A surprise at the door?

Imagine yourself happily on your way to see art at a museum. The sun is shining, and you hum the latest pop hit, as you step lightly along. You arrive at the door, but suddenly the threshold reaches up to your nose. Are you dreaming? Or are you not supposed to enter at all? Somebody to lift you? Should you climb? You can't quite see the other side, but something exciting and - ugggh - so unattainable is going on in there.

The second time you try to enter the museum, they have a power cut, and it's pitch dark. Still, the staff move effortlessly through the echoing rooms, and they tell you that the magnificent piece of art is up there. They lead you to it in the dark and tell you to be careful not to touch this miraculous piece, and not to get too close because it's rotating in the air. You don't see so much as a glimpse of the work or the environment, and start wondering how to find your way out.

Well, that was just imagination. But what if you faced such situations in real life? There are quite a few people whose ability to move, to function, to orientate themselves, or communicate with others is excitingly different from your average Joe Bloggs. There are people who want the museum thresholds levelled, they want audio guidance, listings of works that may be touched, sign language guided tours, etc. People with disabilities want to visit the museum the same as anyone else. The museum visits can be easier and more fulfilling for everyone, if people's different ways of sensing, moving, and perceiving are accommodated.

Good accessibility for a museum is having services that provide for all kinds of guests.
Educational curator Erica Othman has been dreaming of good service, and she launched an accessibility project for the National Gallery in the summer of 1999. Acting as the project secretary, Sari Salovaara is mapping accessibility in Kiasma, the Museum of Finnish Art, and the Sinebrychoff Museum of Foreign Art. With the help of various disabled people's groups and organisations, and together with the museum staffs, solutions are being developed, and new services created. The Finnish Association of Museums is also taking part in the project by extending the accessibility survey to all the museums in the country in the form of a questionnaire. The museums, too, must learn to notice the accessibility issues, and to come up with solutions. Then, the thresholds reaching up to your neck will remain just a dream, and our cultural treasures will gradually become accessible to everyone.

Sari Salovaara, Project secretary