Physical Accessibility Guide for LeMay - America's Car Museum

Authors:

• Adrienne Duran-Rios, Museology Graduate Program
• Chair: Meena Selvakumar
• Elizabeth Ralston
• Samuel DeBacker

Contact the author

Abstract:

Disabled people are just as worthy of access to information as any other group of people, including at museums. And for museums, fulfilling their mission should mean ensuring genuine opportunities for engagement for visitors of all abilities. LeMay - America’s Car Museum (ACM) attracts local and national visitors and seeks to understand how it can improve physical access to its exhibits and galleries for current and future visitors. The purpose of this project was to create an implementation guide that aids the museum in their journey towards accessibility. This guide delineates the access issues and solutions specific to ACM and provides information, resources, and background. In this project, accessibility is focused on the following physical disabilities: limited mobility, visual impairment, and auditory impairment. The use of existing literature and best practices on accessibility within the museum field helped to inform the initial approach. Importantly, the implementation of a focus group composed of individuals with physical disabilities was critical and highlights the importance of including disabled people in any process that is related to them. Since making museum-wide changes can be a lengthy and expensive process, this guide takes a phased approach to implementing these changes, organizing them into categories and then breaking those categories down further into what are “low-hanging fruit” or more lengthy processes. The audience for the guide are staff at ACM who will implement the change. Ultimately, the outcomes are for visitors with disabilities to feel engaged in a space that is designed for universal access.

Poster:

Download a copy of the project poster

Project Deliverable:

Physical Accessibility Guide for LeMay - America's Car Museum

Video Presentation