September 20th, 2024
Authors: Elise Levin Güracar and Martha Merson
Elise and Martha are TERC researchers working on Sound Travels which investigates the visitor experience and the role of sound in it.
The exhibit is colorful, but the prism-formed rainbow is lost to the blind child.
The interpreter’s invitation to step up and touch is inaudible to a deaf adolescent.
Science centers and other informal learning institutions have the potential to unlock curiosity about complex scientific concepts. Science museum staff are working diligently and creatively to craft inclusive environments for all of their guests. Woven into the mission and history is commitment to educating and inspiring public audiences. Science museums are places where children can encounter complex scientific concepts and scientific reasoning.
For decades, science centers and natural history museums have enhanced exhibits with audio guides and labels along with live interpretation, all to increase visitors’ pleasure and wonder. Yet these options can fail to provide enough information to allow blind and deaf visitors to create a full and accurate mental image of an exhibit (Neves 2012), to physically navigate in the space, and fully participate in interactive experiences (Vaz, Freitas & Coelho, 2020). This is especially true of interactive science museums where hands-on exhibits are designed to be changed and engaged with.
In particular, blind and deaf visitors will struggle with visual and auditory elements. For example,deaf visitors will miss out on verbal explanations and multimedia displays that rely heavily on audio. Barriers are especially daunting for young children and their caregivers as they are still acquiring sign language terms and familiarity with assistive devices. Blind visitors will likely miss out on text as will pre-literate audiences and speakers with limited proficiency in written English.
How are museums making sure that all of their visitors are able to access rich experiences with scientific reasoning?
We interviewed staff members from seven science museums across the country who shared ways they are removing barriers and accommodating visitors with disabilities. In each interview we asked who and how staff address these issues. Read on for creative and practical approaches and recommended resources, including forming advisory committees with members of the disability community, performing accessibility audits, and creating tactile versions of visual exhibit components. As members of the Sound Travels team, our interest was primarily on vision and hearing impaired visitors, though we recognize that museums need to reduce barriers for all kinds of reasons such as neurodiversity and physical mobility.