- Introduction
- Terms and Access
- Accessibility in Practice
- Planning for Accessibility
- During the Visit
- Continuing to Innovate
The COSI Color of Science Passport Program
While thinking about how to accommodate all visitors at hands-on experiment stations, Davis contacted American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters, working ahead of time to let them know what to expect, including any specific vocabulary they might need to research. Davis also considered transcribing worksheets to braille, but ultimately activities did not include worksheets or written content.
Prior to the event, Davis scheduled calls with the visiting scientists to discuss how they could increase accessibility and inclusiveness of their activities. She noted a learning curve with some scientists as they explored how to make their interactive activities accessible to blind and deaf youth. One activity was for scientists to bring tactile objects. For example, one scientist brought molds of mushrooms. Another scientist came with a beehive and had blind youth touch the glass of the beehive so they could feel the warmth the bees produced. A participating vendor brought a robot, and Katherine worked with the company ahead of time to plan how the blind girls would engage with it. They were able to have the robot lay down so girls could touch it to feel it’s dimensions and shape, and have it jump to feel the vibrations.
The event also included an engineering challenge to build catapults to send ping pong balls to buckets. Beepers were placed in the buckets so blind students could identify where to position the catapult. Katherine noted that the event “made scientists think differently and share the work they do. Girls were critically thinking and stumping scientists, making them really think about answers. They were truly contributing and engaging. These are our future scientists.”
The Museum of Science (MOS) in Boston
Elizabeth Kollmann has worked at the Museum of Science in Boston for nearly 20 years. She knows, “accessibility has been built into our work for as long as I’ve been here. We include a range of people with disabilities in testing products from the very beginning. We think about usability as we are creating things, in the formative evaluation phase, and then also when we are doing summative evaluations as well. When an exhibit or program is complete, evaluators look at how well it achieves the intended goals and outcomes (could be learning, skill, emotional, whole range of things).”
The Museum of Science has structured two ways to gather input from visitors –through a list of volunteers willing to come in and try out one or two components and by forming an accessibility committee, with five experts who are paid for about two days of service per year.
The Museum of Science in Boston has slowly built a list of people who are interested in testing exhibits. This is how we build up our accessibility list to get more potential exhibit and program testers. We send a request out to different community groups regularly. For example, email goes to contacts at the Mass Council for the Deaf and other community groups, about once each year. This list has hundreds of people interested in testing, representing the whole spectrum of abilities.
We ask people to come in for testing based on their ability to help us understand potential accessibility issues. This work takes time, but it is worth it. When we ask for help from folks on the list, We plan to set aside about a half-day anytime we are doing this testing: we need time for prep, then we will be with the visitors for at least an hour as they test out the exhibit or exhibits. Staff often do a quick interview to get more feedback and then we make sure that the visitors have what they need to enjoy the rest of their visit at the museum if they are staying. Typically participants receive free museum entry plus an incentive.
We need to plan ahead to make sure that we understand the needs of the visitor who will be doing the testing with us.
Kollmann notes that “The list has worked pretty well for a number of years, but we need lots of people on the list, since we won’t hear back from everyone when we send out a call requesting testing and feedback. Fortunately, we get new volunteers every time we send out an email.”
In contrast, members of the Accessibility Committee have a contract with the Museum for a year at a time and they either renew or not, depending on their interest and ability to keep working with us. If not, the Museum staff recruits new people. “We have about five people on the committee, acting as experts. They have a range of disabilities, they come in at specific points in a development process to give us advice. They are expert in knowing what might work well for the different audiences they represent, such as individuals with limited mobility, blind or limited vision, learning disabilities, and deafness. Accessibility Committee members have expertise and know how to talk to us about design in ways that make it easier for us to make changes. They give advice on how they might change features of an exhibit or program.
Kollmann explained that either representatives of or everyone on an exhibit team or program team meets with the Accessibility Committee members. During a recent meeting, the person who did physical design was present along with the person who worked on content, and the evaluator was there taking notes. “When we bring them in, we try to have a certain number of things ready at the same time.”
The Museum of Science teams look for feedback on components within exhibits. While an exhibition is a group of different activities, a component is one activity. For example, a table top activity set up to display different interactions when you move things, that is one component. Another example is an immersive room dedicated to a single experience, for example, the room where visitors search for things on the surface of Mars interacting with a projection and tools.
“So the Accessibility Committee members aren’t called in to review just one component. If they make the time and the trip to the museum, we expect to spend a half or full day with them. Staff have to be patient and wait until we have a critical mass of exhibit components to show them.
“Typically when we convene the committee, staff lead off by talking through the background of the project. We describe what we need feedback on, then have the committee members use the exhibits, while the MOS team takes extensive notes and subsequently makes changes based on the observations and feedback.
“We try to get them to come together and then have conversations with us and each other. It is so good for us to hear them talking to each other. Those conversations help us to hear how they might work through a problem. They are brutally honest with us. They will tell us when things aren’t good.
“Overall we are more transparent and intentional with the committee members. We tell them our goals and what we hope the interactions will be like. With visitors our framing is minimal: Just use it, however you want. Sometimes the more minimal background we give them, the more helpful it is. Staff see what visitors do with buttons and instructions.
Philosophically we subscribe to universal design, meaning we try to have everything be as accessible as possible—every component has broadcast audio or headphones, the buttons to play audio are in the same location so people can find them easily. We don’t call out accommodations, but rather try to do the best we can to make everything as accessible as we can. This can be difficult. We have an exhibition called Arctic Adventure about exploring the arctic with technology. We needed to translate the concept of sonar for a deaf audience into something that is visual. Even if we weren’t completely successful, we aimed to place visuals and interactives in the space that visitors could use to get the idea and hopefully everyone would find something that resonated with them (See Kollman et al. 2024).
We have found that it is important to maintain both a network of visitors and a group of experts. Visitors that will notice things that wouldn’t otherwise be uncovered especially during the development process. The committee took a while to set up but we realized the need for an expert group, and the desire and commitment to create and maintain that group has been a consistent priority for a number of years now.