Once on site, good design and proactive steps make it possible for visitors to navigate the space and find entry points to the content. Technology, tactile engagement, interpretation, and other in-person services can make a difference.
Using Technology to Improve Accessibility
Advances in technology have opened up new possibilities for improving accessibility in science museums. While augmented reality and virtual reality are most commonly associated with visual interactivity, they can be used to create immersive experiences that provide audio and tactile/haptic feedback for visually impaired visitors. Similarly, mobile apps with audio guides and interactive maps can help hard of hearing visitors navigate the museum and access information more easily.
Tactile Engagement
We found that museum staff across all seven institutions are looking at tactile elements as more than a doorway to more visual content, such as displays that have a slider that visitors move to reveal the answer. Tactile elements like knobs and buttons offer learners a sense of agency, but if designed well, they can do so much more, including communicating content. Coupled with Braille labels and audio descriptions, visually and hearing impaired visitors have multiple channels to develop their understanding of exhibits.
The Tech Interactive includes 3D prints in their space exhibit, allowing visitors to feel three possible locations for a Mars habitat. Each has physically distinct characteristics, including a crack running down the middle of the Valles Marineris location and the ruggedness of the Jezero Crater, possibly formed by an ancient river. The museum is training employees to offer audio descriptions for any individuals who need them. Given the complexity and number of visual elements in the exhibits, the museum has plans to work with a local expert to provide this training.
Museums and science centers have long incorporated tactile models. For example, the Museum of Science (MOS) offers touchable models, including a generator in their theater of electricity, while the Exploratorium has scaled up visual models of items like sea urchin egg cells and algae to give visitors an understanding of the relative size of very small objects. The Exploratorium staff shared that scale is an incredibly difficult concept for people to comprehend, and they wanted to “make the invisible visible” through accessible tactile experiences.
Interpretation, Live and Captioned
For visitors with hearing aids or cochlear implants, museums can provide assistive listening devices to amplify sound. They can also provide ASL interpreters, as some of these museums do, if a visitor schedules it ahead of time. Some solutions, such as providing a transcript of audio tours/interactions do technically provide some access, but these take visitors out of the interactive elements on offer, and can be long and unengaging. COSI is considering adapted audio tours for one of their new exhibits, with key sections recorded in ASL by an interpreter. Additionally, visitors can leverage Google live transcription via personal devices.
Signing Dictionary
Tara Robillard and Judy Vesel from TERC have had AISL funding to enhance the use of informal science education venues by those who communicate with American Sign Language (ASL). Since ASL interpretation is not always an option, tablet-based (or app-based glossaries can fill the gap.
Vesel says the glossaries are designed so that visitors can acquire information in different ways. Incorporating these interactive options means individual visitors and families apply the glossary in ways that suit their needs and for their own purposes. Visitors can use these icons individually or in groups to:
During development and testing, parents found that using the glossaries enabled their deaf children to engage in exhibits more independently than they expected, and that the children spent more time at each exhibit than they would have without the glossaries.
Deploying Staff and Volunteers to Assist
One of the most important aspects of creating an accessible environment is ensuring that museum staff and volunteers are trained to assist visitors with disabilities (Argyropoulos and Kanari, 2015). This includes providing disability awareness training to help staff understand the needs of visually impaired and hard of hearing visitors, as well as practical training on how to use assistive devices and communicate effectively with these visitors. Some museums have roles dedicated to accessibility. Katherine Davis works in a new position as the manager of special education experiences and strategies at COSI. that allows her to work across different departments at COSI, including facilities and guest services to make impactful changes These include offering sensory bags, adding adult changing tables, and offering visual schedules to visitors such as stick-on activities and exhibit descriptions, and can be used to support visitors to plan their visit and support those who might become overwhelmed). Additionally, Davis is creating online training for all staff at COSI on styles of communication and interacting with visitors, focusing on advocating and educating.
OMSI has trained guest services to support guests in adding Aira to their phones, and offered all staff training in collaboration with Oregon Commission for the Blind (OCB) on interpersonal interactions in March, 2024.
Whereas visitors needing assistance could use use Facetime with off-site friends or family members, Aira provides professional interpretation services that offers narration and navigation in English and Spanish for visually impaired visitors. OMSI is well into the second year of a contract with Aira, which has a large geofence so that visitors can use the service all around the OMSI campus, at nearby transit stops, parking lots, on sidewalks across the street, and, of course, everywhere in the museum.
However, one challenge is trying to get the word out. Jim Todd of OMSI’s Planetarium, which serves roughly 120,000 visitors per year, elaborates: OMSI needs to say to the public that we have these things available. That’s one of the challenges: people don’t know what’s available. Some people thought Aira was a tax refund. Todd is upbeat, though:
“New technology has made it easier to meet the requests we get for people with disabilities. We do what we can. The challenges are sometimes tech-based, sometimes built into the site. Questions come in regularly from teachers about students with visual impairment and it feels great that we are able to respond. We need to do more than offer AIRA, but it is something we chose because it is a great initial step, a blanket service that covers everything. Hopefully we can keep doing more.”