Making Museums More Accessible | Accessibility NYC Meetup Recap

Hello. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for being here today. Thank you Thomas and Stacy for inviting me.

Do you hear me well? Good. Okay. And thank you for the captioning and the hosting here in Thoughtbot.

I am really, really pleased to be here today because that's my first time in New York, USA. But also one year ago I arrived in Montreal from France to develop Tactile Studio in North America. And so, it's one year day-for-day I was landing in the airport in Montreal. So, I'm very, very happy to be here to be able to share with you the incredible accessibility that we are doing and maybe to have some new ideas.

Today I would like to speak about accessibility in museums in the cultural context. How can we use the accessibility to increase the experience of the visitors with, of course, disability, but also for all of the visitors of the museum? To give them a better understanding and better experience of the arts, the science, the architecture, different kinds of thematics. And we are very strongly inspired by universal design.

And we think about the users in a user-centered design orientation. As you heard, I am French native speaker so, if you don't understand, or if something is not clear, please ask me to repeat and try to make it clearer. I will do my best and we are in an accessibility topic. So, that's the minimum I can do, of course.

So, when we think about accessibility mostly in museums we think about the facility for people in wheelchairs for the mobility issues. But what I want to share with you today is more the next level of the accessibility. How we can give access to the content, to the message and the intention of the museum. So, we have time to do that.

I think 45 minutes. And a few questions after that. If you have some questions during my presentation, just raise your hand and share it with us. And after the presentation you can -- I also brought some samples and different examples of what we can do.

And I will be happy to share it with you. Okay. No. So, I'm going to introduce myself.

I used to work in control field for ten years in France first. I was accessibility manager in the Man kind museum in Paris, about the human beings, the culture aspects. I was in charge of the renovation project. For two and a half years.

And after that, for programs during the two and a half years. So, it was a very great chance to have the possibility to see if what we saw was really useful and to adjust when it was necessary. And before that my first meeting with accessibility was in my first job when I was in the national natural history museum in Paris in charge of the exhibition for children. And my boss told me ten years ago, you're going to be in charge of the accessibility project.

Great. How do we do that? I have no idea. So, you just find the people to do that.

So, we built a project with users and with -- that was also my first meeting with Tactile Studio. Tactile Studio at that time was a little company with four passionate and dedicated people. A bit crazy too. Who started in the basement of a studio with a 3D machine, laser cutting and printed.

And there were two people dedicated in control mediation, very concerned by the artistic topic. And two people in the techniques. So, they started with us this project, and nowadays, ten years after, Tactile Studio is an international company. We drive more than 350 projects in more than 10 countries.

Obviously more in Europe. But we start in Canada this year. And we opened different offices. One in London, one in Berlin and the last one in Montreal.

So, I am driving this since one year. Sorry. So, it has been a very big adventure. We had the chance really to work with a big range of museums.

The Louvre four times. But also the V&A in London. And it was meeting with incredible people, very inspiring and also other partners working with the users to build the next level of accessibility to try to fail sometimes and to try again and to do better each time because accessibility is a long journey and it never stops. So, it's always about trying and developing new ideas, new content and new solutions.

And those museums started to make a difference. Okay. So, I will start today with maybe a quick introduction about the Tactile specificity and the benefits and challenges of that for all the visitors. And I will focus on three case studies more deeply.

Of course, accessibility is a very good way to let people be in contact with art. But it's also helping all the visitors to have a very new experience. When we saw -- when we are society -- we have an immediate perception of the environment and of an outlook. For example, here we have -- it's immediate.

It's entered to -- it's related to the environment so we can have an idea of the size. We can have an idea of the material it's made on. But when we discover it from the touch, it's much more different. It's very sequential.

It's not immediately like you see. And its center in the users for his perception. So, to have an idea of the dimension and the relief. The important information in the composition.

It takes time to build a mental image. So, a work in Tactile Studio is to translate and to clarify (brief drop in signal - talking about Musee D'Orsay's Gustave Courbet painting) to restore it, this artwork. And they had the idea of doing it in front of the visitors. So, they put a window glass to protect, of course, the artwork and the workers.

