Exhibitions for everyone
It is sometimes said that designing visitor experiences with accessibility in mind can make them more interesting and fun for all visitors.
How is that? It’s because instead of focusing on a single type of visitor, we are challenged to look at things from multiple points of view, to accommodate different abilities, different preferences, and different senses. And out of that diversity comes richness.
An old-school take on accessibility was to treat it as a compliance issue. You looked at the regulations for (say) wheelchair ramps, and you made sure that your design complied. Job done.
Someone needs to learn the definition of a ramp...
We were introduced to a more holistic version on He Tohu, when we worked with the indefatigable accessibility advocate Robyn Hunt (and others). We were challenged to consider a whole range of variables, from “undercoving” our interactive tables to make sure wheelchair users could get right up close to them, to increasing tactile elements throughout the exhibition, to designing touch screens for maximum visibility for those with different degrees of low vision.
Going through the exhibition later with a fully blind friend was a wonderful experience, exploring the opportunities for sound and touch. Some of these were planned, but others were more or less accidentally “hidden in plain sight” in the design. We’d made a “map table” with a dimensional topographic map of New Zealand because we thought it would look better than a flat table to project on - but it was also, it turned out, something that you could explore with touch…
Map Table at He Tohu
More recently we had the privilege of talking (via Zoom) with the Australian Museum’s big, diverse and knowledgeable accessibility advisory group about our projects there. We walked them through our designs and listened to their many detailed suggestions for how we could take what we had designed to the next level and make it less confusing, safer and more accessible to all.
Of course, designing for accessibility does involve compromises. A designer might have a vision of an edgeless, almost invisible glass showcase - but to a person with low vision that could be a hazard. We have heard design purists say that if you have to put a directional arrow in an exhibition, you’ve failed, because the design as a whole should magically tell you which way to go: but for some people, those arrows might just save them a whole lot of unnecessary confusion.
The good thing about working with accessibility advocates is, they are (in our experience) usually not at all “doctrinaire”, but very open to different options. It’s not about imposing a prescribed way of doing things, but about exploring ways to mitigate potential issues. Most importantly though it’s about thinking positively about different “ways in” to experiences.
In that sense, the accessibility movement over the past couple of decades can be seen as part of a wider big, positive societal change. A shift from thinking that there is always, ultimately, one best way to do things, to an understanding that there are many different ways, each of which are usually equally valid.
Arts Access Aotearoa has an excellent page of links to accessibility resources and toolkits, here.