The main focus of the SPEKTRUM project is to enhance the accessibility of the cultural heritage, especially the museums offer, to the young with autism spectrum disorders. These people face situations that make it difficult, disturbing or even impossible to fully participate in social and cultural life. The needs of people in the autism spectrum and various opportunities and experiences in facilitating their use of the cultural offer of the place where they live have been compared by organizations and institutions from several European countries that want to enter into cooperation. To strengthen the network of European museums and other institutions willing to exchange the best practices and researches on ASD and dedicated cultural and educational programmes and to strengthen the skills of museum operators in promoting the museum accessibility for young people with autism.Moreover, the culture and cultural heritage Each European country is on different level regarding to take of ASD people’s need. Transnational character of the project will be an occasion to exchange experience and work out new solutions which each partner can implement in their organisations. The main activities in the project will setting the rules and tools of verifying the accessibility of cultural institutions in a partner country for people with ASD. It will be achieved with the support and cooperation of beneficiaries among people with ASD and support from institutions at the national level. Youth people with ASD will be invite to visited chosen cultural institution and fulfil questionnaire. Next all questionnaires will be analyse and on this basis proposals for changes will be worked out for each institution. Next step will be development of universal solutions that can also be applied in institutions that did not carry out surveys. This database of recommendations and ideas will be made available on the partners' websites and during the summary meeting, to which representatives of cultural institutions, people with autism and journalists will be invited. During the meeting we will exenage experience, discusse problems and try to find solutions to make cultural institutions available and friendly for young people with autism.
All partners wanted to join a new international partnership to improve knowledge about ASD users and their characteristics. Gaining knowledge is very important in the process of raising awareness that museums can and should be more attentive to needs of people on the autism-spectrum: visitors with a ‘hidden disability’. The crucial issue in achieving this goal is to raise awareness among the museum employees, not only education and marketing staff, but all of the people working at the museums, especially those who have face-to-face contact with museum visitors. The Spektrum project wasn’t about creating a special program dedicated only to ASD visitors, but rather encouraging cultural institutions to consider various accessibility needs when developing programs for the public. By providing practical tools we wanted to enable museums to recognise and address those needs. In that way we could convince young people with ASD that museums will welcome them. We realised that by achieving the specific goal of creating an ASD-friendly museum - with ASD-friendly tools, implementations, texts, places - we also create a museum open to everybody, including ourselves.
The main focus of the Spektrum project is to enhance accessibility, especially in heritage institutions. Museums should be friendly and accessible places for young people with ASD. According to research very few cultural institutions in Poland consider the needs of people with ASD. The Spektrum project was designed to change this mindset through awareness rising campaigns addressed to Museum staff, as well as developing and disseminating a set of practical tools for cultural institutions helping them to become more ASD friendly. The project’s aim was also to create a network between cultural institutions working in benefit of young visitors with complex requirements. The Spektrum consortium consisted of highly professional organisations working in the field of inclusiveness.That is why cooperation among international partnerships provides a chance to compare different perspectives, exchange experience, and identify best practices. Spektrum partners sought to improve knowledge about the accessibility needs of ASD visitors, find ways to remove the barriers they have to face, investigate the use of technology, and define and use innovative strategies in creating museums open for ASD visitors and their families.