Unknown Speaker 22:18 Good morning and welcome to the beginning of day three, the final day of the Ohio local history Alliance, annual meeting. This is your first presentation of the day and accessibility toolkit A Guide to Implementing inclusive practices. At this stage, you're probably all super familiar with my tech slide but I'll go through it briefly anyway. We are recording this event recordings will be available to registrants on the Alliance's website. I will email a link to that shortly after the conference, please go ahead and ask questions using the q&a box you can type those at any point during the presentation and we will pause to take them as it makes sense. Please go ahead and use the chat to talk with each other to share comments or resources, make sure that everyone is selected, so that other attendees can see what you are saying also use the chat to get in touch with, with me for tech support. By selecting hosts and host and panelists. The most common way to solve a technical problem is to log out of the webinar and log back in, however, closed captioning is available. By going to the and you can turn on subtitles by going to the CC button at the bottom of your screen and choosing the the option to show subtitles. At this point I'm going to turn it over to our moderator, John Swearengen. To get us started. Unknown Speaker 23:45 Hello everyone, welcome. My name is John swearin Jr, and I'm the director of the Museum of Fulton County, weigh up the very top of the state, and I'm also the one of the two, Ohio local history Alliance board members for Region One which is the upper north west corner of the state. And I also worked at Greenville village years ago when Ada first was invented so I have dealt with some of these issues, and our presenters today are, are in the field dealing with these issues at the Ohio History Connection site in Columbus. So, how accessible is your site. Do you want to start to get better at welcoming people of all abilities from ADA to best practices becoming accessible to everyone can be overwhelming and difficult. Today we will learn from the Ohio History Connection and Ohio village, and how they began a project to give guidance and direction to the staff to an accessibility toolkit. And what it includes. So Andrew, our presenter, Andrew Hall is a senior experienced developer for Ohio village campus experience department at the Ohio History Connection, he joined the connection team in 2015 as a program coordinator, developing educational public programs for both the Ohio History Center and Ohio village. He now serves as the senior experienced developer of Ohio village and is primarily responsible for developing the site's daily experiences, and for managing the interpretive team. He received his bachelor of arts and history from Bowling Green State University in 2013 and his Masters of Arts in early American history, from Miami University 2015 along with bringing history to life through special events, Andrew served as a project lead for the History Center's World War One Centennial display, and currently serves as the chair of the site's accessibility committee. Now Chloe is an emerging professional with experience in museums, historic sites, and libraries. She received her Bachelor's of art and history with a concentration in public history from Messiah University in 2020 that fall she began a year of service through AmeriCorps, with the Ohio History Service Corps and the Ohio History Connection and Ohio village. She now works as an information assistant for Southwest, public libraries, serving the public and caring for the library's local history connection. So we have quite a, quite a background for these two folks, and we will now let Andrew start his presentation so hope everyone enjoys and read don't forget to ask questions in the q&a section. Unknown Speaker 26:41 All right, thank you, John, for that wonderful introduction. And hello everybody, thank you so much for joining us this morning. Happy to be here working with all of you on accessibility. To get started, again my name is Andrew, I am currently working from my home office so my background is a dark green room, wooden door I am wearing a red and blue check shirt with floral print glasses, dark brown hair and a dark brown beard. For those of you who may not be able to see. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen, and I'm going to run us through a basic introduction of accessibility, where to get started, things like that. And then I will hand things off to my partner in crime Chloe, and she will actually be running us through a draft of a toolkit that we've worked on over the past year Unknown Speaker 27:51 already. So, for starters, I'd like to ask you a question for those of you in the chat. What does accessibility mean to you. So what's the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the term accessibility. I'll give folks a couple of minutes, You know about 30 seconds or so to type in to the chat with whatever thoughts they may have. Unknown Speaker 28:31 So we've got the ability to take part in your services, making sure no one is unable to participate. That's great. Does anybody else have any thoughts on being able to enter and use the building and materials comfortably. Certainly, certainly give it just another couple seconds, if anybody else has something that they would like to share. Unknown Speaker 29:11 The ability to access and benefit from