About a year ago during one of my docent shifts at the Gardner, I can remember a fellow docent Paula was about to give a private tour. A private tour isn't a rare occurrence, however what was interesting to me was that the woman who scheduled the private tour was blind. Now, if you haven't been to the Gardner Museum, the walls, tables, and cabinets are filled with a vast and varied collection of items that Mrs. Gardner acquired during her travels abroad. Just looking at the overall installation is an experience in itself.
As I watched the two women in the gallery, I couldn't help but think how much we as average visitors take for granted that we are actually able to see the collection. I would assume that if the patron visited museums frequently, that she was probably used to some sort of private or group tour that would give her great sensory description of the art surrounding her. But I imagined for Paula however, as it was her first time giving a tour to a blind person, that it was a challenging, yet educational experience for her to think about how to best imagine an object with this person on tour having no reference point. I think Paula did a wonderful job that day and I think the visitor was really impressed and thankful, however I wondered if there was a better way that we as a Museum could prepare for more situations like this.
This story triggered my memory as I read the article, Blind Spot in Newsweek this week. The article discusses disabled museum visitor's needs for better services. After the American with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990, it forced museums to bring their institutions to higher standards providing everyone equal accessibility. Unfortunately many museums have only achieved the minimum national requirements failing to go above and beyond programing and accommodating learning environment changes for disabled visitors. "The issue is, do people come to museums to ride elevators and use bathrooms, or do they come to have a meaningful social and aesthetic experience?" says Nina Levent, executive director of New York's Art Education for the Blind. It is a valid point and I think so much more could be done to provide better experiences for the physically disabled.
While I support the necessary change, I suppose it is also easier said that done for museums to integrate accommodations as many organizations have small operating budgets or in some cases, strict stipulations. This made me think of the time last week at the Gardner when a gentleman arrived at the ticket book in a motorized cart. He was asked by the Visitor Services desk if he wouldn't mind switching to a standard wheelchair that the Gardner had because the cart was not able to fit through many of the doorways in the upper galleries. The gentleman luckily had no problem doing so and was very happy that the Museum could provide him with accessibility to the upper galleries. Although this wasn't a big deal, I could imagine it would have been difficult for the gentleman if he was completely immobile because he wouldn't have been able to switch chairs, thus unable to visit about half of the Museum.
Thinking about how to make the upper floors equally accessible, doorways within the Museum would most likely need to be permanently widened to make room for various mobility devices. If this were to happen, and because the setup of objects within the Gardner are so non-traditional and intricately placed, some of the objects would need to be moved for these changes to occur. The altering of the collection would technically go against Mrs. Gardner's will, which states that no object can be permanently moved within the collection, and the issue would probably entail extreme legal attention.
I propose this scenario knowing that it is a worst case scenario, however it does raise the point that there is the potential for someone to have an issue with the Museum that could complain within their legal rights. I think about the instance in the article when Michael Byington, the President of the Kansas Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, who is blind himself accused the International Spy Museum of being inaccessible to those people with visual impairments. Byington cited a lack of docents able to provide a tour for blind customers; computer exhibits and terminals with speech outputs; and supplementary materials in Braille, large print, and audio format. This caused the DOJ to become involve where the settlement was reached that the Museum would have to make these changes to provide their institution to provide more accessibility.
In the Gardner's case, there are no computer terminals, or large print guides, and the closest thing to assistance with the collection is to schedule a private tour days in advance which costs extra money, or pay extra for an audio guide, which isn't suitable for blind visitors. To make a long story short, some museums if not prepared for disabled visitors could give themselves a very large headache. At times, I could imagine that it felt like a ticking time bomb for some museums that are not up to date on these laws.
In my other class that I am taking this semester, The Education of the Exceptional Child, I learned that about a decade ago, although there are learning-disabled students in their classrooms, some teachers do not know how to teach them properly because they never had training in special education. Because equally accessibility laws are now such an important factor in education and for equal rights, many MAT/MED programs require learning disabled classes. This makes me think that if teachers need to know how to provide for their students, that we as museum professionals must be well-versed in providing for our visitors.
It is a horrible thought to have to imagine someone who is disabled not able to have the same rights as someone else would. I think this is a very interesting topic and one that I hope will push more museums to accommodate the millions of Americans who have disabilities. What could be the best ways to handle situation where if a museum was unable to provide accessibility due to lack of funds or limitations? Do you think more laws should be enforced to make museums become more accessible? I wonder as a young professional seeing this if I will see more of these changes throughout my career. I would love to hear about anyone's experiences working with visitors in museums that have special accommodations, or worked in a museum who had programming or disabled programming.
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This is an interesting topic, and one that I think many museums don't- or are unable to- consider. I think that the Gardner is one among many museums that is not very accessible to disabled visitors. Small historic houses are even worse off; the house I give tours in is in no way handicap accessible because the rooms and doorways are too small, there isn't an elevator, and there are rugs all over the place. Yet how can we expect all of these sites to raise the funds or go against the donor's will in order to revamp the property? It is a very tricky situation.
ReplyDeleteThe point you raised about accommodating visually-impaired visitors is something I also think museums need to do more often. I've never been trained to work with people with disabilities, but I do have a wonderful friend who is blind. She is extremely independent and can truly do anything by herself if she puts her mind to it, so it took me a while to understand when and how I could actually be helpful without stepping on her toes (like describing what was happening in movies so she could follow along). If museum workers aren't trained to help disabled visitors then they may feel uncomfortable doing so on their own, especially if they are afraid of accidently offending someone.