New Foundations: Principles for Disability-Inclusive Museum Practice

Abstract

This paper seeks to provide museum professionals with a practical road map to improving outcomes for people with disabilities in their museums. Written by a museum researcher with autism, this paper weaves museum research with interdisciplinary studies, while prioritizing the voices of people with disabilities, in order to develop clear, well-defined, and customizable steps for making the museum as an organizational unit more welcoming for people with disabilities. It examines several issues within the field, such as the overwhelming childhood focus of museum accessibility programming, the need to include people with disabilities in the process of creating inclusive practices, the importance of focusing on the larger picture as opposed to small issues, creativity in accessibility, and the dangers of performative accessibility and suggestions to avoid it, combining literature on each topic with the author's own knowledge of disability and museum accessibility.

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