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Museums
Under Title III of the ADA regarding public accommodations,
museums (along with movie and play houses, restaurants, etc.) are
required to be accessible to all persons. Additionally, many museums
are funded with tax dollars and further obligated to be accessible.
The Smithsonian Museum of American History
in Washington, D.C. created an exhibit to illustrate the history
of the disability rights movement. The Smithsonian made the exhibit
interactive in order to be accessible to people everywhere. The
exhibit excellently portrays the right to access as a civil right.
See the online version at http://americanhistory.si.edu/disabilityrights/exhibit.html.
Disability History Museum:
http://www.disabilitymuseum.org
Audio Tours for Blind
The Indiana State Museum and the Texas State History Museum
in Austin, Texas both offer specialized audio tours for the blind
and the partially sighted. The audio tours were written specifically
for patrons with vision loss, rather than common audio tours found
in many museums that are geared for sighted visitors.
http://www.thestoryoftexas.com
The audio tours describe the state museum's
permanent exhibits and others. 25 free Acoustiguide listening
devices are available at the museum's ticket counter. Each Acoustiguide
user must be accompanied by a sighted adult who leads the tour listener
to more than 100 marked tour "stops" linked to numbers
on the listening device keyboard. However, the museum does not provide
the sighted companion.
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