Exhibit Access: Building In Rather than Bolting On
In the interactive, multi-media exhibit “Patient No More: People with Disabilities Securing Civil Rights” the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University experimented with accessibility. We mounted it at the Ed Roberts Campus (ERC) in Berkeley, CA from July 2015 through January 2016. The locus of many disability organizations and services offered an exciting, if truly daunting canvas for the exhibition. Opened to much acclaim in 2011, the universally-designed building was the architectural embodiment of what disability rights activists had been fighting for since the 1960s. Designers tried to anticipate the full array of different people with disabilities who would want to use it, from wheelchair riders to anyone who processes information differently. The ERC’s fluid layout, limited number of electrical outlets, need for us to easily move the exhibit kiosks in and out so they could hold public events added yet another layer. And we had limited funds. Meeting these fascinating challenges by building them into our process and design from the outset ultimately introduced opportunities for us to create a public history exhibit like no other and even to introduce elements of playfulness for visitors. Moreover, as we progressed we increasingly realized how these features in many respects quite literally embodied the historical content of our exhibit – the 26-day occupation of San Francisco’s federal building in April 1977 by over one hundred people with disabilities that would pave the way for passing the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990.
Beginning with the initial planning, we approached our “Patient No More” exhibit as an opportunity to be creative. We wanted visitors with different disabilities to get as much as possible out of their experience, but we also wanted everyone to discover something new, whether they needed “special” access or not.
One of the most striking features of our exhibit was a 70-foot mural that depicted the protests. The wall above the iconic Ed Roberts Campus red ramp was a daunting blank canvas. We spend hours trying to decide which photos to include, what sizes, what story to tell. Our challenge became even clearer as we debated how to deal with access for people who couldn’t see it. Standard practice would have been to label each photo in some way (“Top row, photo 1,” “Second row, photo 1” etc.). Of course we did provide a Braille binder and the audio description tracks that we provided online also contained that information. But this struck us as unsatisfying and dull, at least if it was our only attempt to render the images non-visually. We needed to find something that would be true to our mission to incorporate access to everything in our exhibit, though not necessarily in the same way for everyone? Our solution: commission two poets each who identify as people with disabilities to respond creatively with sound poems. Their interventions added another dimension to the mural while resulting in something completely different, especially since we didn’t insist the poets provide description. But this raised a further challenge for Deaf visitors wouldn’t be able to hear the recordings. Thus we hired an ASL interpreter with a reputation for interpreting songs and poetry. And of course we provided captions too.
We also used Braille innovatively. Few museum access professionals appreciate ways that the tactile reading system does and doesn’t work. They think of it visually rather than spatially and tactually; too often Braille labels appear where they look best or at least where they won’t “get in the way” of the item (assuming there is Braille at all) rather than where a blind person might actually find it. Including Braille in our exhibit design from the beginning, we built what we called a “Braille rail” that was the same central place on each exhibit panel. Our curator/exhibit designer planned every kiosk so that the rail became a unifying design feature that helped organize the distribution of images and text. And the square casing could hide lots of wires that powered our video monitors. At the last minute, as we were installing the exhibit, we discovered that wheelchair users were put off by this feature because they couldn’t tell what it was, and assumed there was something beyond reach on these seemingly useless counters. We rushed to add the words “Braille rail” (in print and Braille) for each kiosk, and everyone quickly understood.
Our most audacious flourish was to include what I called “subversive dots” to the rails – i.e., some additional information so that blind Braille readers could enlighten their sighted friends. We let news of this spread by word of mouth and mentioned it on tours of the exhibit for blind people, who were delighted. A few sighted people were indignant; our explanation that it gave blind people a rare chance to be experts at an exhibit gave everyone food for thought.
From the experience of “Patient No More,” I’d like to share three general comments/observations that I hope will provoke conversation for the working group.
- People with disabilities should be integral members of the exhibit team at every level rather than brought in as consultants or testers; in fact, an exhibit design team should be considered inadequate without at least one or two people with disabilities playing key roles.
- Anyone setting up a public history exhibit should imagine the possibility of there being docents with disabilities, including blind docents; this would add an extra dimension to the experience and ultimately make visits more interactive.
