a disability rights activist who reviews accessibility at Toronto restaurants and businesses through her social media, with some videos attracting more than a million views. She began making the videos after the COVID-19 pandemic to show the daily challenges people with disabilities face when visiting their favourite spots. Through her content, she calls on restaurants and businesses to provide accurate accessibility information online, highlighting barriers like inaccessible washrooms and front doors. The majority of restaurants she reviewed contacted her and shared plans to improve.

Her non-speaking role in the film puts her among the demonstrators portrayed occupying the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare in San Francisco for 28 days in 1977. In the film, Judith Heumann is played by Ruth Madeley of "Doctor Who," with supporting roles by Mark Ruffalo and Dylan O'Brien. The occupation demanded the U.S. government issue and enforce regulations implementing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which protects the rights of people with disabilities. The protesters, many of them disabled activists and allies, had support from the Black Panthers and the LGBTQ community.

Lindsay-Noel's own story begins at 14, when she broke her neck while attempting a skill on the uneven bars as a competitive gymnast, an injury that paralyzed her from the chest down. "I had to figure out who I was outside of the identity of being an athlete and re-commit to a new life that I could have never imagined for myself," she has said. Beyond her activism, she runs her own tea company. What drives her, she says, is taking everything life has to offer. "Oftentimes, the tale of a person with a disability is so much pre-work," she explained. "Just getting out of the house." On what Heumann and the sit-in protesters accomplished, Lindsay-Noel reflected: "We are dependent people. We have certain needs. We have nurses and caregivers and supplies that we need. So to occupy a building for as long as they did with the support of the Black Panthers and the LGBTQ community was a big ask."