“As a blind person, my ambition is for our voices to be heard, and for our ideas to be taken into account. This is the first of hopefully many opportunities where we can express our opinions and maybe have a say in what could be improvements for museums in future.”
The Project
As an organisation, MADE want all young peopleto thrive through access to the arts, and when Henshaws invited us to join aforum for vision impaired young people to discuss access to cultural activitiesand venues, we were really keen to hear what these young people had to say.
We worked with Henshaws to put together avideo in which these young people shared their experiences of visiting museums,and their top tips for making venues more accessible. Their tips are realistic,focusing on solutions that don’t require venues to make much structural change,whilst also considering the varying needs of the young people, who all haddifferent levels of vision and different ideas.
Alongside the film, the children and youngpeople visited two museums: The National Football Museum and People’s HistoryMuseum, discovering accessibility features hands-on. One of the young peopleinvolved had never visited a museum before due to their concerns aboutaccessibility, and all the young people felt a real sense of empowerment whensharing their ideas.
As well as giving young people a platform toshare their views with venues, we want this project to encourage other visionimpaired young people to visit their local cultural venues. We hope the videowill give young people ideas of the sorts of questions to ask before and duringa visit to a museum or gallery, especially in relation to accessibility.
https://youtu.be/9_Q3PL16oww
Young People’s Top Tips
Below are just some of tips from the youngpeople we worked with:
1. Make all exhibits multi-sensory — “I’d likethings to touch because everything just seems to be behind glass, so it’s veryhard for me to know what’s there.”
2. Provide audio description of attractions —“If you had a speaker attached to it and a button which someone could press,you could have someone speaking about the exhibit, telling you what it lookslike and some history about it.”
3. Provide written guides in multiple formats— “Provide it in loads of formats because some people can see large print butothers need Braille. Sometimes the writing is so small, you just can’t see itin the museum.”
4. Use contrasting colours — “If it’s a yellowsign on a green door, I probably wouldn’t be able to see the sign. Any darkcolours mixed with black, or white colours mixed with green, I wouldn’t be ableto see any of them.”
5. Offer sighted guides or tours — “I wouldlike someone to describe everything to me so I understand what’s going on. Asighted guide would really help.”
6. Ask us, then implement our feedback
https://www.henshaws.org.uk/
Some other comments the young people had:
1. For going downstairs, maybe put a yellowstrip of tape at the bottom to indicate where the bottom is.
2. Have replicas of artefacts that you cannottouch.
3. Ensure the museum’s website is compatiblewith screen readers.
A big thank you to Henshaws and to all theyoung people involved for their enthusiasm and their ideas. We hope culturalvenues will watch the video and adopt these strategies to make their spacesaccessible to more people.