But at that time they the problem that people can see the worker working. But not really have an idea of what they were working on. So, they put a picture in the window to show them what was the painting. And they asked Tactile Studio to develop a station with an interpretation of that masterpiece.

It's like 4.5 meters by 3 meters. It's a very huge painting. As you can see, we can have a line -- and in the top of the painting, there is not so much relevant information. Just the background.

But on the bottom of the painting there is a lot of characters. Gustave Courbet is represented in the center of the painting with his inspiration muse behind him. And on the right side and the left side he has different people. On the right side there are those who inspire him.

Those who support him. And on the left side is more like his dark side. So we -- the curator, wanted to focus on the composition of the painting and on a few details. Here is the interpretation in tactile relief and contrast.

We have black and white and gray to contrast the image. As you can see, there are different lines to explain the composition and the construction of the painting. But doing different texture, the black shape has been a bit like bored, if I can say that, to highlight different detail. So, we can see on the left side where they are the dark side of Gustave Courbet different details highlighted in that case.

And both in the top of the painting there is a little area where Gustave Courbet represented his mistress. In the painting, we can't really see it, but doing that work of clarifying and selecting different information, that highlights those little details. And as the top you can was also to explain the restoration work, we offered the museum to develop also another station with different canvas that people can touch and understand that the work was a very long process.

He first put different layers on his canvas. So, that's also why this restoration took so much time. Because people need to be very cautious with the work. And on the left side we added some audio to explain the work of the restoration.

So, at the end, in front of the -- this big window where behind there were the restoration projects, they had an explanation of the artwork and of the work of the museum. This project has been traveling after that. Once the painting was, again, hanged in the museum. And they sent it to different schools to make a connection and immediacy around this project.

As I told you earlier, we cannot do things for visually impaired people without them. We cannot think for the others. We need to share with people to know what is better for them and to test the station. To have better feedback also of their needs.

And doing that we have five peers. I will explain later. But first I just want to introduce the way that someone will discover a station, tactile station. There is three levels of discovery.

The first, of course, is bug level. I mean, just discovering the size and what is in front of me. Just like seeing what is it? And after that, going into the different information block.

Okay, where is the title? Where is the -- is there something to touch? A sculpture? Okay.

Where is the captions? And after that, people enter into the detail to start to build a representation. A mental representation. So, doing all that communicating and work with users, we start to develop a textural vocabulary and different resources to give the best proposition for them.

So, here we have a picture of an exhibition in the south of France. It is the museum of Mediterranean civilization. So, for their permanent exhibition who deals with all the trades on the sea, the Mediterranean Sea, they wanted to have interpretational banners. What we did here is the interpretation of the painting on the side with the focus on the boat.

Because it was, of course, about all the trade that was made by boats. I told you about the ergonomics of the panel. Those need to be a bit inclined, like 20 degrees to give a better comfort to discover the panel. But also the size.

It's important not to oversize the object. Sometimes we have huge and very nice ideas. But it needs to be something that people can handle. Because you keep the connection when you have the both hands in the panel.

It's also important to have the area for information to give the title. And if possible when you develop a different station in the same space to have a constant vocabulary with the same -- the title in the same space. Here you can see that there are two -- two parts of the panel. On the right side, it's a high relief representation.

And on the left side there is the title in the top. The text, black text. And the braille that we cannot really see because it's transparent. And on the bottom of the panel there is the representation of the shape.

But also comparison with a car. It's not really easy to see. But just to give an idea of the size, of course, of the vessel. We also add the number for the audio description.

Because in that museum they give some audio guide that people can have so they can also have a description of the panel. And a QR code. So, for the one who doesn't want the audio description, QR code. And there is a little sign for the children game around the museum.

Because they have a stop here. So, the scale and the texture. Here you have another example. It's still in the same exhibition as their current graphic design.