- Access is a work in progress, so it should be approached s something fluid, evolving, as a source of adventure where some things will inevitably go wrong, but that’s okay; when people are open to it, the dialogue and planning will bring many rewards.
~ Catherine Kudlick, Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability, San Francisco State University
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Thanks for describing your design process and some of the outcomes. We often talk about how accessibility has to be planned from the beginning, but I find that even when it is, we are sometimes still retrofitting the exhibits for access as opposed to taking new approaches. It seems like your team really pushed well beyond that. Perhaps in some instances that was the starting point, but it didn’t stop there. This to me is how striving for access can be used to make exhibits for everyone more exciting and engaging. I wish that exhibit teams would use access in this way during the planning and design process. I unfortunately find that excuses—some real and some not—still limit team members’ willingness to think expansively and have yet to come up with consistent ways to overcome this.
How were you able to recruit individuals with disabilities to help with the design process? We are going to be designing exhibits in the near future and I want to make sure we can reach any audience who comes into our museum.
We had a pretty ready group who used the building where the exhibit was located. But we also did outreach to various groups online, making sure that their philosophy of inclusion came from disabled people themselves rather than a group seeking to do god “for those people.” The key was letting people speak for themselves rather than having others speak for them. While it was tough and we didn’t always get it right, the process was extraordinary and the results were worth it.
I appreciate your statement about subversive dots for those who read braille. In exhibitions, information is not diffused equally whether it be from seeing an object visually or hearing sound effects in an exhibition. Expanding that idea to incorporate other disabilities could lead to sharing information such as having information only available in ASL would lead to an exchange between a blind individual and a deaf individual sharing information or having a deaf person be empowered to share more information. While abled people might feel slighted as you point out, it’s a reinforement of the lesson of the advantages that they have on a daily basis and they should respect and enjoy the fact that they no longer have all the dots.
That said, I admittedly have a hard time seeing this implemented in exhibitions that are not centered around disability. Say a museum have an exhibition on the American Civil War, would it be appropriate to have that kind of subversive dots or additional information hidden for people with disabilities or should we encourage that for all exhibitions to empower people with disabilities and make it more fun for them to visit? As a deaf person, I find that fun, but looking at the larger picture, I have a hard time seeing anyone buy into it.
Drew-
I was lucky enough to experience Patient No More in person and, for me, it was one of those moments where I just thought, “Yes! This is how you do it!” Obviously the subject of the exhibit made the design that much more relevant (and being there for opening day and watching people of all different abilities interact with the exhibit was fabulous), but I left there thinking “why doesn’t everyone do this?” Certainly, larger institutions like SI could easily incorporate the design features they used in Patient No More (as could many smaller museums). What they did was not complicated, it was just thoughtful. All of the different features were integrated into the design in way that (for me) felt totally organic.
To me, the key lesson of the Patient No More exhibit is that accessibility is not only achievable, but beautiful. When done well it is creative, and interesting, and challenging, and enriches the exhibit as a whole. I think for those visitors who do not have a disability (myself included), the Braille rail and other features make you think about accessibility and confront the fact that “disability” has more to do with the way we plan and construct our world than how our bodies or minds work. I think this is a good thing.
I could absolutely envision an exhibit on the American Civil War (or any other topic) incorporating these design features. I can’t wait to visit that exhibit some day!
Unfortunately, I did not get to experience the Patient No More exhibit, but I wish I had. It calls back to both Amanda’s post about UD and the article you added in the comments, where architecture and design should be questioned from the outset beyond of the privileged normate. As Heather said, it is thoughtful design.
I like Drew’s suggestion that providing additional information to visitors would empower people who often feel marginalized in exhibits, and I think it would provide a fun dynamic to exhibits that need to be more inclusive. But how do we balance this enjoyable, secretive knowledge with giving everyone a full experience, as in—to use his example—an exhibit on the Civil War? Or how can we facilitate the information exchange between individuals during their visits with people who are part of different groups?
Your exhibit sounds wonderful! Using music and poetry are interesting additions–ways to elevate audio information to aesthetic pieces of the whole. One of my blind students interned as a docent on a Braille Trail and I was impressed at the impact this had on visitors. They were there to learn history and art, but left with a better understanding of how blind people perceive exhibits through braille and tactile drawings.