Call to action: improve access for all
25% of the EU population consider themselves to have some level of disability. Working in partnership and creating environments for communities to have their voices heard does not happen overnight. Organisations need to learn to listen to communities, act on their feedback, and through doing so improve accessibility, not just for their community, but for all visitors.
This session, which includes views from across Europe, will inspire participants to think differently about communities including those who are autistic, have sight loss, or are hard of hearing, enabling participants to see things through a new lens. This session will include tips to inspire all who want to learn more about increasing accessibility for communities, enhancing organisations reputations, and improving visitor experience. Join this call to action and pledge your support to make a difference.
This session is part of the Equity and inclusion conference track.
Facilitator
Community Liaison Manager
Newcastle upon Tyne
United Kingdom
Session speakers
Meie van Laar (NEMO) will be talking about NEMO's new exhibition and sharing how the exhibition supports visually impaired people to actually make the show more accessible for visually impaired people. They are also working on improving the whole museum with those learnings. E.g. they use the app navilens for navigation and providing information on what is shown in the museum, including training for tour guides to give audio descriptions. Sharing real current insight..
Rebecca will be sharing her experiences and lessons learned as a visitor-facing Explainer working with visitors with disabilities, as a manager involved in planning and implementing a range of visitor accessibility initiatives, as well as her perspective as a disabled staff member (autistic & ADHD) and parent who brings her disabled child (autistic) to the science centre.
Universcience have been working with disabled people for many years including those representing the voice of the blind, deaf and autistic communities. Geraldine will share some of the innovative, accessible approaches they have taken like ‘Whispering’ which is sound texts for blind people and AR glasses in the planetarium: to have sign language and subtitles for deaf people.