And we add here some smell. So, because the merchant that sail the seas and they sail here cloves. I was very surprised when I saw cloves grow on trees. There is a big tree.

You can see the human scale on the side. So, adding not only tactile, but also going to other senses with audio, with the smell, really helped visitors to enjoy their journey into the museum. So, we spoke about the interpretation of the panel. And if we go more deeply into the pedagogical approach.

How we go into it. The Abu Dhabi Louvre, they wanted to be an international museum. They wanted to have a multi-sensory path to interpret their collection. It's the portrait of George Washington.

The composition of the panel is in three parts. And the right side, because we read from the right to the left in Abu Dhabi. There is the text. After that in the center there is the main object represented.

Here it's a painting with above the real material of the painting. Here it's a canvas and a scale. And on the left side, they highlight different parts of the painting. The topic here was focusing on the symbol of power.

In that painting, Washington is represented -- he's seated in front of the visitors. And he has his hand on documents. There is a curtain behind him. And he's wearing a sword.

So, doing that, it's really easy for us to check what are the main objects and what are the main points of this symbol of power. And when we go back to the reading of the painting, it's much easier to understand, okay. And if I go to another painting with the same kind of thing, I will be able to say that the curtain is the symbol of power. So, it's really interesting to have this kind of -- this composition of the project.

Another example here with the interpretation of a mirror. So, we have the ivory on the bottom and the representation in low relief of this mirror. It's the back of the mirror. Which is very tiny, sorry.

And they wanted to highlight the importance of the animals in that representation. So, there is a parrot on the top. There is a horse with someone on it. And a dog running after a rabbit.

So, when we go back to the main picture, it's much easier to understand and to disconnect that it's only a representation of flowers and curves and what is actually the main representation. So, a tactile object is also helping to touch the collection directly. To have a connection with the arts. So, it's really important.

There is a challenge into offering a real tactile experience. Not like a plastic or a toy. People want to touch and to have a real feedback of the -- what they touch. So, we always try to put some density in those objects.

But it's also helping because most of the time museums say, oh, yeah, we would like to do something to discover by senses. But people cannot touch here, of course. We cannot touch in the museum. So, it's a way to offer this experience.

And still protecting the art collection. There is another point here which is that also allows us to restore the representation of objects that have been deteriorated through the time. Here we have behind a window glass in the Louvre museum a helmet. The helmet of Charles V. Who has been discovered into the ground.

But not in very well state. So, we did a 3D scan of this object and we did a reproduction of it. So, people can really have the dimension of the -- of the head of the king. And they also can understand the details that are on the helmet.

There are lis flowers which are a symbol of the king. And different inscriptions written on it. So, in this panel there is also text, braille. There is the vocabulary of the design of the exhibition is also respected with this little bar that we find in all the big windows of the museum.

Because it's a very big challenge for lots of time. Because it's not so new to do things for tactile and a solution for visually impaired people. But before they were put into the corridor right after the exhibition and not inside the exhibition because there were design preoccupations, there were esthetics to respect. And through that time we didn't really succeed to offer a very beautiful experience that can be in the exhibition.

Nowadays it's going to -- with all the new technology, with all the new material -- it's really much easier to do and to implement those solutions. And that's a good point because -- so, we are here today for the Global Accessibility Awareness Day. But it's in the universal declaration of human rights that people have the right to access. To access to the arts.

With the 27th article of the declaration, it says everyone has the right freely to participate in their field and to enjoy the art. So, here you have the accessibility act who already push this -- all this intention. In France we have those who appear much later, in 2005. That's very recent.

And this law obliged all the public institutions to be accessible until 2015. And guess what? It's not accessible already. But they are moving forward.

So, things have moved since then. And so, that's a very good thing. And the international council of museums also recommends to give access to all the people to their collection to the heritage. So, thinking of that, I think we are in a very good time to still develop those kinds of solutions.

And if we focus on the public, on the visitors, a lot of people have disability. One in five people in the U.S. And until 2030, people are growing older and we have more seniors. More than 50% of the population is going to be more than 65 in a few years.

