Innovative Museum Tours at The Royal Ontario Museum

Seventy per cent of disabilities are hidden, and so we wanted to be careful we included all people with disabilities. So we focused on of course the physical challenges, but we’ve also looked at people who have vision loss or who are blind, and people who have hearing loss or who are deaf. So we have captioning on all of our screens that give information about all of our artefacts. Our way-finding has got signage that includes Braille and raised lettering so that people can use whichever means they want to access their routes to the ROM. Through our accessibility initiatives, the Royal Ontario Museum, we’re going to bring both natural history and world cultures to life for everyone. And tours lead by American Sign Language intervenors and interpreter students from George Brown College – they provide a context to the museum’s collections for people with hearing loss. The tactile tour program allows people with vision loss to experience and connect with rare and fascinating artefacts in a meaningful way. I would just sort of simply explain what it is and then give them enough time to touch, to feel, to have a sense of what this is all about. We also have a book that’s showing all the objects; there’s also Braille. This will, we hope, enhance the experience because they can either touch the objects, then they can come back and touch the Braille and then have a better understanding of the objects. This is really important, especially for a world-class museum, to really open our arms, open our doors to all audiences. It’s important also to recognize that this is not just a social issue; it’s an economic issue and it’s a tourism issue. We have the aging population, we have medical advances that indicate people that are living longer with different conditions. And so it is a right for people to enjoy their lives fully, and it’s an economic advantage to any organization that does it.