Fran Prezant: Ken and Rebecca I’m happy you’re able to join us here today to talk about Museum Access issues for people with disabilities. So maybe we could start with what is or why is museum access an issue and are we just talking about getting in the door and being able to use the restroom. Ken:: Well I think its more than just getting in the door using the restroom and I think a sure answer to your question is that last I checked I think is New York City alone, 1 in 8 people are described as having a disability and we know their all getting older, as well and I think that as time goes by a cultural institutions like so many other businesses in New York City will find that they will need to be able to welcome and to affectively serve people who have all sorts of abilities and all sort of needs for supports, that are pretty diverse and not just of matter of getting through the front door. Rebecca: Yes and as we know the vast majority of people with disabilities have invisible disabilities so although physical access is crucial, many many more people have disabilities such as visual impairments or hearing impairments or developmental or learning disabilities that might not be obvious to staff front of house staff in cultural institutions so we need to be thinking about accessibility in a very holistic way. Fran: So in talking about accessibility beyond the obvious physical access, can you give some examples of access issues faced by museums? Ken: Well for example, a lot of the people that my organization City Access, works with have sensory disabilities like those that Rebecca just talked about. We work with a great many young people who are visually impaired or blind. And when these people go to an Art Museum quite obviously it would be difficult for them to appreciate what’s hung on a wall or the beneath of a train without some additional supports as labeling, large print, Braille or some tactile rerepresentation of the artwork that’s in a frame. Without that there’s not much of a point for these young people as an example to come to the institution where the art is hung. Rebecca: And say for people with hearing loss, assistive listening devices can make all the difference in the world and really, make the difference between making them attend a lecture or gallery or not at all and that’s a very straightforward kind of accommodation that museums and theatres can offer. Also for people who are deaf, having sign language interpretation or even programs in American Sign Language are also vital if where thinking of real inclusiveness and accessibility. Fran: Can you give a few examples of some specific access projects that perhaps different museums have done lately in the area? Rebecca: Let’s see, one of the projects that the Metropolitan Museum has done in the last few years is training deaf people to be museum educators and this is a fairly unusual project. There are other museums that have done this, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston also has deaf people who act as guides and teach an American Sign Language. And some of the educators that now work for the MET as a result of the training program, that they followed a few years ago, are now teaching in other museums in New York City as well. And I know that having a deaf person giving a tour in American Sign Language, is a huge draw to audiences who are deaf who have ASL as their first language. After all anyone would prefer to have a tour or a lecture in their own language rather than having an interpretator, it’s much more direct and American Sign Language to boot is such a wonderful language to communicate about visual art. It’s a visual language and there’s this great affinity that I think with the visual art so its also a very beautiful blending. Fran: So that’s great, that’s going beyond talking about issues that the visitor with disabilities faces, you’re talking about having people with disabilities actually lead the groups and attracting new audiences or audiences that might not be comfortable in situations. Rebecca: Yes, it’s both really. I think that the institution should reflect its audience in terms of what we’re saying and whose saying it and including people with disabilities as staff members, is part of that. It also raises awareness inside the institution of accessibility issues and raises that level of comfort and just general awareness. And then it also speaks to the audience, the potential audience, you know it shows that we’re committed to including people with disabilities. We don’t think of people with disabilities as other and it’s been very affective in all of the institutions I know of that have instigated this kind of work. Ken: I’d throw another collateral benefit of thinking about access in an institution. I’ll give you an example, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, for example put into place some years ago, a distance learning component, the tenement itself where the museum is housed, is inaccessible and its going to remain that way, because of the very essence of being in this tenement is that your not going to get into it if your using a wheelchair. So how’s a student whose wide and tall, who has mobility impairment or uses a wheelchair take part in the program, up to them it was only available within the tenement. Well, you can devise other ways of delivering the same content by using today’s technology, the Web and you can broadcast that technology out into the field