So, we speak about this silver economy too. And those people are grandparents. They go to the museum with their grandchildren. They go with their friends.

And they have -- most of them, half of them, have visual impairment issues. And there are also issues of mobility. And we also have museum fatigue. So, if we bring all that together, if we don't think really about the disability of the people, but if we think about the ability of the institution to change the scene.

To change the way that people can have an experience. They can have a seat on a sofa for a while. And after that, going and seeing something and having an experience. Starting from their perception, starting from what they feel and not from what they know.

From the knowledge they were supposed to have. So, we can have a conversation from that. You feel that and I feel that. Oh.

And after that, we can go further. We can. We are just here to open windows. When people go to a museum, they pass one hour, two hour, maybe four or five, patiently.

But into their life, it's not so much so. What we have to do is make the experience enjoyable. To let the people have the desire to go back and to bring their friends, et cetera. So, I am a bit lost in my notes.

Yes. We saw that museums are changing. Here it's in the Belvedere in Vienna. They made an exhibition about Schiller.

They wanted to have the family, the painting to the right in the picture. The wrong thing is the furniture is not really wheelchair-friendly. But as we say, it's always a journey. It's always a work in progress.

So, there are a lot of constraints when we are working with museums. Because there are collection protection. There is acclimatization. There are space and all the rules to access.

So, and there are a lot of teams. There are the communications, the collection, the education. So, it's very difficult to make people speak together and have at the end a product and the project which is fully accessible. But doing that, the communication, the collection, and the education, have been through the process that maybe made some people with disability discover that they had needs and that they can -- it was really easy to feed their needs.

And so, it's a really, really wonderful journey, actually, to do that. Because it's four people and it's doing it with the people. Do you have some questions before going through the case study? Yeah.

Yes?

Hi, I'm Jill, I'm from the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library and I'm loving this presentation. Thank you. We are doing a project called dimensions which is all about tactile art. And so, I have some very specific questions for you if you don't mind.

Maybe I can focus on the Courbet. And my question is when you do make a tactile, have you decided to do the whole shape rays or the whole shape the opposite of race or an outline or a double outline? Because we have been trying different things and trying to get some feedback and there's so many choices, textured, not textured. What have you decided and how did you come those decisions?

Okay. Maybe to give a quick answer of that because I don't really know. But what we can say first is that we mostly prefer the highlight and then the curve. That's like a general point.

Because it's much easier to understand when it -- and in reading, of course, it's the best way. But to have a high relief is much easier to have a representation that occurred. And to ensure that what we have raise and what we have not to raise, it's always about the intention. What is the topic?

Is it about the tread into the Mediterranean Sea? So, we're going to pick up the different examples who are focusing on that point. Because there is always subjects who are fitting the intention and the message. So, if it's an exhibition about painting and landscape with a lot of different paintings, maybe we are not going to raise the people represented in the painting, but more the landscape.

Just to give an idea. Something like that. But I will be happy to share more later. Was there another question?

Bringing the mic.

How you decide what exhibits essentially to have smell associated with?

Again, it's a question of intention. And what fits the needs. And if you want, for instance, if we are in landscape, maybe some of the selected points are more relevant to have smell. If it's a spring field with very lovely flowers.

Or if it's -- if there is dirt and garbage on the side. So, no, it's always interesting to go and not only give good smell, but also to make a reaction. Because when I smell something bad, I'm just, hey, come on. [ Laughter ] And so, when you invite someone else to discover what you have just smelled, but you don't tell him it's a bad smell, of course.

So, yeah. It's this kind of a -- it's always about the intention and what we want to say. What is the experience for someone who can see? Okay?

What kind of experience I am going to offer for someone who can not see? And try to make a scenario with that.

I'm sorry, one more on that. How does that work? Is there a button or something? Or does it smell constantly in there?

Does it release smell?

The technique behind it?

Yes.

