It was in 2018 when the Dutch Resistance Museum set a new milestone: bringing an inclusive experience for every visitor.
Introduction
The Dutch Resistance Museum in Amsterdam was founded in 1984, dedicated to opposition to National Socialism and Fascism. Their storytelling aims to educate new and old generations to avoid the repetition of the events of WWII. It was in 2018 when the museum set a new milestone: bringing an inclusive experience for every visitor. With the renewal of their permanent exhibition in 2022, their goal is to be able to offer all visitors the same museum experience.
But how has the process of creating an inclusive visitor experience for blind and deaf visitors, including visitors with hearing and visibility impairment been?
We go back to 2013, when the Dutch Resistance Museum Junior was founded. A few years later however, they knew they needed to upgrade their exhibition and make their tour accessible for children with different hearing and visual impairments, including blind and deaf children.
The first step to start adjusting your audio tour is to consult the needs of the audience you want to include. That is what the Dutch Resistance Museum did with the help of a focus group. They shared their museum experience: What are their difficulties? How could it be improved?
The focus group and volunteers started testing the adjustments to the tour, including the Podcatcher, our audio guide player with special tactile stickers to the buttons. This way visitors can feel and press the play/pause and volume settings. Next, the museum designed a route for blind and visually impaired visitors to follow and included further instructions to guide the visitors within the audio tour content. While visitors with a visual impairment were now having the same experience as other visitors, there was still some work to do for deaf visitors.
Sign language tour & all
in-one platform
The next step was to integrate a sign language tour. With the help of the association Wat Telt!, they recorded the videos for their tour. The museum wants to tell stories to all visitors in the same way and this isn’t possible when visitors are treated differently. With their previous guiding solution for the sign language tour, deaf visitors needed different equipment, so they had a completely different experience than all the other visitors. The deaf visitors didn’t feel integrated.
Here is where the MapMyVisit app steps in. With Guide-ID’s new app it is possible to have all the tour content in one platform. Allowing all visitors to have the same access point to the tour without distinctions, creating a feeling of integration. There was still some work to do, as the sign language tour was in Guide ID’s backlog, but not ready yet. The pressure was on to work with the museum to bring the feature to the new app in time.
‘It is a process where we need to learn from each other. As you are stepping into new worlds, it is wise to ask questions to the right people’.
Sandra ter Mijtelen, Head of Education & Accessibility of the Dutch Resistance Museum
Our Research and Development team started working with Sandra ter Mijtelen, Head of Education & Accessibility of the Dutch Resistance Museum, to build the sign language tour feature in the app and in the Podcatcher Portal. By adding the video functionality to the Podcatcher Portal the sign language tour videos are easy to add to the tour, exactly the same as adding an audio stop in the Online Tour Editor.
Thanks to the volunteers and together with the Dutch Resistance Museum, the sign language tour feature was created. The museum was able to re-use all the videos they already had by simply uploading them to the Online Tour Editor. They were saving extra costs of transitioning to another supplier. While the main objective is inclusion, the implementation has also brought benefits for the Museum’s team. As it is a user-friendly system it eases the workload for the team at the front desk, and the all in one platform allows the team to have all the content in one place: text, audio stops and videos with the sign language tour.
Work in progress
Building inclusive visitor experiences means a long-term commitment to the project. The Dutch Resistance Museum has spent years working with partners, focus groups and volunteers to upgrade their visitor experience to an inclusive museum experience. For them, all the extra efforts are worth it when they see the positive impact it has on the whole community, At Guide-ID we recognize the important role museums have in setting an example of what is possible and what are the next steps to continue including visitors from all backgrounds. We are keeping our commitment to work with our clients and partners to be part of the solution.
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