where these people are and as a result we were able as an example to do a module with a couple of classes in Queens who were not going to be able to travel into lower Manhattan to this museum and they weren’t going to be able to get into the museum in any case, were they able to travel, and the museum was able to conduct it’s workshop via the Internet. Before the workshops took place, their educators came out to meet the kids and to prep the kids for what their about to participate in and that was beneficial as well. So it wasn’t just using the technology, there was still the human interaction. It was a marvelous example of an institution coming out of itself coming into the field where the people who would benefit are and to work with people that might otherwise not be able to benefit. I would also say that anyone else can take part in this distance learning and there’s some of that collateral benefit. I think its an instance in a way of an offshoot of universal design and what was good for these kids who were not going to be able to get in turns out to be good for anyone else who can’t make it to the museum and who would like to participate in the content by the Internet in this case. Fran: And that’s a great example. And I’m very familiar with the Lower East Side Tenement Museum because our affiliated program the Henry Viscardi School, is a school for children with severe physical and medical disabilities and we participated in that, in fact, the Henry Viscardi School may have been the first school that they did that with and I thought that it was a very creative for a museum that is physically inaccessible because of its historic nature can circumvent that and actually make themselves accessible. It was a wonderful experience for our students and it was two way interactive, so there was conversation back and forth between the docent who was on the screen and the students who were here in the Smeal Center, in fact that was great. Can you talk a little bit about things like touch tours? I know you have a special interest and expertise, Rebecca, in visual impairments and what goes on at the MET in terms of touch tours or tactile information. Rebecca: Well we have touch tours in the galleries of original works of art that are on display. There is one for example in Ancient Egyptian galleries that can be done as a guided tour with an educator by appointment or it can be done as a self-guided tour. And we also have other touch tours in the museum. We have a touch collection, as well, it’s a collection of about 130 or so accession museum objects that are part of the museums permanent collection but there small enough go they can be put on a table top so they can be handled for a workshop for example. And we use that with various audiences not as a replacement for looking but the way I see it is that we’re really teaching through touch and teaching people to appreciate works or art, the tactile nature of a work of art an object, we’ve talked to curators and conservators and brought them in to talk to audiences with and without visual impairments and they emphasize the importance of touch in their work. You wouldn’t authenticate a piece of furniture say without touching it first without knowing what it feels like, its weight, its volume, its surface and conservators of course, have to touch objects and understand them in that very physical way in order to do their jobs. And that’s something that I think museums, art museums have gotten away from. We think of one of the first rules of museum going is to not touch anything and we put things in behind glass and it separates us from the very physicality of the objects many of which were made to be touched to be interacted with in a much more physical way than is usually allowed in a museum. We also use handling materials very regularly, artist’s materials, pieces of marble and granite canvas that’s stretched on a stretcher just to explain what oil on canvas means to anyone who hasn’t made a painting himself and that aspect of a tour can help people to understand how an object is actually created. So touch can really tells us a lot of new things about a work of art that looking at it can’t in fact. So we incorporate a lot of multi-sensory elements into all sorts of different tours and classroom experiences. Fran: It’s funny that I’d never really thought about that until I watched a visitor who was blind touching a sculptor and began thinking about the sculptor who created this as a tactile experience but most visitors view it visually and don’t get to touch it as you said. So I had to watch someone who had to touch it to appreciate it to understand that concept. Can you talk a little bit about tactile images? Rebecca: Yes, tactile images, tactile graphics, tactile pictures as its sometimes called are made in a number of different ways but there usually basically a kind of schematic representation, raised lines and drawings sometimes with other kinds of relief textures to distinguish different areas of the drawing and I see them really as a map of a tactile picture of a painting the information that you convey there is really spacial you can give someone information about the composition of a painting that’s understandable where things are in relation to one another and then through description you can help the person to build up a mental image of the work of art and mental representation so much of which is spacial just as a picture is worth a thousand