That depends. The one that I showed you was a very simple one with cloves behind and just an open little button that can open and close that people just have to push and pull. Some others it's with mechanic impression. You press a button and there's a little fan that just gives the smell up.

Okay? And that's -- yes. That can be a different kind of technique. Yes.

There is a question.

Hi, thank you. To your knowledge, is there a guide for museums on best practices for tactile accessibility?

For tactile -- there are good, very good guidelines for the whole experience. Like the Smithsonian guideline is very well known here. And in each country, actually, in Canada, they also have different guidelines. Museums are trying to do their best, actually, to develop the accessibility.

So, they have guidelines to help their designers. Because the first person who is concerned is also the one who is going to design the exhibition. But as a tactile experience, we have different authors who already wrote on the topic. And in France we are very linked to Bries which explain how a person can discover a tactile panel.

But as really related to the topic of museum, I don't know that. So, maybe we can -- we should do that? That's a great idea. Okay.

Maybe -- I just give you some other examples to think more about. So, that's an example I really know well. I really know well. Because it's the mankind museum.

So, this museum is in Paris in front of the Eiffel tower. It was a huge renovation project over six years. As I told you before, this law in 2005. When the museum was going to open in 2015.

So, you can imagine that there were a lot of pressures. It had to be fully accessible. And the challenge was to give access to this very complex content of the exhibition. The main exhibition is 2500 meters square with more than 2,000 objects.

And the exhibition is divided in three parts. Who are we as human beings? Where are we from? And where are we going?

So, saying that, go for a tactile experience. I want to focus on the first path. Who are we as human beings? In the museum, they explain in two different compositions different topics.

So, we are being of flesh and blood. We are a being of souls, of speech, of link. And we add a history about the interest in the diversity. More of an history focus.

So, there were five topics in that first part. All of the objects were behind windows. There were the composition of each big window where like a curiosity chambers. An accumulation of a lot of objects.

And to let people understand better the organization and the link between the objects there were digital explanations in front of the little screen that people can interact with. So, in those screens there were sign language interpretation and captions. And the tactile experience we imagined for that was related to the last part of the -- of this first big part, who are we as human beings? The graphic display had a very huge impact on the people who can see.

It's like a big structure. We can imagine the form -- the shape of the L. Something like that, you know? Starting from the top of the gallery and going on the right side.

And on this structure there were a lot of faces represented. Like people who were being molded by scientists during the 19th century. Scientists who were very interested in the diversity of the population. So, that was a very aesthetic proposition for the designer.

And we started thinking about what kind of experience can we offer to visitors to explain to them that we are people of flesh and blood -- sorry -- blood and flesh. That we are -- we have a cultural and a biological point of view. Because the exhibition put in front of some explanation about our biological origins. And in the same time, then, cultural identity.

For instance, they say that the main topic is we, as human beings, are all Homo sapiens. We are part of the same spaces. But at the same time we are all very different and we have all different ways to hold our culture, to represent our strengths, et cetera. So, we decided to sync -- we worked with the museum to design a story.

Different characters of a family who are going to speak to the visitors. So, different character of family, but a modern family. So, there will be the mother. About 48.

Coming from Senegal. Arriving in France in her early 20s. Her daughter, Marianne, she is 25. And the mother met after that a new husband who had already a child.

Mathieu a little boy. And Lucien, the grandfather, he is 85 years old. We represented them as a culture, people can touch. They had different audio, French, English and Spanish.

And on the side there was a focus on tactile graphics that people can discover. Here with Marianne, she's introducing the exhibition. She welcomed the visitors and invite them to touch her eyebrow and her ears. Explaining to them that she has the heritage of that.

So, she introduced the notion of genetics and biology. And after that she also invites visitors to discover the tattoos she had on her shoulder. To explain that's how people tried to be part of a community and to have his own relation with his body. The little boy, Mathieu, he is speaking about speeches and languages.

He's very fond of languages. He explained to visitors that he loves and he starts to learn Greek. And in that way he transmits the explanation of the content in that part of the exhibition. So, people can have a relation with those characters that can discover them individually or in during each station.

