Museums, Accessibility & ICT for deaf people: Favoring best practice in Europe

The project is divided in two parts :

1. Seminars : partners will meet in order to learn from each other about strategies of accessibility. They will also meet with organizations of deaf people so that learners really be involved in the project.
2. Writing of a white book "Best practice of accessibility for deaf people and the social use of ICT in Museums". This will be written thanks to every seminar, every partner's experience and trainees organizations.

European museums have different practice. They work in different ways: the use of ICT is more or less widespread, exhibits use few or a lot of pedagogical tools, accessibility issues have been tackled differently. Our exchanges with this Grundtvig program will be an essential step toward a European white-book on accessibility for deaf in museums. Our cooperation will address the trans-national nature of Deaf (Sign Language) community. Deaf communities in each country feel they belong to a wider European community of the Deaf. Issues of identity, language and culture are common concerns for these communities, beyond boundaries. By favoring exchanges, this program will strengthen better understanding on common matters of interest.

All partners share the idea that new means of informal learning for deaf people could emerge easily from European cooperation, and that new and better tools could be implemented through these exchanges of experiences. Moreover, partners are different such as Non Profit Organization working with museum and for deaf people, Museum of the Deaf History (entirely created and thought for the deaf people) or the Historic Royal Palaces that has several sites.

The three partners are:

• Signes de sens (France), a non-profit organization dedicated to accessibility to Knowledge and Arts for the Deaf, with a special interest in ICT
• Historic Royal Palaces (UK), an independent charity that looks after the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, the Banqueting House, Kensington Palace and Kew Palace.
• Museums of Southern Trøndelag (Norway), an organization consisting of 7 museums in the region, covering music, art, arts and craft, railway and cultural history, in addition to The Museum of Deaf History and Culture.

All three partners have strong experiences with deaf audience. All partners strongly believe that museums are very important places of knowledge and socialization.

Subjects or problems that will be addressed:

• Whenever a museum wants to do something for the deaf, there isn't any guideline they can use. Having a white book of best practice will be time- and money saving.
• There are various experiences of accessibility for deaf people using ICT in Europe, but there isn't any connection between projects. Professionals don't get to know what's already been done, what does or does not work with the deaf audience. Results often are money and energy wasting. With this project we will create a network that will share experience and widespread knowledge about accessibility.
• Accessibility and the use of ICT are both developing in museums, but independently. We want to encourage cooperation so that ICT become tools for accessibility to all.

How achieve these goals?

• Each partner works on one particular theme and will organizes a seminar about it
• Each visit will be composed by : experiencing and meeting Deaf organizations
• Seminar in Lille : ICT professionals will present new ICT opportunities

For further information:

Signes de Sens

Aurelie Brulavoine: a.brulavoine @ signesdesens.org