ACCESSIBILITY TO CULTURAL HERITAGE: FIVE COMMONPLACES, FIVE STRATEGIES

We'd like to suggest five strategies that, in our opinion, could help us to develop accessible museology for good -including the territory museums, such as cultural parks, routes or itineraries-. The first one is related to the education and the increasing of awareness. Courses for technicians, architects and engineers (like the ones that the Generalitat Valenciana organizes at Universities every year) contributes to the awareness of the new generations of responsibles and designers who, facing a new project, will probably consider a normal thing to look for the greater extent of accessibility.

The second strategy consists in promoting accessible products. Tourist guides, web pages and flyers must help disabled visitors to select their visits. The civil service should create and update these resources.

The third strategy is to give awards to the most accessible museums and cultural places. Spain is a country where there are few awards. It would be very convenient to create awards for the best projects and actions in accessibility. The world of culture, after all, moves very much by imitating or desiring what others have reached or done.

The fourth strategy is to follow principles of 'universal design'. This concept, created in 1985 by the architect Ronald L. Mace (www.design.ncsu.edu/cud/) suggests "to design products and environments in a way that they can be used by most people, with no need to adaptation or specialized design". Its aim is "to simplify everyone's life, making environments, products and communications more useful for more people, with a low or no additional cost". Its principles (a useful design for every user, adapted to abilities, that contains clear information and requires low effort, comfortable, and that allows getting close, reaching, handling and using the device no matter the user's size, position or mobility) are the key to a real accessible cultural product.
In Villajoyosa Municipal Museum every model is touchable, we've reduced from 160 cm ( 63 inches, the usually employed in museography) to 135 cm ( 53 inches ) the average height of the texts (that are always in macro-type), and we've designed a new accessible display model in collaboration with the firm Riobe, S. L. The political will and support have oriented, for years, our efforts to increase the accessibility of municipal museums, such as the Barbera Manor House or the project for the future Town Museum (see www.museusdelavilajoiosa.com ). You don't need to be a huge museum to offer an accessible product; it isn't a question of money.

Finally, it is a question of allowing disables people to get as closer as possible (total accessibility is almost an utopia) to heritage's cultural values the Museum offers, even if they need some help. A good solution is to create physical and intellectual resources for an average time of visit, similar to that of a non-handicapped person (not less than 1 hour). Adapted displays and furniture, touchable models, subtitled audiovisuals, etc. can help us reach this objective. Don't even forget to consult specialists or representatives from every collective and specialized institutions and associations (please see an article of both Diana Guijarro and me at www.interpretaciondelpatrimonio.org, section "documents"). With little effort, using adequate means, we can altogether contribute to the creation of a real accessible museography.

Antonio Espinosa Ruiz
Jefe del Área de Arqueología, Etnografía y Museos del Ayuntamiento de Villajoyosa
www.museusdelavilajoiosa.com

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