words, tactile graphic is maybe not worth a thousand words but it’s kind of a short cut in description to kind of helping people understand a composition, just of overall scheme that’s being represented. Fran: Is there a special person, who’s in charge of this at most museums? Ken: Well there is a special person in some museums, but not all museums. You can probably imagine that the larger museums have larger revenues and they would be able to afford someone called an Access Specialist or Access Coordinator, certainly the MET and MOMA come to mind, perhaps others here in the city have met MOMA leaders in this regard, no doubt. And these people have it as their part time or full time charge think about these issues and create ways to welcome audiences who need different sorts of supports much like we’ve been discussing over the past few minutes, but it’s by no means ubiquitous most museums don’t have that sort of revenue base and most will not able to afford that so it might be a sign to others in the museum as a secondary set of responsibilities and to be frank there are still some museums even here in New York City that don’t think much about it at all and there if you don’t have that sort of commitment at the leadership level or the board level your probably not going to get that sort of activity at the staff level. Rebecca: It’s a requirement of the Disabilities Act to have someone who is responsible but it may not be a very active responsibility. Ken: Well yes, that’s right, years ago, two years ago and before that three years ago, five years ago, with the Museum Access Consortium and the National Center for Disability Services, now Abilities! put out a survey. The survey was of cultural institutions throughout the city and the questions were many and among them, were questions just like these, do you have an Access Coordinator Specialist and if so how many hours per week does that person commit to these duties. What do you see as barriers to getting that position up or created full time at your institution? We found if memory serves, that most do not and that those who have these duties in cultural institutions find that while it’s much needed it’s also a secondary set of responsibilities by in large. Fran: So then what happens at these museums and then how do potential visitors with disabilities or their family members find out what a museum has to offer to them? Rebecca: Well then I guess just following up a little bit from what Ken was saying, it is a case that if there is anyone who is given this specific remit of accessibility it isn’t usually all of their jobs, MET, MOMA and other places are exceptions to that, but also I found that in most cases when there is someone it’s the new person, the person with less experience whose kind of given this responsibility among many others and that person often tends to you know do a wonderful job but then moves onto something else and I think that, that creates a lack of continuity. Since I’ve been at the Metropolitan, I’ve gotten to know the other people in charge of accessibility in other museums in the city. I’ve seen so much change over in many museums, I think one museum I could think of had eight different people responsible for accessibility in the last nine or ten years and that means that the institution doesn’t have that continuity, if the institution doesn’t have that kind of built in commitment and understand and really deep knowledge then how can the visitors ever hope to learn what the museum can offer. When often the museum itself hasn’t had to follow on, the longevity of commitment. Fran: So if I was an individual who had a hearing loss or had a family member with a hearing loss and wanted to go to a museum. Ken: Well you might go to the museums website. There are compilations more or less out of date that are available for example hospital audiences incorporated, I think eight years ago ten years ago did a survey itself on cultural institutions in New York City, now that survey is eight to ten years old. And it’s very difficult to know thanks to reasons Rebecca just articulated how much is that accurate anymore. It’s a very difficult thing to keep that sort of database up and current, but I think your point of entry now a days if you have access to a computer would be to go to the institutions website and there your going to get your first clue if you have access issues regarding using the website that might tip you off to as there cognoscente of these issues at home base, so that when you go to the museum itself, you might also encounter this sort of thoughtful supports that you encounter on the website or alternately you might find further barriers to participations such as you encounter on the website, so that’s your first tip, I think and also you will be able to probably pull down a menu that would have to do with access for programming at the cultural institution and find out what it is that they specifically that they offer, if any, that’s the good first step. Fran: And then if I visited a museum and found that I had suggestions that would help make the museum more accessible to my friends or family members with disabilities is there a specific point of contact or method that a visitor would use to let the museum know that? Rebecca: Well different museums have different systems of getting feedback and comments I think most museums have some kind of comments form that available from the information desk and I would