Review of the Sighted Guide Technique
What Cultural Institutions Need to Know about Service Animals?
Service animals are defined as dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. Examples of such work or tasks include guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling a wheelchair, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, reminding a person with mental illness to take prescribed medications, calming a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during an anxiety attack, or performing other duties. Service animals are working animals, not pets. The work or task a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related to the person’s disability.
When it is not obvious what service an animal provides, only limited inquiries are allowed. Staff may ask two questions: (1) is the dog a service animal required because of a disability, and (2) what work or task has the dog been trained to perform. Staff cannot ask about the person’s disability,
require medical documentation, require a special identification card or training documentation for the dog, or
ask that the dog demonstrate its ability to perform the work or task.
Department of Justice 2010 Revisions of the Definition and Requirements Re Service Animals
This video created by our Norwegian colleagues might give you a new perspective on service animals
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Visitors with disabilities
and their role in the training
When you are conducting an in-person staff training, it is critical that representatives of the local community of people with disabilities play an active role in your training. All Art Beyond Sight in-person trainings feature a panel of people with disabilities and facilitate candid dialog between staff and panelists. It is important for the staff of cultural institutions to interact directly with visitors and future visitors with disabilities (and their families), not only with organization that provide services for this community. Please refer to the videos here (and others on Art Beyond Sight YouTube Channel) for the first person accounts and suggestions from art and museum patrons with disabilities.
Advice from with Museum Visitors with Various Disabilities
Dr. Betsy Zaborowski, former Executive Director of the National Federation of the Blind’s Jernigan Institute, offers advice and inspiration for museums in creating accessibility for blind visitors.
What I would like from a museum? Sheila Leigland is blind and lives in Great Falls, Montana. She is a member of the Montana Association for the Blind.
How does it feel to be blind? A personal story from Dr. Betsy Zaborowski, former Executive Director, National Federation of the Blind Jernigan Institute
Hearing Loss: What does it mean to be hard of hearing? Joseph Gordon, a New Yorker and avid museum goer, describes his hearing loss and appropriate language for referring to people with hearing loss.
Hearing Loss: Successful Museum Experiences. Joseph Gordon describes his recent visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Closed captions, open captions, and t-loops and their use for visitors who are hard of hearing.
Kim Mack Rosenberg, president of the National Autism Association (NY Metro Chapter), on preparing for the museum visit of a person with autism
Autism: Advice to Museum Staff
Autism: Performing Arts and Music
Aimee Mullens, athlete, fashion icon, actor, advocate, and design innovator speaking at the Project Access New York/Art Beyond Sight symposium at the Museum of Modern Art, May 2, 2013.
