MCN 2020 VIRTUAL

Safety, Comfort, and Inclusion: We Choose All
Building off 2019’s MCN session Multi-Sensory Design Towards Inclusion and Access, Sina Bahram and Corey Timpson examine and surface the details related to ensuring rich inclusion and access for onsite and remote audiences, given the world we now find ourselves in. Ensuring safe, comfortable, sustainable, and equitable experience design requires a multifaceted approach across several operational touch points. This session examines intention, design, execution, management, and maintenance across the museum enterprise, focusing on strategic objectives and practical tactics for sustainable solutions.

Accessible Touch Objects
Currently, the majority of museum and historic site experiences are visual and lack tactile alternatives for visitors. In this session we describe our efforts to better understand the challenges and opportunities for sustaining and expanding tactile objects in museums through conducting interviews with 15 museum access specialists from museums ranging in size and location. We discuss the responses from six accessibility experts who identified as blind or low vision to the museums current practices. From our findings, we identify and describe seven different types of touch objects currently being used at museums, which is the most inclusive and descriptive taxonomy to date. We discuss their design processes, trade-offs, usefulness, and value compared to audio and virtual tours. Finally, we share design recommendations for museum practitioners: 1) preserving touch experiences during COVID--19, urgently called for by BLV accessibility experts, 2) considering three additional touch object categories from an interview with a BLV accessibility expert not previously used or mentioned by the museum access specialists, 3) avoiding a one size fits all solution and offer visitors the opportunity to personalize the content and modality of touch objects. Our findings illustrate the diversity and importance of touch interactions in creating accessible educational experiences.