Another part of the accessibility question evolved into its own complete topic. Child Access. One of my biggest interests for a project like this is allowing kids working with school-owned iPads or such to research, browse, and discover new points of interest. A child cannot exactly fly 10 states away to visit a museum with pieces related to something they may really like locally, so an application of shared museums can allow for some cool new ways of learning to take place.
However, there are some major problems with this. I work full-time providing internet and wireless access to schools, and one of our biggest concerns is security and filtering. If you want kids to have access at a museum, that's fine. But you need to filter what they can access. Tagging inappropriate works so a child version of the app cannot access them is easy enough, but what about the forums and discussions? You really don't want young kids and adults commenting in the same place, so separate forums for the child access is the easiest way to go.
But what happens when they grow up? Say when they turn sixteen, their account is upgraded and they can access the adult forums and all. What about all their old posts? They can no longer access or discuss their old posts, but their badges and such can carry over to their new account.
Overall keeping things clean and making sure no one complains about something or other here or there is impossible in these situations. The best we can do is try to make everyone as happy as possible and keep kids safe, while still allowing them to freely explore as much as possible.
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