Training on Disability and Inclusion for Museums and Cultural Institutions

This 60-slide presentation is designed for museums, historic sites, art centers, and other cultural institutions. It can be used for staff and educator training as well as self-study.

Visitors with disabilities and their role

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 below (and others on Art Beyond Sight YouTube Channel) for the first person accounts and suggestions from art and museum patrons with disabilities.

This version of the PPT is a DRAFT. More video testimonies of museum visitors with disabilities will be added soon.

Review of the Sighted Guide Technique

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.