Last month I attended the Leadership Exchange in Disability and the Arts conference in Boston. I was very interested in the conference, so when I decided to attend, I thought it would be great to contribute something interesting. Given that not too many accessible and tactile coin exhibits exist, I submitted a short proposal about how to make coin exhibits accessible for blind people.
It was accepted. I didn’t think much of it at the time, I thought it would be an interesting concept, but let’s face it, coin collecting is not a common hobby among blind people. Thus, coin museums are generally as inaccessible as could be for anybody who needs a tactile experience. Here I am always quick to mention that not without exception, and though not many blind people visit coin museums, whenever I asked for a guided tour, most museums put a fantastic program together for me.
Of course, if coin museums would be more accessible, probably more blind people would visit. Anyway, I thought it would be at least worth a discussion. Making a coin exhibit doesn’t necessarily have to be too costly, and there are other advantages when it is made accessible for blind people.
To my surprise, within a couple of weeks after the conference, three museums have contacted me to consult with them on how to make their coin exhibit more accessible for blind people. I was truly thrilled that it wasn’t just me who thought it was a great idea. At the moment I don’t have permission to give you more details about this work, but as soon as information becomes available I will post it here. For now, all I can say that there are some excellent ideas out there.
On my consulting site I wrote about the same conference from a different perspective, it was the most inclusive conference I have ever been to.
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One day or the other it had to come! Just take a look, what's done for non-hearing people, there shouldn't be a discrimination, should there?
Please expand on this, but if I understand it correctly, there shouldn't be any discrimination of course, but the highly specialized nature of making a coin exhibit accessible for blind people made sense to unpack in a conference presentation. I particularly didn't include people with some functional vision because that would be worth the next presentation. When working with a museum, I would of course promote full accessibility, for that matter, full inclusion which makes even more sense.