institution, alright. So it sounds like we all have a pretty similar idea of what we're thinking of when we consider accessibility. So, something that's important to think about is it accessibility has a lot of different meanings and a lot of different definitions. So, a kind of a broad reaching definition of accessibility. Is that accessibility is the ability to access, which we kind of already touched on, and the ability for someone to benefit from a system or an entity or an institution. So it's focused on enabling access for people with disabilities. Through the use of assistive assistive technology, structural improvements or things of that nature. However, accessibility is, at its core, intended to benefit everyone. And I think that's the one thing that we all want to make sure we keep in mind when we're thinking about accessibility, because, especially when you get into the weeds of working with the really fine details of how to make something accessible. We often get caught up on the idea of how many people is this really going to help how many times do we really see someone with a disability coming through this particular space or viewing this particular exhibit, but it's important to remember that accessibility is beneficial to everyone, which I'll have a few examples to share here in a little bit. So, the concept of accessibility versus ADA accessibility is also very important to note. So, ADA accessibility or essentially ADA compliance means that you're complying with the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 and its subsequent additions, which is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability and also enforces that all publicly accessible buildings are required to make accommodations within a reasonable amount for people with disabilities. Now there are a lot of really specific aspects to the ADA, that we're not going to get into here, there are a lot of really great resources online that you can start reading into about where ADA compliance begins and ends. But the main focus of ADA compliance is on the essential essentially legal requirement to make your space accessible. Physically speaking, the right now we're actually seeing a bit of a, an ad a renaissance, with the internet in making websites accessible as well so that's an interesting new frontier in that respect. But the concept of accessibility takes that ADA compliance and takes it another step further, which Chloe will talk a lot about that as she goes through the ideas around the toolkit. But the idea with accessibility, being, how can we go above and beyond to make all of our content as accessible as possible. So that leads us into why bother even making your space accessible in the first place. So, the more accessible your space is, the more people will be able to enjoy it. So, just because you're adding a ramp or adding captions to your videos, yes, that does make your content and your faces more accessible to a small portion of the population who may visit your site that are disabled, but it'll also help your typical visitors as well. On top of that, you might also be able to show the disabled communities that you are a site that is accessible, building your audience, even more so from there. Unknown Speaker 33:47 So my last comment I accidentally clicked on to the next slide, where do you start, which leads actually perfectly well into the images I have here. This is not where to start. I am certain that some of you have seen, what are considered accessibility fails on the internet. These are just a few examples from museums and cultural institutions, out of respect for those institutions I decided not to post where they were from. But this is what accessibility attempts look like without proper guidance guidelines and practice. You know, the the ADA requires that you have ramps and lifts and other means of access for people. But when, when you don't take the time to find proper guidance on how to implement those things, you sometimes end up with problems like the ones you're seeing here. I can start off both certainly with that ramp on the far left. Not only does the ramp not actually connect to the place that it needs to connect to. But that also looks a little bit more like a roller coaster, than it does, like an actual accessible ramp. Again the ADA actually has very specific guidelines on how steep your ramps can be. So, you can find information on that actually pretty easily, You have to know what you're looking for. And of course, having an accessible ramp or a lift is all well and good, but you have to make sure that there aren't steps leading up to that ramp because that defeats the purpose. Well I did admittedly put some of these images in partly out of a spirit of liberty. It is important to look at some of these examples and recognize what we want to make sure we're not doing. And I'm certain that nobody here has something like this at their site. But are there other things where you've tried to make somewhere accessible, but there's something more, you could do a really great example from the history center that we learned, based off of experience was in our older building. We have restrooms on the front. The first floor of the museum. And the way that the restrooms were originally designed was that there was almost an airlock heading into the restroom, so you had the exterior door. You had a short corridor, and then an interior door, and then that would lead into the restroom itself. We