Here we have Lucien, there are two pictures. One with two seniors. We don't really know what they do. Maybe they're going to touch the head of Lucien.

And on the right side there is a little boy which is listening to him. This kind of solution offers a different, more emotional relation to the content. Lucien has a finger missing because he used to work as a carpenter. And doing that, he explained that we use words to speak about food.

And depending on our environment, we use different vocabulary to tell things. And that's exactly what we say in very huge windows and accumulation of objects. We say it in a totally different way. You also start to speak about brain damage and neuroplasticity.

Explaining that he has been injured during a war. So, he lost a lot of his capacity. But he started to recover by doing exercise. And so, he explained that our brain has a very big plasticity.

And helps us to still learn things even at 85 years old. So, here we are. The mother on the left side. And on the right side there is a total sculpture.

Yeah, because the character has only the top of their body. On the right side there is the last station people can meet at the end of the exhibition. It's a woman which is seated on -- who sat on a little station. And she's pregnant.

She has a prosthesis on her knee. And she's tired. Of course. So, she starts the conversation with visitors explaining to them that she's sad because she's tired after that exhibition.

And she's also in front of a big window with a lot of prosthesis and a lot of mechanical solutions to help humans to have better accessibility as you know the audio solution for people who are deaf. Until the last part of this display are super heroes. So, to give also in that display the idea of nowadays with the technology, we have a lot of solutions to improve our lives. They also present some aesthetic solutions.

So, we can make solutions to have better access and to live a better life. But until where? So, she's wondering and she's thinking about all of that evolution. And that's her who closed the exhibition.

It's important also for us to have -- to let her have -- to have the prosthesis. Because it's a way to integrate visitors who have issues, mobility issues, to let them be part of the description. They are represented. If I am represented, I also feel part of the project.

The second example, we go in a total different area and we are going to speak about architecture with the Louis Vuitton Foundation. They had a very beautiful art collection to expose and they wanted to build a new building which has been built by Frank Gehry, an American-Canadian architect. He designed a huge building which maybe looked like a sailing boat or a cloud. We don't really know.

Maybe you have your own interpretation too, I don't know. But there is like big window shields that are hanging into the concrete structure. And the Foundation wanted to let people explore and discover this architecture. Because when you are ground, you don't see at all the whole composition.

It's just like a huge building. Very disconnected and very entering. But very difficult to handle. So, what we offer them is to give them a step-by-step explanation of the building because all that the represented.

And the concrete structure is more like an iceberg on what we put some windows. And on the other -- the last explanation is only the floor levels explain. And there is an interesting story because they didn't have the permits to build three floors. So, they played with the size of each floor.

Of the roof. They go under the ground to have a bigger space to host their collection. Here we have a close up of the first 3D model. So, the windows can be put off and on.

So, we can discover the inside. There are also the real materials on the right side explaining. So, the glass, the wood and the concrete. The wood is for the big beams who hold the wheels.

Here it's a closeup of the concrete structure so you can realize that there is no right angles. All the walls are like wavy. They give an impression of maybe something organic too. And the last -- the last example is only the floors.

And there is an interesting point here that the Foundation wanted to give that D models to let people have a better orientation into the museum. But when we started working with the Frank Gehry team, the one who built the building, they told us that was the purpose. To make people to be lost into the museum. [ Laughter ] So, some architecture ideas.

So, the point here was not so really -- we could not do something that the building, the structure itself doesn't do. But we could explain to people that was normal to maybe be a bit confused when you think you are on one level and you are in another one. So, and to explain also that there is water on the ground which is represented by the texture here. And the last example was a Canadian one.

Because we are -- so, we start to work with Canada. We have already like eight projects. Half finished and half in progress. What is interesting is that the Royal Ontario Museum wanted to make accessible a temporary exhibition in Ontario.

The province in Canada where the Royal Ontario Museum is which is in Toronto. And they have the ALDA, they copied the American. The accessibility Ontario Act. And they wanted to make their exhibition accessible.