certainly encourage people to give feedback to let the museum know whether you’ve had a frustrating experience or good experience, bad experience whether you could find everything that you needed, I think getting that feedback is crucial that we need to hear from our audiences specifics on what they’ve experienced when they come to the museum and I’m sure that all museums will appreciate that. It provides evidence for the need. Museums should know that with 54 and half nearly people with disabilities in the US, what is that nearly 1 in 5 there are a lot of potential audience members there but they don’t always realize that and we can remind them by offering regular feedback. Fran: Why is this such an issue now, doesn’t it seem that 25 or 35 years ago that it was an issue that you heard about a lot? Ken: Well I think we should take our hats off to the advocates within the community to begin with who made themselves heard and felt that they wanted what everyone else wanted which is to make use of community resources that enrich their lives, which it’s been a struggle and as a result of that I think first of all businesses and other entities had to respond and they knew that if they didn’t they would first missing market share if you want to think of it that way, secondarily and later on they were not in compliance with the law. And these people who want to use the resource they still keep coming and still make themselves felt and heard; I think that’s a large part of it, the change. Rebecca: Yes, I think that’s right we have a stronger sense of social responsibility and of course now that the population is aging its kind of helping to remind cultural institutions that accessibility is needs to be essential core part of the visitor experience. Also, the Americans with Disabilities Act which has been around a while now, it’s passed in 1991, but it has been a long road to making this, this largest minority of people with disabilities, it’s the largest group of unrepresented audience in the country you know making that voice heard. Ken: Also, I think it takes us back to what we began talking about and a colleague of mine years ago once said disability of ability is really a spectrum and we’re all on it someplace on it and not a place it’s not static we’re changing and so while eyesight might worsen, or you may have an accident and may no longer be able to mount those stairs. All of those are progressing toward an increasing state of disability or less ability. I think as that becomes more evident to more of us, I think it’s reflected in the institution where as maybe a board member, certainly our consumers and I think that also has an impact over time. Rebecca: The personal connection with disability is very powerful. Fran: Great point, and you mentioned the ADA before in compliance with the ADA, but one of the other things the ADA did, the Americans Disability Act, is it made transportation in New York for instance, more accessible, so more people who would have not been able to physically get to a museum 25 years ago because they couldn’t get on a bus or a train and now show up at the door. Ken: Fran if I may, chip in one more point that occurred to me. How does the institution how does it come to there attention that they may not be providing accessible services or they need to do more? There’s another way that I’m aware of because City Access is not a cultural institutions that were not for profit that works with people with disabilities, so we’re users of the resources and what we try to do as often as we can maximize community participation for inclusion and to make long term partnerships with these community resources, cultural institutions in this case. Why is that? Because we have found there is not doubt in our minds that the longer we engage with the institution the staff that would be there the turn over could be high the longer we engage with them the greater the familiarity obviously, the greater their comfort levels, their expertise, their capacity to effectively welcome students for example with developmental disabilities, with autism, or other developmental disabilities increases and that means that it’s a win win situation. Their better at the resource side and our participants are better served. So I think that’s yet another way the cultural institutions particularly in New York City come to learn about what it is that they can improve at and that’s through partnerships with other providers that work with people with disabilities. Partnerships not just programs for a day but maybe seeking again providers that do programs that last a month or a year or more. As we do for example with the Tenement Museum as discussed or The New York Aquarium, another sort of cultural institution that we have been doing programs for years with our education department. Fran: So now that you actually mentioned, I was going to ask you about the MAC but as long as you mentioned City Access New York that you direct, could you tell us a little bit about what City Access New York does, what’s the mission? Ken: Well the mission is to increase inclusion for people with disabilities sensory and developmental by and large, it was founded in 2005, we’ve just turned four and I think we’re doing quite well in this regard. As I’ve said already, as often as we can we like to form partnerships with community resources and the idea is that we’re helping to build capacity on the community side, but we’re also bringing more