learned from experience when a visitor got in a wheelchair got trapped in that space, that there was not enough room for a person in a wheelchair to maneuver to turn around and it was very difficult for those people to open the door. Even though there were accessible restrooms in that space. They were not as accessible as we could have made them. So, good things to keep in mind. So as promised, I have a couple of examples that I wanted to share with you have accessibility in museums. Now, these are museums that take their accessibility initiatives, above and beyond what is required by the ADA. And of course we're not expecting everybody to be able to jump to this level. Immediately, but close toolkit will give you some of the questions and the tools to get towards what these folks are doing. So my first example on the top left is a very simple one. It's from the British Museum, and it just has pasted on the glass barriers, near staircases, how many steps there are on a staircase. Some people with mobility issues, or low vision capabilities, sometimes do watch stairs, if they can or they will count stairs if they can to make sure they don't trip and fall, so being able to list the number of stairs, that are coming, is a help. Down on the bottom left, we have a sensory safe room from the Children's Museum of Cleveland, which I personally think is a wonderful addition. Unknown Speaker 38:40 So they worked with a local Autism Spectrum awareness group to develop this space. It was intended to be a sensory safe space for visitors with developmental disabilities, but it is open to any visitor who needs it. So the idea being, it's a quiet dark space with comfy chairs fidget toys, and just is a way for you to step away from what could be a loud and raucous crowd and decompress, pull yourself back together, and then head back outside. At the history center we're actually hoping to be working on a similar style of room sometime in the next year or so, the picture in the top right is from a museum in Spain the museum Museo del Prado, where I'm sure there are some of you out there who are thinking, what are they doing letting that man touch the artwork. At least that was my first impression when I very first saw it, but what this is is it's a 3d printed recreation of a piece of art. The 3d printer actually mimicked the brushstroke styles that work on all the various different parts of the painting and give it texture. And it's specifically designed for visitors with visual impairments, to be able to feel the paintings. It was an attempt to give an entire section of their community access to art that they otherwise would not have been able to interact with. On the bottom right is a an accessible sensory map from the National Museum of Computing and it is very similar to what you might consider a basic museum map, except it has specific areas identified for people who may have accessible issues. So there's a space that has notifications of it being a low light area, or an area that has flashing lights and clicking sounds, things like that. Again, even for a person who is not disabled. This map might be helpful. I personally don't have problems with things like flashing lights or low light, but I'm not a huge fan of really loud really busy spaces, especially indoors. So this map would be helpful to me to know where to be cautious of. In essence. So, again, I want to reiterate that we're not. We are of course not insisting that you all jump straight to this level of accessibility. But this is the type of accessible behavior that is really becoming the kind of forefront of Museum, Museum accessibility, this is where the field is moving to moving beyond the bare minimum, and pushing to give guests, the best possible experience. But of course, we all have to start somewhere. And sometimes it's important to start. Oftentimes I should say, it's important to start small. At Ohio village and the Ohio History Center, we were forced to start small. Our accessibility committee formed roughly a decade ago, and formed in response to a visitor complaint about access to our red carpet space, which is a slightly elevated area on the first floor of our museum. It has four steps leading up to it. And there was a program happening on that space, and it's a couple of visitors, did not have access to that space because they were in wheelchairs, and they were not at the time, offered any alternative on how to access that space. Unknown Speaker 43:17 So, to make a long story short there, they, their complaint to us, helped form an accessible Accessibility Committee, which at the time and for about the first six to seven years was primarily focused on tackling ADA compliance issues throughout our campus. Over the years, we have built that committee based off of interested staff members like myself, folks who have a vested interest in improving the experience of visitors making sure things are accessible. And we're starting to move into a space where we've hit most of the ADA accessibility aspects that we can now we're trying to move ahead to, what can we do to improve the day to day experience. And as a part of that, we partnered with AmeriCorps. Last year, to create a document that anybody could use coming into an event, an exhibit a building project, something that would act as an introduction to accessibility both ADA compliance and broad accessibility as well. To make it easier to understand, to make it less intense and kind of