Making Museums More Accessible: How Do We Overcome Barriers to Content?

To celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Accessibility NYC is presenting a special Meetup on May 16th. By reinventing the museum, how can we ensure that culture and museums reach everyone? In creating new narratives, new pedagogical methods and new emotional propositions, museums are able to invite all visitors, including those with disabilities, to participate. The arts and culture are not experienced solely via sight; they engage all our senses. By multiplying the approaches related to the senses (tactile designs, audio, smells, manipulations, etc.), universal design offers a solution to make exhibitions more accessible while enlarging a museum's audience.

Through inspiring examples of European and Canadian projects, Aurélia Fleury, Director of Tactile Studio will detail the singularity of the sensory and emotional approach as a solution for developing a more accessible and inclusive exhibition.

Presenter Bio:
Aurélia Fleury is an expert in sensory accessibility and ergonomics. She worked for more than 10 years in the fields of culture and museums in Europe, advocating the universal design approach to make exhibitions and programs welcoming for all. She played a key role in the HumanKind Museum in Paris, first as accessibility manager in the renovation project, then as program coordinator for visitors. In 2017, she accepted a new challenge: to implement Tactile Studio, an inclusive design agency in North America. Since then she has been developing projects with national museums to increase the accessibility of their exhibitions (National Gallery of Canada, Canadian Museum of History, Royal Ontario Museum, Canada Agriculture and Food Museum). She also gives academic lectures in various master's programs in museology.

Tactile Studio is an inclusive design agency specializing in pedagogical and multi-sensory approach. Tactile has developed their own in- house digital manufacturing and supply chain – 3D design and modeling, production by digital manufacturing, 3D printing, laser cutting, digital printing and transforming the sensory experience of museums worldwide.