While my institution is not as accessible as Heather-Marie's, I do think
we're trying.  A number of years ago we hired an accessibility consultant,
Jeffrey Moyer, who is legally blind.  What he's been most effective at is
changing our mindset, so that we start "seeing" what's wrong with the way we
do things, in terms of access.  And we're starting to make changes, such as
creating larger labels with larger text, printed black on a white
background.

I joke with Jeff that he's ruined me now for other museums, because when I
do go visit other museums, the first thing I notice now is how accessible
they are.  Too often I can't just enjoy their collections, because I'm
critical of their labels, lighting levels, etc.  But that was his job.  He
made us go through our own museums and find out what we did wrong.  Several
of us on the curatorial staff also went through the museum in wheelchairs,
so we could see that something mounted "eye-level" wasn't always eye-level
for all our visitors, and that also brought home to us some of our past
practices, which were not at all accessible.  It was a great start, though
there is still much work and conscious-raising to be done on the staff.


But working with Jeff has also paid off another dividend for us; part of our
institution is the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum.  While it's physically
accessible, it's not at all accessible for someone who is visually impaired,
though if we are alerted, we will allow those patrons to have hands-on
access to our cars.  But we're working now on creating interpretive stations
to assist our patrons in enjoying the car collection.  Using a grant from
the Ohio-based Storer Foundation, we've created what we're casually calling
"Access Stations" for a number of our cars.  These stations, that look like
vintage gas pumps (an appropriate motif for a car museum) will have textual
information, information in braille, information in audio formats, Talking
Sign wayfinding systems, sounds of the vehicle in operation, and even scale
models of the selected vehicles so that the patron can "see" the car in its
entirety (which is often not possible when they are feeling the full-sized
car).

It's a small step, but there is NO reason why any museum cannot be
accessible to ALL its visitors.  It first requires a change in your mindset.
Our jobs in the museum field are to collect, preserve, interpret, and
essentially share what we've found; if we don't try to do that to the widest
possible audience, then we're not doing our jobs correctly.


--
Christopher J. Dawson
Curator of Urban and Industrial History
Western Reserve Historical Society
10825 East Boulevard
Cleveland, Ohio 44106
216-721-5722 x247
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"History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are
and why we are the way we are." -- David McCullough

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