scary looking. And that developed into the accessibility toolkit that I've been referencing. So at this point, I am happy to pass things off over to my co host Chloe, who will be discussing the accessibility toolkit. Unknown Speaker 45:07 Thank you Andrew. Hi everyone my name is Chloe, I am a white female with short brown hair and wearing glasses, red button up shirt. I have a fabric background behind me, that says let's be adventurers, and a lamp in my background as well. This is just an example of, as Andrew said, making videos successful people who might not see what is on their screen. And so this is just a way to acknowledge that they are good, their presentation, could be at your presentation and saying, Hey, I acknowledge you're here, let me help you by just explaining how I look right now. So, developing the toolkit. I jumped into this with little to no experience in accessibility. And the reason for this toolkit is really to show that if you want to bring accessibility services into your museum, oftentimes you have to spend hours and hours and hours looking at all of the opinions, ideas and options you have moment on as Andrew showed you, you can do things like a sensory map. You can do things like showing how many steps you have. But what's best for you, typically takes a lot of time. And so this toolkit is kind of compiling all of the outside resources into a spot that you can then decide for yourself what is best for you, your events your program, your institution, your space. So here I have three rectangles on the top left, it's the Metro regional arts council, just out of the Twin Cities in Minnesota. They have a DIY ADA access planner. And that really is good for organizational planning. So that's, you know when your whole institution is committed to accessibility, you have a good understanding of the ADA, and you're trying to follow the legal letters, whether that's building or ramp, putting together budgets. That's what this is really good for the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian art, which is for your art gallery. A. Sackler art gallery. Together, they also have an accessibility Toolkit, which has some good resources, but it also has a lot of forms in there that really help you with budget stuff. So this is their toolkit is really good if you have a high level of resources. So whether that's a large budget, a large institution. And a lot of time to dedicate. So then on this bottom rectangle here is the Ohio History Connection and village, and our toolkit is hoping to emerge with these other toolkits, but be different, where it can be entry level, and it can be adaptable. So whether. So whether or not you have your whole institution behind you, If you were the only one hosting an event, you can use it just for you. But if your institution would like to commit to accessibility in a hole. You can also use the toolkit with your institution. Next slide. So, developing the toolkits, how did we do it. So, we looked at what other museums were doing, what other historic sites were doing, who were leaders in making their space accessible. Another word for inclusion, may be universal design. And so I looked at kind of what was out there, but then also looked at all of the outside opinions from different communities with disabilities, whether it was the deaf community, whether that was community of people who were low vision or blind, and people with autism, and putting together a table of contents to kind of put our focus together. So we started off with definitions. Now we went into accommodations. So, accommodations, being. Unknown Speaker 49:56 Hey, your museum can't provide a sign language interpreter, every single event, because you don't know if it's even needed. Well, you can put an accommodation in place where you have assisted listening devices for when people who are deaf come, or you can have a dedicated email to offer accommodations when needed. If it's, there's not enough a need to put it in place right away permanently. The worksheets, is really what makes her toolkit, unique, I guess, and helps put the person planning on track of what that entails. So one worksheet is to address physical spaces. And it comes with an example and then a blank copy, and then it also has a worksheet that addresses like programming and events. So more of the side of the physical spaces it's instant looking at including people and allowing them to access the information side of things, or the participation side of things. And that also comes with its own example sheet of how to use it, and a blank copy. And we'll get into that more later. But then these miscellaneous additions are is kind of just pulling what is out there and putting it in one spot. So if you're hosting a webinar, for example, you don't have to spend three hours trying to see what is recommended. What are some ideas, you can come to this one spot and see tips for hosting a webinar and making it accessible. If you're interested in putting together a social story, social stories are often told through a perspective of someone who is nervous coming to the exam. Exam. Those are nervous to coming to the museum, it's typically told through someone who has maybe anxiety or has social anxiety. Difficulties being in high, high traffic areas, and it's so it's very simple, so we can have a picture of your welcome center and say, Hi, welcome to be Ohio History Connection. Here is our Welcome Center at this desk, you