They had an exhibition about India with different weapons. And they wanted to focus on the magnificent representation of animals into the weapons, into the -- where we hold the weapon. So, we offered to them to describe six weapons in a tactile way with a braille explanation related to. What is also interesting is that in a fine art museum, in a science museum, in fine art, mostly, they start to offer new experiences, of course, through tactile and audio.

But also through the experience of the visit. There were a swing -- a very precious swing made by stones, I don't know what kind of stones it was. But there was, of course, a little barrier that people cannot go into that precious swing. But they put a swing on the side to let people have the feeling of the movement and just to enjoy for a moment the exhibition around.

So, that's really interesting to see how little a solution can help the museum to give better experiences. In that image there is a tactile panel explanation for a wedding procession. So, they were behind. There are a lot of huge objects represented on the different traditional objects for a wedding.

There are two elephants. We can see one. And in the tactile interpretation, there is like the caption of each object. So, the point here is also that those tactile devices can be used as the only device in the exhibition.

It's not necessarily to do it twice, like the one for the one who can see and the one for the one who can not see. It's really useful to mix them and to have only one panel for everyone to just share the same experience. And to finish, I just want to sure with you a bit of our preoccupation for the future. We are really committed to developing more digital solutions integrated into tactile devices.

Because it's nowadays people are all connected. More and more, at least. And we would like also to develop research projects to be able maybe as -- as you said before, maybe to develop guidelines and a recommendation to go further and to go through that journey of the accessibility. Thank you very much.

[ Applause ] And if you have some more questions, please.

I've got one. So, I was curious just kind of taking off of the point you made with the Royal Ontario and these tactile experiences being relevant for everyone. Or maybe being the default experience. I definitely felt like seeing the art examples even in the beginning where maybe some of the visual art is broken down sort of the way that you're showing the composition for someone like myself.

I find I'm not always that visual. I would probably gravitate towards seeing an experience like that. And I was curious if museums you've worked have -- you know, if they do observations or see who are using these experiences? Or do they collect any data about that?

Absolutely. I can say for myself. Because I had the chance to see for two years and a half visitors in my museum using the tactile devices for their own. And making that connection with those devices.

But, of course, it can help, for instance, to have a big character. Helps the children, helps the children starting to read. Helps someone just starting to learn the language. It's as -- it's the same mind-set where we were thinking -- what we were saying about wheelchairs.

When I think about the space for a wheelchair, I also help someone with a trolley, someone who just broke his leg, someone who has a group of people who are going in. So, it's really the same mind-set to think that we can serve much more than one visitor. Absolutely.

I was curious -- okay. I was curious when you spoke earlier about partnering with museums and being able to have partnership and collaboration in terms of being able to create these layouts. I'm curious for any of the -- does the exhibition designers, do you find any pushback from their creative perspective in terms of whatever creative vision they have for experiencing those materials versus making them accessible? Or do you find that it's an easy process in terms of getting them to cooperate?

That's really dependent of the institution, definitely. For instance, with the Royal Ontario Museum, they really have deeply committed designers. We are in communication with them. They know how to design tactile.

They really want to learn more and to go further. So, we have very experiences like that. In other institutions it's much more like concrete to move. And that's why I said that it's always good to have some experience.

Like the users. But also like company, like Tactile Studio. To just help the one in the museum who believe in that but cannot convince their colleague. Because he's working every day with them.

I'm just the one that's going to come and think about your disabled people and blah, blah, blah. No, we really see the people that are committed, the accessibility manager, someone in the exhibition who believes in that. But as I told you before, there are so many constraints. There is a timeline, there are budgets.

There are so many problems that accessibility often is like the last wagon of the train. But when you just put it in the first place, you see the very big difference into the team, into the final exhibition, in the visitors experience. So, it's really there is just one thing to remember of that is that the accessibility is good for everyone. And it's going -- doing that, it's not easy.

But it's helping everyone from the museum, but also from the visitor experience. Absolutely.

