Accessible Attitudes, Ruth Starr

“ If access is no longer relegated to the education or visitor services departments of an art museum, and spreads not only through the curatorial department but through every department, wall, door and window of an art museum, what would that mean for the art museum? Perhaps access would no longer be an add-on to a museum budget or as an after-thought for a curator when installing an exhibit without large-print labels. Perhaps programming material that is accessible will no longer be considered unattractive, but can be treated with more aesthetic potential, care, sensitivity and intelligence. It might be embedded into all exhibition planning in the future as a matter of course, rather than as a last-minute addition. Access can be approached as a tool that will widen perspectives and thinking around practices that are in need of reinvention and revision. 

"Stories of Inclusion: Universal Design in Cultural Institutions" Museum Access Consortium, 2015.

Ultimately, if access is to be made radical and controversial, as these scholars have called for, the very concept of access also needs to be re-visited in order to develop new attitudes, perceptions, and language that counter its stigmatized status.” [1] - Amanda Cachia

In the past several weeks, I have continued to collect resources to support my thesis project. At this point, I’ve divided my research into three subcategories: museum practices in addressing challenges of accessibility for visitors with disabilities, contemporary issues in disability studies, and physiological studies which aim to ascertain implicit attitudes surrounding public perception on disability, inclusion, and accessibility. It has been exciting to continue to see my project evolve into a synthesis of many of my interest areas. In the inception of this thesis, I was unsure about what particular framing I was intending to look at regarding the topic of access within cultural institutions. Over the course of the past semester, I have been able to develop the project into work which will bring together related content disciplines in a way that I have not seen done in the field before. 

I believe that the intersection of implicit attitudes, perceptions, and mindsets surrounding issues of disability, inclusion, and accessibility is essential to improving equality within contemporary museum practice at the core of institutions. This work is consistent with the current dialogues happening in museums focusing around partnership and the social model of disability. I hope that this project continues to support, even in a small way, the development of the field to improve cultural access for diverse populations. Looking forward, I intend to continue the research I've begun in these areas, as well as create a survey instrument which could be utilized in museums to assess the current status of accessibility within daily practices. The survey will target both staff and institutional values, biases, and additional potential barriers limiting the development of accessibility in current museum practice.  

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[1] Cachia, Amanda. “Talking Blind: Disability, Access, and the Discursive Turn.” Disability Studies Quarterly 33, no. 3 (12–5, 2013). http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/3758.