can either get tickets, or you can tell them your name, and they will find the tickets that you already ordered and it walks you through the steps of the museum. So, you know what to expect. A lot of families who have kids, or family members who have either autism or some type of spectrum disorder like this to know exactly what to prepare for, like Andrew said, some people don't like it when a museum is very busy, has flashing lights clicking noises. And so, families like to know this in advance so they can see is my kid having a bad day or a good day, as we would like to come to the museum. On a good day so it will take more energy to participate in. So this social story kind of breaks that up. Sensory map. Andrew did show an example of that, that's a map of your museum but showing here is a place that you can rest that's low traffic. Here's a place that has smells, and it can, you know, some people get headaches, easy if they smell different fragrances so it's like, hey this room, often has a strong smell. Maybe you have old fabrics in there, something like that. So, those two components the social story and the sensory map are kind of extra steps. So, it's one of those things that you There's nothing that says you have to do this, but some people would like to do it. And so this miscellaneous additions, kind of addresses that like hey these are extra things you can do if you would like, here's how to do. We're also putting in a resources list, so kind of showing you Hey, this is where we got stuff here are good places to find information so you don't have to take just our word for it. You can do some research on your own, but again it's kind of in one place. Symbols. There's also tons of symbols that come along with accessibility, whether that's the level behind the wheelchair, showing that it's wheelchair accessible, Unknown Speaker 54:54 a CC for closed captioning. You can have a Braille sign to show like hey, this is where our braille programs and pamphlets are, and then an area context, this would be more specific to the Columbus area, Ohio area, just because that's where we're located, but it can also give you a good idea for yourself, hey, maybe we might have an Autism Society and our local area. We should have these type of organizations involved in our planning, and maybe we get their opinions, as we go forward with making our space more accessible. It's always good to include the people that you were aiming to include, you know, sometimes what we think is best for others, isn't actually best. So it's kind of good to talk to the others, to say hey, I know we don't have a talking relationship right now, but we want to make this place more welcoming for you, and we would like your feedback directly. And that can link to really great partnerships, and really great work. That's instead of saying, Oh, I wish I had known this before we did this, you know up front, and you can make it the best suit possible to welcome visitors who might not always feel included. So let's look at this toolkit a little bit more. So this is the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council's DIY ADA access planning. So, this is what we modeled this current efforts, short term goals and long term goals. So, for example, this one could be, like, so as this thing is you need to have an example, already ready. If you don't know what you're doing, looking at this can be very intimidating. The first question is, does the organization have a named accessibility coordinator, does the organization involve access, advisors, your organization might have two full time staff members, and the rest is just volunteers. So, you don't have the resources to have a dedicated accessibility coordinator. So right away, you're already like, Okay, how do I make this work. So, what we're really looking at is this large model in the middle of parent efforts, short term goals and long term goals. Current efforts, you know, this is we have an email address that people can contact us if they need accommodations. The short term goals could be, We would like to purchase to assistive listening devices. And then, long, long term goals could be, we would like to get in partnership with the deaf community around us, who would like to find an interpreter, that we could hire for certain events, or, you know, figure out things that we could provide or host at our institution. So things that you know, take a little more time to cultivate this one question, third one down. Is there an appropriate budget specifically reserved for accessibility needs, how are resources secured for access strategies. Really good question. A lot of times, institutions say what budget. Our budget is taken up. And we're struggling, especially in this time of post pandemic post pandemic mid pandemic. Wherever we are, you know, we're, we're looking at. I don't know how much we can financially, put towards making our institution accessible but we want, we want to do what we can. So we're going beyond this. Unknown Speaker 59:13 This format right here. If you want to go to the next slide. So, this is what ours looks like at the moment. So, we have the far left column as guiding questions, and then the following four columns on the right are different examples. So, each row, then we have goals. We have audience, and we have needs. So the goals, format, it asks you, What do you want people to learn. What do you want people to engage with, how do you want people to