Since art is often subjective, how do you -- or what's your process in terms of determining how to interpret for those stations like how you -- like what you're actually choosing to convey?

Yeah. We speak about that a bit earlier. That we design -- we selected the part to represent or to highlight depending on the intention of the exhibition. If, for instance, it's for an exhibition, temporary exhibition about some -- about a portrait and the symbol of power.

We're going to show different -- we're not going to select the same kind of portrait with the same kind of symbols. Of course, we're going to select different ones who give different information for people. There is another thing that we have to keep in mind. That is for someone going to a museum, he wants to see diversity.

Doesn't want to enter in the same room again and again and see the same type of hanging, the same text and everything. We want diversity. So, it's also in the tactile path, it's also something. So, maybe sometime you can put a 3D model.

Sometimes it's low relief. Sometimes it's just graphic interpretation. It's got to be sound, it can be smell. So, just mixing all the senses help.

And it really works. Thank you.

Okay. And we'll have time for one more question after this.

Hi, aurelia, thank you for the presentation. Can you speak about the research part? How you involve people with disability into your research to come up with this design?

Yeah, we build partnerships with associations. So, depending on the project with the museum. Mostly museums who hire, sometimes it's a fabricant or a stenographic team. And we integrate some prototypes to share with the community.

So, dependent on the region in Germany, it's more relevant to do it with the local community because those people are gonna speak about -- to the others about your project. And they're going to go and discover your project with their friends. So, it's always trying. And people are always very happy to share and to go into those kinds of projects.

So, it's usually a little group of people like four or five people from the community.

Anyone have a last question?

No?

Maybe we timed it perfectly. We got one last question.

Just to tell you if you want after that, of course, I am available for any questions. You have an experience, an audio experience of Van Gogh. There is a button you can press to discover tactile interpretation of a Van Gogh with the special touch of this artist. There is some cards.

So, please feel free to come and see me if you want to have more information. I will be pleased to send it to you.

Hi. Thank you for the presentation. It's really interesting because I mean, in the U.S. I'm not sure -- are there standards for museums right now in terms of accessibility?

I was just curious if you have encountered any challenges here in the U.S.

If there is -- sorry, can you repeat your question?

Are there standards for accessibility in museums in the U.S.? In New York, there are a lot of challenges for people with disabilities. I'm just curious.

Yes, absolutely. There are some standards. The Smithsonian Museum wrote some standards. The actual is -- they did it a few years ago.

But they did it recently, a new add inside. But definitely yes. There is. And in North America museums, mostly science museums are committed to that topic.

Originally science centers are more into the experience of explaining science. Doing it is more easy to understand. It's better to memorize. So, they do a lot.

I also have guidelines. If you want, I can send it to you. And so, the bridge is also to go to a fine art museum, to go into a design museum, to make that being normal and common of those kinds of solutions.

Great. Well, thank you so much again.

Thank you. Thank you very much. [ Applause ]

Just in closing, thank you, everyone, again were coming to accessibility New York City. We're going to be having two events in the month of June. Check out the meetup dates. We actually have two people again coming in from out of New York City that are interested in presenting to the group.

So, very excited about that. I want to again thank our event host here, Thoughtbot is the sponsor for the meetup. We want to thank Level Access who sponsors our captioning as well as Adobe who is also one of the sponsors of the accessibility events there. And final kind of in a my announcement for global accessibility awareness day, I'm actually moving away from New York City.

I'm moving to Japan. So, global awareness. Excited to work on accessibility kind of in that space. I'll still be very involved remotely.

Stacy Smith who is here and has been at, you know, most of the last meetups over the year. She's going to be representing Equal Entry at these events. And it's been great getting to work with the community here. And look forward to seeing what continues to develop.

And thank you to Joly MacFie for producing and to White Coat Captioning for the excellent captions tonight. And excited to try out the examples over here. Look to adjourn here and we should look to be out of here by 9 p.m. tonight.

Thanks, everyone. [ Applause ]