Beyond The ADA: Creating Truly Disability-Friendly Museums
The fight for the Americans with Disabilities Act (the ADA) was long, hard, and demanding. Thanks to the incredibly taxing work of disabled activists for decades leading up to the eventual passing of the ADA in 1990, Americans with disabilities have more protections than ever before. However, unless you are disabled yourself, or have someone close to you that is, you may not be aware of how difficult it is to ensure the law is being upheld and to try to advocate for oneself, especially in the workplace.
Museums and other informal learning institutions have struggled to reach beyond the ADA and be fully accessible and inclusive to disabled people, rather than just meeting the minimum requirements. And as a disabled person working in this field, I’ve noticed trends as both a visitor and an evaluator that I feel could benefit from incorporating the words and guidance of disabled activists.
As we as a field continue to navigate best practices in making everyone feel fully welcome in museums—visitors and employees alike—I would like to offer up a list of goals and resources to help museum professionals begin to look at how to center being welcoming and accessible to disabled people in their work.
1. Hire more disabled people on staff and work with them towards creating fully accessible workplaces
Creating fully accessible museums starts by including the people we are trying to welcome at every stage of the process. This means hiring more disabled staff members and consulting with them about their needs.
The first step is to just ask what your employees with disabilities need in order to be successful. Within the Americans with Disabilities Act there are requirements for workplaces to uphold that oftentimes have loopholes that, when exploited, frequently result in little to no access to disabled people. By purposefully holding space to hear what your disabled employees need, then meeting those needs with a supportive attitude, you are not only being accessible but also providing support that fosters a feeling of welcome. Some examples of creating accessible inclusive workplaces include: ensuring there are physically accessible office spaces (e.g. desks, counters, cabinets are at reachable heights, ramps for wheelchair users, accessible bathrooms) and offering work-from-home options for those at high risk for COVID-19.
If you aren’t sure where to start, the disability rights organization Work Without Limits has some great resources, including event and meeting accessibility checklists. Even if you don’t yet have a disabled employee, it is always a good idea to begin the work of creating an accessible workplace so you will be prepared to welcome future disabled team members.
2. Create accessible physical environments that are friendly to all
A disability consultant or an accessibility firm can be a huge help to ensure that museums’ physical spaces are not just accessible, but friendly to all. There are awesome disability consultants who work with organizations to create physically accessible spaces that exceed the minimal requirements. A disability consultant may recommend providing adequate seating, a space that is easy to navigate, and media that is both D/deaf and blind/visually-impaired friendly, to name a few possibilities.
In the same spirit of creating welcoming spaces, we as a society need to continue to be mindful of COVID-19 safety. With pandemic fatigue leading many people to no longer mask in public, going to crowded public spaces is dangerous and potentially life threatening for many disabled people. Many disabled people are immunocompromised, meaning they are at a higher risk for contracting COVID-19 and suffering complications or even death. While we are still in a global pandemic, we must ensure museums continue to be safe and welcoming spaces to high risk disabled people by implementing COVID-safe practices like requiring masks, having designated times for fewer visitors, and continuing to provide virtual programming.
3. Work with disabled people to make museums' collections and stories accessible
This could mean including works by disabled artists, highlighting disability history, and more. It could even mean using technology to make collections more accessible to disabled people, such as the Andy Warhol Museum’s 3D printed models of some of Warhol’s works for visitors to touch, which creates accessibility for visitors who are blind or have visual impairments. The Warhol worked with Prime Access Consulting, a disability access design company that works with museums to create disability-friendly spaces.
Another way to ensure disability stories and disabled voices feature in museums is to be advised by a dedicated team of disabled people. One example is Access Smithsonian, which works closely with a team of people, some with disabilities themselves, who are a “catalyst for consistent and integrated inclusive design that provides meaningful access to the Smithsonian Institution museums and content for visitors with disabilities.” A recent Journal of Museum Education article entitled Museum Crip Space, By Any Other Name, is another great resource. The article, by Beth Ziebarth (the Director of Access Smithsonian) & Janice Majewski (Director at the Institute for Human-Centered Design) highlights a study of disabled people who envision what it means for a museum to be a “crip space” and inspired me to write this post!
4. Actively engage with and create space for disability activism as an organization
Museums have a great and unique opportunity to hold programming that can be a catalyst for community engagement. One way museums can implement this is by hosting a talk with a historian specializing in disability history, or having a roundtable with local activists in discussing how museums can continue to work towards full inclusivity. Other examples include having sensory-friendly times so people with sensory disabilities can visit and providing sighted guides and American Sign Language interpreters for tours and events.
Disability activism is not new, and disability activists outside the museum world are creating many resources that could be very useful to museum professionals. Some people to look towards are:
Alice Wong, a disability activist, host of the Disability Visibility podcast, and author of Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century, Resistance and Hope: Essays by Disabled People, and most recently Year of The Tiger: An Activist's Life.
Imani Barber, aka Crutches and Spice, a stellar disabled communications professional who creates incredible TikToks explaining ableism in our everyday life.
Amanda Cachia, a professor, historian and curator who focuses on disability art activism in her work. She also recently edited Curating Access, a collection of twenty four essays which “critically examine contemporary exhibitions and artistic practices that focus on conceptual and creative aspects of access.”
5. Engage with anti-racism and decolonization work
Ableism is an inherent byproduct of racism and colonialism. As we grapple with both as a society and as museum professionals, this is a wonderful opportunity to learn about the intersection of ableism and racism and how we can decolonize our mindset and lens on life, as well as museums as institutions, to better engage with creating inclusion. I am a firm believe that in order to begin Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility work, we need to start first with learning the history of racism and colonialism, engaging in anti-racist practices and decolonizing the spaces we occupy. Museums are a tricky space to engage with this work in, as oftentimes they represent colonizers that have stolen artifacts from other countries that are then highlighted in their spaces. However, if we do not face the history and current day realities of the systemic racism and colonialism in museums we cannot begin to untangle the web of ableism within these spaces.
A great place to start is this explainer from Disability & Philanthropy. I have also found Tema Okun’s writings on the characteristics of White Supremacy Culture and resources to dismantle this culture to be instrumental in my own work.
I am heartened by the cultural shift within museum spaces to be more inclusive, and know that museums and museum professionals can only benefit from engaging in this work to be accessible and disability friendly. I also understand how overwhelming adding another task to your day-to-day work may be. I hope that this list can act as a starting point and make your journey towards creating more accessibility within museums for disabled people less stressful.