interact. And it's very important that it's people. What do you want people to learn. We're not separating, what do you want the disabled community to learn what do you want your current visitors to learn, they're the same group. So, your goals, you're just saying your goals, as they are. So, this if you're doing an exhibit. Your goal can be to present information in different formats to engage learners, different sensory processing. So, that can be having a text panel, but then also having a couple iPads with maybe videos, or even exhibit panels with photos. And so if you don't absorb information very well, reading, there's that visual component as well. Or maybe you can't see so there will be an audio component as well. So when you're saying you know, how do we, okay. Our goal is to engage learners with different sensory processing. Now you're thinking, Okay, well how do we do that. So then you kind of go down to your audience. Well, who are we really targeting in our marketing of this, or who is our current audience, so it can be anything. This one I wrote you know families, adults, students. Further down the audience, anyone. You can really make this fit your institution. So then you combine those together, while our goal is to engage learners with different sensory processing, and our audience are families adults and students. So now we need to make sure that we have things that can be engaging to learners with different sensory processing. So here are nice monitors for video with closed captioning, additional lighting for Hollaway text panels for LED lights needed the hallway doesn't have windows so it's kind of dim in there so if you have low vision, and might be hard to read. So you need additional lighting. You also need a staff member or staff members to provide guided tours on a regular basis, that go beyond narrate narration and describe artifacts. This is an example of when I say go beyond narration. And they describe artifacts, people who are blind, you know, you can't just say like, Okay, well here is our exhibit on the War of 1812. So we have some original artifacts and we have some exhibits go ahead and take a look. That's that's not an option. So, hey, welcome to our exhibit on the War of 1812, we have this six foot by four foot old flag that is torn up, they're describing the artifact, making it come to life for those who can't see it. Another option for a guided tour is to kind of help people who have sensory processing issues and stuff, talk about it in a more personal level and kind of going at their pace and helping them move along to give it a little more structure than an open concept area. So, we have exhibits, we have outdoor spaces, indoor spaces and wayfinding, and this one will be a little bit more technical, you know, like Andrew was talking about the ramps, you know, do we have the ramps at the right height, we would like to build the ramp. What, what do we need there. I'm kind of thinking about it from that physical mindset. Okay, in the next slide. So the next worksheet is programming and events, so it's the same type of layout, but then we have event workshop webinar, and digital exhibit. And again, these are all examples. This is just showing you ways to use this worksheet. Unknown Speaker 1:04:05 So the goals, the audience needs are the same exact ones from the prior worksheet. But then they go into talking about how to make his programming or events more accessible. So, for example, we'll look at this workshop column, I know the fonts a little hard to read so I apologize for that. So under goals we have the workshop would be create with us so this is like a crafting workshop. So the goals could be the participants complete a finished project. The participants learn and appreciate the historic trade and participants follow an instructor with minimal hands on. So you might have spaces for 10 people want to instructor, so you don't really have the ability to have the instructor go individually and help everyone out so you're trying to do kind of a project that the instructor can have people fall on without really having to go and help individual people, just because there isn't that time or resource. Your audience as seniors and adults. So your needs are, you need a sound system for the instructor. So, people who might be hard of hearing can hear better. You mean volunteers for extra help, if the instructor has minimal opportunity for hands on help volunteers, be nice to then also kind of go through the program with the participants and when needed, were asked. And then adaptable projects, so this could be, let's say it's like a sewing project, and you're teaching a specific stitch. You can have one that semi completed, so people can already, they can follow the example right in front of them and see how it's done, or something that's already started, you know, it could be hard threading the needle so you could have needles already threaded with thread, or you know you can have the first stitch on, and so people don't have to worry about those steps, that's a little extra day. So you could have been adaptable projects. Some being easier to start in others, you know, being, you can do every step. And then if you want, as the instructor can only provide minimal help written structured and written instructions with photos for each participant. So the participant can maybe, if they're step behind, they can follow along on his paper. While the instructor goes on