In the Indian context, the majority of museums are publicly funded institutions and therefore need to be open to all including people with disabilities.

Museum communication (including education and exhibition) involves the use of senses such as seeing, hearing and touching. In addition, museums utilize supplementary media such as audio-visuals and the service of interpreters to enhance the educational potential of objects.

Many disability conditions are based on the lack/impairment of senses such as vision and hearing. Since many contemporary  museums use multi-sensory communication techniques extensively, they have great potential to become unique educational resources for persons with disabilities.

The term access is wider in its scope and may cover equal opportunities, cultural diversity and social inclusion as well. In the museum accessibility context, these could be further broken into  socio-cultural, economic, attitudinal, physical, sensory, intellectual/mental and linguistic. It has been observed that attitudinal accessibility plays an important role in making a museum accessible to all.

While working for museum access, it is useful to consider the museum visitation

process into three stages (pre-visit, during visit and post-visit stages) as summarised below

No.	Stages	Sub-stages	Factors to be considered
1	Pre-visit	Decision stage	General benefits, information search, evaluation of alternatives, making of choices
		Preparation stage	Human factors, location, transport, price(entry tickets), orientation, opening hours
2	Visit	Physical infrastructure	Museum gate to building, provision of wheelchairs, museum building to collections/ resources
		Information	Braille, audio, video
		Orientation	Facilities
		Attitudinal barriers	Sensitised museum staff
		Comfort facilities	Toilets, drinking water, cafeteria, rest facilities etc.
		Services	Interpretation, guides (braille, audio, video, human), appropriate services and programmes
3	Post-visit	Evaluation	Regular post-visit communication, feedback, mailing list etc

An access audit of a museum may be undertaken for various reasons:

• To identify thrust areas for improvement of museum functioning,
• To collect information needed for funding/ sponsorship,
• To assess the accessibility of museum provisions and services,
• To act as a tool for increasing the social relevance of museums, and
• To fulfil the requirements under Rules and Regulations of the Government.

Once a museum decides to go for an access audit, what are the steps required?

It is advisable to undertake MVS (Museum Visitor Studies) and then MAS (Museum Access Studies).

MVS involves all the studies undertaken to reveal the nature of museum visitation and includes two major subdivisions: visitor evaluation and exhibit evaluation. The thrust areas of MVS include parameters of visitors such as demographics, psychographics, visitor behaviour and learning. It also answers why people visit museums and why some people (including persons with disabilities) do not visit museums. The constraints of non-visitation, as well as visitation/accessibility, will be revealed if museums undertake MVS regularly.

MAS is generally undertaken through access audits (AA). Museum access audit may be defined as ‘auditing of museums, with respect to the access needs of potential visitors for whom the resources are actually meant for’. A team consisting of representatives of the museum, people with disabilities, NGOs working for the welfare of persons with disabilities, and architects may ideally undertake these audits.

A large number of declarations are available on museum accessibility as part of

recommendations of national/ international programmes organised in India. These

include the Declarations at Mysore (2007), Chennai (2008), Bhubaneswar (2011), and

Jaipur (2016). While the former three were initiated by the National Museum of Natural

History (NMNH) New Delhi, the last one was initiated by the Commonwealth

Association of Museums with the Maharaja Sawai Mansingh II Museum Trust Jaipur.

While evaluating the access initiatives of museums in India, the National Museum of Natural History (New Delhi, Mysore, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar and Sawai Madhopur) entered the scene early. It has released the first Museum publication in Braille in India, established the first Garden for persons with disabilities, organised the first All India Museum Conference on Museums and Disability, the first nature camps for children with disabilities and a lot more.

5.1.Touch, Feel and Learn Live Plant Bioresource Centre (TFL Garden),

5.2.Nature Camps for children with disabilities in Bandipura National Park

5.3.Heritage interpretation for persons with visual impairment at the World Heritage

Other than the NMNH, the National Museum Institute (NMI), has launched a few academic projects in museum accessibility. It has incorporated the subject of accessibility into the syllabus of MA Museology and established a National Centre for Museum Visitor and Access Studies (NC-MVAS). The latter has helped the NMI to organise a large number of professional programmes and an exhibition (called ‘Ehsas’) at the National Museum. A few students of MA Museology have taken museum access studies as part of MA dissertations as well.

About the Author

B. Venugopal is the Convenor, India Heritage and Museum Field School Kochi. Formerly, he has been the Director of National Museum of Natural History, New Delhi, the Director of Indian Museum, Kolkata and the Registrar of National Museum Institute Deemed to be University, New Delhi.