A few weeks ago, the Academy announced that it would be making some changes that would impact the Oscars, voting requirements, and other areas. Today, one of those changes was announced, and it’s significant.

The Academy is launching “Aperture 2025,” which will link Oscars eligibility requirements to representation and inclusion standards. The changes will begin with the 94th Academy Awards, which will be held in 2022 on the films of 2021. To help with this initiative, the Academy is setting up a task force to develop and implement those new inclusion standards with the goal of finalizing and announcing them by July 31 of this year.

Academy CEO Dawn Hudson had this to say:

“While the Academy has made strides, we know there is much more work to be done in order to ensure equitable opportunities across the board. The need to address this issue is urgent. To that end, we will amend — and continue to examine — our rules and procedures to ensure that all voices are heard and celebrated.”

Aperture 2025 is the second phase of the Academy’s push of the last few years to break away from its outdated models and overwhelmingly white membership, a push that started five years ago in the wake of the #OscarsSoWhite campaign. The first phase of that push was “A2020,” a goal to double the number of women and people of color in the Academy’s ranks by 2020. For the most part, the Academy has achieved that goal, but it has also known that simply opening up and diversifying its ranks would not be enough.

To help with the inclusion standards, the Academy also announced that, also starting with the 94th Oscars, the Best Picture category would be re-expanded to 10 nominees. This isn’t the first time the Best Pic category has been set at 10 nominees, but just over a decade ago, the Academy shifted to its current five to ten nominees structure. The result of that shift has been that white films made by white men have overwhelmingly been chosen thanks to the stodgy, traditional mindset of a large number of the voting body of the Academy on what constitutes a Best Picture-worthy film. Expanding the category back to 10 films forces Academy voters to look outside their preconceived notions and unconscious biases to look for the films that are just as excellent, but not necessarily in the outdated mold of an “Oscar movie.”

Also in the 94th Oscars season, the Academy is implementing a quarterly viewing process, where Academy voters will have the opportunity to watch Oscars hopefuls all year round via the Academy Screening Room. Currently, Academy voters watch Oscars hopefuls in a truncated period of time just before the voting period. Last year, concerns were raised that Greta Gerwig’s Little Women was getting overlooked and snubbed by male Academy voters in large part because when they had time to see a film, they largely chose to bypass the film about women, feeling it wasn’t for them. We don’t have time to unpack all of that in this article, but providing access to screenings year-round will help remove the “I didn’t have time to watch all the Oscar hopefuls” excuse and the inherent biases that scenario creates.

And in a less immediately impactful but still important final note, Academy governors and members of the board changed their own bylaws to limit the terms of an Academy governor. Currently, board members serve three-year terms and can serve an unlimited number of terms provided they take a year off after every three terms in a row – outside of the year gap every nine years, it operates much like a sitting member of Congress.

The new terms will limit governors to two three-year terms, either consecutive or non-consecutive, after which they must take two years off. They can then serve another two three-year terms but the lifetime maximum is 12 years on the board. Furthermore, all Academy governors will be required to undergo unconscious bias training, as well as all branch executive committee members and Academy staff, and the Academy will also be offering that training to all 9,000 members.

There’s still a long, long way to go, but it’s excellent to see that when the Academy made a commitment to changing its outdated model and becoming more inclusive five years ago, it wasn’t all just talk.