with the class. And these are just examples. But if this is something that's kind of similar to what your institution offers you know maybe. Maybe you don't really offer create with us programs but you might offer, you know, a calligraphy class or something, you can then tweak it and put it, put it to use more specifically to your institution. So, go to my last slide, sound, this is just a little bit more zoomed up or zoomed in. So worksheets, your turn. So these are the guiding questions, and then a blank one. So I guess this is, this is my last slide, we're nearing the end of the presentation so you know you can either look at this and start to think about, well, if I were to do this, these are questions that I have before really wanting to take on this blank worksheet concept for my institution, you know, I'm a bit confused with this wording, or hey, I have a question. My goal is this, how would I phrase that. So we're happy to have questions now, about kind of this specific worksheet or the toolkit in general or accessibility in general. This is just the last slide to kind of show you what exactly the worksheet is is like to use. Unknown Speaker 1:08:52 See we have a question here from Kyle. Do you have suggestions for a quality portable audio speaker system that can be set up for events in a small room. Unknown Speaker 1:09:11 Alright, I can handle that one. So, what I would highly recommend is, especially if you're trying to work with visitors who are hard of hearing, it's always helpful to reach out to local organizations to see if they have recommendations. So, especially local universities, Like for example, I've worked with Ohio State's Speech Language Hearing Center in past for various events. Not only did they come out and provide a community resource but they've also answered a lot of my questions about, like, what is appropriate. Like we I've actually asked the same question before, what's an appropriate sound system to be using in an indoor space versus an outdoor space. We also recently worked with an AV system and AV company to get some portable speakers for Ohio village. So, I will make sure that I get all of that information over to Betsy. So when we send out the link to this recording, we'll get that information to all of you as well. Just to give you some examples of the types of things that we're using, that are kind of community approved. Unknown Speaker 1:10:35 Great, and Abigail is really likes the format of this last form here and the checklists, and she's wondering if this will be available after the session today, somehow, or people to copy it steal it. Unknown Speaker 1:10:57 I would love to make it accessible. I will work with Betsy about figuring out what's the best way to get that document to all of you. Okay, I don't know if that means posting it on the local history Lyons website, sending it to all of the participants. So Betsy, you and I can talk later on, what's the best way to get this into everybody's hands. Unknown Speaker 1:11:20 Now this format works great for all sorts of things, not just the accessibility planning exhibits planning events, you always have goals and audiences and strategies on how you get there. So this is a good worksheet for life in general. Unknown Speaker 1:11:38 Yeah, and sometimes the, the, it's nice to have these worksheets because there are questions that you never even thought about addressing like no one's ever asked the question until it happens. Unknown Speaker 1:11:53 Some people are wondering if there would be grants or financial resources for people that would need to change their buildings, other than maybe the history fund. I don't know of anything off the top of my head. But there are lots of groups, small groups that that need to address how to pay for some of these things. Unknown Speaker 1:12:20 Yeah, I again, I agree with John I don't know any specific grants off the top of my head, but a little bit of research goes a long way. I know there are lots of organizations that provide grant opportunities. And especially now that you're thinking about, like, your specific accessibility needs, usually the more specific you get, the easier it is to find an obscure grant that offers at least a little bit of assistance. Unknown Speaker 1:12:52 Yeah, and I would also add, I had a question very similar to this a little bit ago, where someone asked me if I had a recommendation of, I think they were looking for a grant for a wheelchair ramp or wheelchair lift so that's like the thing that you like a little elevator but just for a wheelchair up like one step. And I was like I don't know of any grants, let me do a quick look. And there was actually a company that sold wheelchair lifts, they had a page about brands. So sometimes you can contact the company that you're looking to order through, because people who might have purchased those items specifically might have purchased it. With a grant, so they might be able to say, oh thanks, you're interested in our product. Here's a grant that we've heard of before. Unknown Speaker 1:13:42 I was also thinking during your presentation about people who don't speak English that come to our sites. And that is an accessibility problem, too, if you don't have a map or anything in their language. Unknown Speaker 1:13:56 Absolutely. And for, especially, even for for larger sites like at the History Connection we've, we've been having conversations about do we provide copies of our maps in different