Museums around the world develop various practices in order to enhance the access and inclusion of people with visual impairments, but many disabling barriers still exist. Museums, as audience-centered spaces, are required to enhance thee access and and inclusion of individuasl with visual impairment. However, this is a challenging task for museums and requires the collaboration between museums and organizations involved in the education and the protection of individuals with visual disabilities. This need for collaboration and interagency partnerships is the basis of our project, which aims to bridge the gap between museums and individuals with visual impairments. Hence, the proposed project aims to address the following objectives: • To enable the museum members become aware and update their knowledge regarding the disabling barriers that impede the access of visitors with visual disabilities to museums and the techniques that can enhance the access and inclusion of individuals with visual disabilities to the museums. • To create learning, cultural and social opportunities for individuals with visual disabilities and enable them acquire self-advocacy skills regarding their rights as museum visitors and the requirements of an inclusive museum. • To promote the collaboration between museums, schools and associations of individuals with visual disabilities. • To point out the best practices and guidelines for the development of an accessible and inclusive museum for visitors with visua Five type of participating organisations, all together 12 formal partners and 4 silent partners, including museums, schools, associations for people with visual impairment which are governmental organisations, and a company will share their knowledge and experience towards the attainment of the above objectives. The main activities included in BaGMIVI concerns the management, assurance and evaluation activities, the development of a needs assessment study, of a syllabus and of the BaGMVI portal, the conduction of Joint Staff Training Events for museum members and the development of accessible museum content/programmes, the organization of the musums visits and vice versa and the development of a best practices guide and policy guidelines and recommendations and the dissemination activities. The activities during the museum visits lie in the strands of action research methodology that fulfills two important conditions; one is that it seeks improvement and the other is that it seeks an understanding of the setting and context in general (Kemmis and McTaggart 1988). The aforementioned conditions are apparent in BaGMIVI project and in particular during museum visits because an improvement is expected regarding the museum programs and the level of collaboration between the museum staff and the individuals with visual impairment and ultimately regarding the level of inclusion of visitors with visual impairments in museums. In action research, there is a group of four fundamental aspects: planning, acting, observing and reflecting, which end up in a cycle, and ultimately in a spiral of such cycles. All the spirals lead to re-planning and reconsideration of the data obtained in between. The number of the action research spirals is expected to be four because three visits will take place to the museums by the participating schools and associations and also one visit will take place by the museum staff to the schools or the associations. The expected tangible results of the BaGMIVI include the needs assessment study, the syllabus, thevideos from the training and videos from the development of differentiated museum content, the best practice guide and policy guidelines and recommendations. Intangible results include THE acquisition of knowledge and skills from the museum staff regarding the access and inclusion of individuals with visual impairment to the museums, the development of self advocacy skills from individuals with visual impairment, the learning, cultural and social benefits for individuasl with visual impairments, the promotion of collaboration between different organsations, the development of inclusive museums for visitors with visual impairments. Most tangible outputs will be Open Educational Resources to be exploited my many stakeholders in side and outside of the project and will be disseminated through the European Portal, the conferences and the websites of two NGOs. Kemmis, S., & McTaggart, R. (1988). The Action Research Planner, (3rd ed.), Victoria, Australia: Deakin University. O’Hanlon, C. (1996). Why is Action Research a Valid Basis for Professional Development? In R. McBride (Ed.), Teacher Education Policy: Some Issues Arising from Research and Practice (pp. 179-191). Falmer Press: London
Museums around the world develop various practices in order to enhance the access and inclusion of people with visual impairments, but many disabling barriers still exist. Museums, as audience-centered spaces, are required to enhance the access and inclusion of individuals with visual impairment. However, this is a challenging task for museums and requires the collaboration between museums and organizations involved regarding the education and socialization of individuals with visual disabilities. This need for collaboration and interagency partnerships is the basis of the BaGMIVI project, which aims to bridge the gap between museums and individuals with visual impairments. Hence, the proposed project aimed to address the following objectives: • To enable the museum members to become aware and update their knowledge regarding the disabling barriers that impede the access of visitors with visual disabilities • To create learning, cultural and social opportunities for individuals with visual disabilities and enable them to acquire self-advocacy skills regarding their rights as museum visitors • To promote the collaboration between museums, schools, and associations of individuals with visual disabilities, and • To point out the best practices and guidelines for the development of an accessible and inclusive museum for visitors with visual impairments Twelve formal partners and 4 silent partners, including museums, schools, associations for people with visual impairment and a company shared their knowledge and experience towards the attainment of the above objectives. The main activities of the BaGMIVI project concerned the following: a needs assessment study, training material (syllabus), the BaGMVI portal, training events for the museum members of the BaGMIVI project, accessible museum content/programmes, museum visits, development of best practices guide and policy guidelines and recommendations and dissemination activities. In parallel with the above-mentioned management, assurance and evaluation activities were also conducted. All main activities during the museum visits were conducted under the methodological frame of action research that fulfills two important conditions; one is that it seeks improvement and the other is that it seeks an understanding of the context in general. The aforementioned conditions were apparent in the BaGMIVI project particularly during the school museum visits because improvements took place during the lifetime of the project after reflection and evaluation. The tangible results of the BaGMIVI included the needs assessment study (IO1), the syllabus (IO2), the videos from the training process (IO4) and videos from the development of differentiated museum content (IO5), the best practices guide (IO7) and policy recommendations and guidelines report (IO9). Also, in the tangible outcomes all actions and activities which fall in IO8 should be included and concern journal and conference papers, presentations, newsletters, media and sites (see detailed dissemination activities in the Annexes). Intangible results included the acquisition of knowledge and skills of the museum staff regarding the access and inclusion of individuals with visual impairment to museums, the development of self-advocacy skills by individuals with visual impairment, the learning, cultural and social benefits for individuals with visual impairments, the promotion of collaboration between different organisations, and the development of inclusive museums for visitors with visual impairments (it os described in IO6). Most tangible outputs constitute Open Educational Resources (all of them are uploaded at http://www.bagmivi.eu/index.php/intellectual-outputs); hence, they can be exploited by many stakeholders inside and outside of the project. Also, the BaGMIVI website, conferences, newsletters, media and NGOs have contributed tremendously in the dissemination process. It is worth mentioning that more working days were dedicated to the production of the videos (IO4 & IO5) as it was initially planned because their content was very rich and it was needed laborious editing to produce a well structured, multilingual and fully accessible product. On top of this two more videos were developed (i. e. trailer and a consolidated video in English, see IO5) in order to empower the dissemination process. All of them are available on the youtube (http://www.bagmivi.eu/index.php/intellectual-outputs/64-intellectual-output-4-videos-from-museum-staff-training) & (http://www.bagmivi.eu/index.php/intellectual-outputs/65-intellectual-output-5-videos-from-the-development-of-differentiated-and-accessible-museum-programmes). Finally, in a long-term perspective, the project will benefit a vast variety of learners and stakeholders providing learning, cultural and social benefits (IO4 & IO5) for all museum visitors promoting collaboration between different organizations aiming at the concept of inclusive museums.