the people in our program out in the community where they are successfully supportive in ways they promote inclusion. Real inclusion not just same room same time which I think is not the same thing at all and so whenever we can through these long term partnerships and community resources we are able to I guess get to that point where we can get to real inclusion having people with and without disabilities participating and getting together. Teaching each other and consuming the resources there together. Fran: And then part of what you do is related to is that you are the co-chair of the steering committee of the Museum Access Consortium which is why you’re both here today because you’re co-chairs of this steering committee, so can you tell us a little bit about that and how that intersects and what is the Museum Access Consortium? Ken: The Museum Access Consortium is a group of volunteers ten years old at least it’s had a couple of incarnations in the last decade or so. About this latest incarnation came about in 2000-2001 and it is a group of people stakeholders in New York City they could be people with disabilities, advocates, providers on the museum side, or a disability services provider like City Access New York who have a common belief that by increasing access at cultural institutions for people with disabilities you’re actually increasing improving services for every visitor at that institution. And what we do Rebecca can tell you more about this is to provide amongst other things professional development workshops to people at these institutions and other interested parties to help them learn about efforts for access that they might employee at their own institutions. That’s part of what MAC does and I’ll come back to that describing how it interacts with City Access. Rebecca: Well yes, I think the professional development side of which MAC has been doing is so important, I get so many inquiries from other museums from students who are doing degrees in art education or museum education ore museum administration, museum studies about how to develop their expertise and how to learn about how to do it. And there really aren’t that many options, there really isn’t a degree, you can’t go to school to become an access coordinator in a museum of in any other cultural institution specifically, so finding opportunities to really learn about it in a formal setting is difficult and MAC has been attempting to fill that gap a little bit by offering gatherings focusing on different aspects of accessibility. We tried to take a creative approach to really encourage as much participation as possible. The last event that we offered was an afternoon focusing on for people with autism in museums. The panel included experts in the area of autism and introduce the audience to what autism is but also museum educators developed programming for people with autism, parents of people with autism. have talked about their experiences as parents coming to a museum and generally in their roles as advocates and we also did a panel last year on parents of people with a range of different disabilities and I think that was a special event because it gave museum staff to hear directly from this specific audience family program, audience to learn about what the parents experience are really like not after a program where a parent is likely to say, “that is fantastic, thank you so much” and not really give you the critical feedback you need but really in a more separated kind of setting where you could really say, analyze the visit and say that this is what we need this is what works, this is what doesn’t work and also we had a range of different experiences there are four or five different parents on the panel talking about their differences diverse experiences. So these professional development sessions are all free of charge, as is the MAC membership, and are open to anyone that wants to come. They take place in the city at various different venues and as I say, it’s a rare opportunity that we hope people would take full advantage of. Fran: So it sounds like the Museum Access Consortium is creating the wonderful forum, not only for museum professionals to come together to discuss issues and brainstorm and share what they are doing in their respective museums but also a place that stakeholders like families are able to come and meet with museum professionals and share their feedback both positive and negative about their own experiences in terms of to bring family members to museums. And we know that when people with disabilities come to museums they, they don’t come by themselves, they bring their sisters and brothers and parents and partners and friends and so that’s important to consider as well. Ken: There’s a very natural fit between the mission of the Museum Access Consortium and City Access New York on the parents panel I think it illustrates that pretty well Fran in that hear we had parents whose children may very well participate in City Access New York’s programs and the subject of suitable access both for my program participants and their kids is one in the same very often. I was also interested at that panel to see them talk about no just programmatic access but ask, whole heartedly ask museums who are representing the audience to think about volunteer situations, apprenticeships situations, even possibly supported employment situations that could take place at these cultural institutions and it was a