languages. We have some, some basic language like welcoming language that's on our Windows but that's about it. So yeah, that's an excellent question, and that's definitely something that, If you, especially if you have a community like for example I know in Columbus, there's a significant Somali and Brittany's Nepali community. Wow, so we have worked with those communities in the past on programs. So if you know that there are significant, communities of non English speakers, you might be able to work with those folks to find ways to make your site more accessible. Unknown Speaker 1:14:53 I know new technologies are always coming out, where people can use their phone to translate things. I've seen that done. Yeah, Google Translate. Unknown Speaker 1:15:10 Sometimes it feels like technology is running in leaps and bounds, we're gonna have this Star Trek universal translator before we know it. Unknown Speaker 1:15:19 Does anyone else have any questions. Okay, how can I start a dialogue with my director and board about doing this. Yeah, you might have resistance from the people at the top. Any advice. Unknown Speaker 1:15:44 Chloe, did you want to go first. Unknown Speaker 1:15:47 I'm not sure. So from what I've seen, what's really good just to kind of have some other work done before you start the conversation. So kind of saying, Hey, I like to do this. Here are some examples of museums that are already doing this, and this is what we would like to do, so whether. For example, let's say it's accessibility in general, but you can narrow it down when you've just had that conversation. So let's say we don't have automated doors. And so it's very hard for people who aren't wheelchairs or slow walkers to get into the doors, so we want to focus on these doors. You can start off with the problem and say, This is what I would like to fix, or I think we should address fixing this. And here are the communities that we're leaving out by not happiness. Unknown Speaker 1:16:44 That's good. Unknown Speaker 1:16:46 And so kind of having that start also recommend recommendation that I've heard is kind of assembling a team with you before you talk so instead of it's, Hey, I need help because I'm the only one invested in this, you can get you know some volunteers who are, you know, we'd like to work with this on you. Some co workers or community members and say you know, we're committing to get this done, but we need your support. So, kind of, kind of like when you have a big grant goal and you typically say like hey we have this many dollars raised we just need this much left kind of showing, I've already put my personal work into this. So this is very important to me as where I would start. Unknown Speaker 1:17:36 Yeah, I completely agree with Chloe, especially if you have a board of directors that you need to get things approved through, especially if that board, like John said might be resistant to, like, big new changes like that coming prepared is, is key. And instead of adding more on top of what Chloe said because I think she handled it very well, I will just give a shameless plug for this toolkit, because I think this gives you a lot of the questions that you can answer as going into that conversation, and show that there aren't as many unanswered variables as they might think that, like, Chloe said you've already done enough of the work to show like this is what needs to be done. This is how we do it. This is what I need from you. Unknown Speaker 1:18:27 I also like the way she showed what you could do at the basic level, the medium level and then at an expensive low, so at least you can get them on board with maybe that first level or. Unknown Speaker 1:18:40 Absolutely. It's it's it's all about negotiating you need to have a place to fall back on if you need to. So, Unknown Speaker 1:18:52 anyway, I think this has been a great presentation I've learned a lot. I feel bad that I didn't put closed captioning on three of the videos that we made in the gallery and on I'm thinking it's making me open my mind to a different world of folks that need some little help getting to the same level as us. So, it does anyone else have any last questions here I'm trying to get done before, and Unknown Speaker 1:19:22 something I'll say real quick, I'm gonna throw my contact information in the chat for everyone so if anybody has specific questions that didn't get answered here, or if you want, anything that has to do with like working on an institutional committee and working with partners, I'd be more than happy to talk with you after the fact. Unknown Speaker 1:19:43 I think you'll get a lot of contents. A lot of people are going to be interested in this. And Chloe did a great job. Unknown Speaker 1:19:54 Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and mimic Andrew and put my email in there as well. Because this toolkit is still a work in progress. So if you have any feedback of I like to see this included or hey this is a question I have, it would, it would help me and, you know, getting it to its final draft. So, I put my email address in the, in the chat below as well. So if you have feedback I also except. Unknown Speaker 1:20:26 Alright, well thank you everyone for being part of this presentation and watching it. And thank you, Chloe and Andrew, specifically. Unknown Speaker 1:20:35 Thank you so much for having us. Unknown Speaker 1:20:37 Thank you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai