...
I attended the National Gallery of Canada conference entitled "Collections, Connections, Communities: Making Museums and Galleries in Canada inclusive and accessible". The conference was an event that covered ideas of inclusion and accessibility in the museum world. Some broad themes were:
- Universal and inclusive exhibition design
- Museum human resources (e.g. staff training and awareness around disability issues, hiring policy)
- Programming (e.g. inclusively designed general programs, and programs tailored to specific audiences)
- Representation of disabled and Deaf artists in museum collections
- Experiences of disabled and Deaf museum visitors
- Law & policy
This being said, I tried to attend sessions that had a focus on technology and exhibition design. My notes from these sessions, and further resources, are below.
As well, here is the script of John Rae's keynote presentation.
Exhibition design for Access: A universal design approach
- this presentation was quite critical of the "one size fits all" aspect of universal design. it emphasized the importance of universal design as a baseline, and going beyond this by doing consultation with community stakeholders and by doing user testing.
- Brian Casey, an education specialist at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa, gave an overview of the museum's "Braille: Knowledge at your Fingertips" exhibition . (more info here). This was a partnership between the museum and the CNIB.
- a discussion about access barriers in museums followed. Access barriers discussed were: wayfinding; modality translation; small font sizes; physical affordances; language related (e.g. French? English? ASL?); lack of visual aids to address low vision (e.g. colour blindness, colour contrast); cost of attending museums; museum hours
- solutions to these access bariers were discussed: better architecture & signage; legislation; frontline staff training; information and promotion of accessibility affordances
...