different take on this question of what is access all about and could also be access to some form of volunteer situation or employment and these other forms of access can take place at cultural institutions and I think that’s one more piece of information for interest for the Museum Access Consortium and for City Access New York as well which does supportive employment services for young adults who are aging out of the Department of Education. Fran: So again, these ideas and suggestion came from parents and kind of maybe challenged the way museums had been thinking about access in terms of visitors only and stimulated new ideas about what access could really mean and expanded form of it. Ken: That’s right. I should say that the Museum Access Consortium is about 160 members big. I think that Rebecca has said there is no membership fee; we’re really going on the commitment and donation of time and expertise of the membership. It has a steering committee of about 13 people both in the membership and the steering committee there are people with disabilities, people who are disabilities advocates, service providers at the cultural institution levels and others like City Access New York. So it’s a very wide representation, anyone who has a stake in improving access can have there voice heard at MAC and can volunteer their time at the steering committee, so their welcome to join us. Fran: Is the membership primarily from New York City? Ken: It is, there are some members that fall outside of New York I think we have someone from New Jersey, Connecticut, primarily it’s for New York City. Rebecca: But people from further field can participate to the Museum Consortium yahoo group. It’s an email list that serves a wider audience. Fran: and is this a non-for-profit organization, the MAC? Ken: It’s not it’s a volunteer organization that has a charter, and it has sets by-laws but it is not seeking 501 c3 status. It does not have a fiscal sponsor either it works primarily these days in partnership to City Access New York, which is a 501 c3 not for profit but not in here New York City as we discussed. Fran: Do you know of other groups like this, like the Museum Access Consortium? Rebecca: There have been other organizations in other cities, but they seem to come and go. There was an organization called the Museums and Galleries Disability Association MGDA in the UK for many many years, I think about 25 years which was very very active but is no longer working. Ken: And there was a group, I may get the name wrong I think it was something like Network for Access or Access Network for Museums that was in Boston back in the mid 90’s. I don’t believe it’s still with us either. So while we don’t want to say for sure that we’re unique, it’s possible. Fran: I know you’ve talked a little about City Access New York and Rebecca can you tell us a little bit about your specific role at the MET? Rebecca: Sure Access Coordination which I oversee is a part of the education department at the Metropolitan Museum and we’re a department of three plus a lot of contractual educators, we actually wear three hats we’re based in education we work throughout the museum and one of the things we do is to develop programming that specifically meets the needs of people with various disabilities, things like the touch tours. We also coordinate accommodations such as sign language interpretation and large print labels captioning of lectures, that kind of thing across the museum so there are accommodations to any program or service that the museum could offer so not necessarily initiated by access and then the third hat we wear is as internal advisors to accessibility to different parts of the museum to design to visitor services to security and we do a lot of awareness training internally that kind of thing so we’re really have our say in many different areas of the museum. Fran: And Ken is there additional information on City Access New York that you would like to provide. Ken: Well people who want to learn more about City Access New York or about the museum access consortium can first of all go to the website and that would be www.cityaccessny.org and there’s a tab up at the top of the website that says MAC, just click on it and there you’ll find the mission, the latest in workshops that are being offered here in New York City and there’s an option to sign-up and be a member for MAC so please visit the website and that’s a good place to begin. Fran: And MAC just did receive an award? Ken: Right the Museum Access Consortium was recently recognized by the New York City Mayor’s Office of People with Disabilities for its work to promote access in cultural institutions and I believe the award was placed on the 18th anniversary of the passing of the American Disabilities Act took place last August 2008 and we’re very pleased about that and we hope the Mayor’s Office of People with Disabilities will continue looking in on us and supportive backs effort.. Fran: I hope so to. If people wanted to contact either one of you, individually should they use the county website? Ken: There’s also an email which I’m happy to share kstruve@cityaccessny.org. Fran: and Rebecca Rebecca: I can be reached access@metmuseum.org Fran: Wonderful, I’d like to thank you both for being here today. Ken: My name is Ken Struve, I’m Executive Director of City Access New York. Rebecca: I’m Rebecca McGinnis, Access Coordinator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.