At one time or another, all of us will be faced with either a temporary or permanent disability. According to the US Census Bureau, 36 million Americans alone report some hearing difficulty. As our population grows older, hearing, sight, and mobility issues will undoubtedly increase. Since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, accessibility has become an issue that demands our attention and resources. While most interpretive facilities from national park units to private nature centers have accessible facilities, accessible programming does not seem to get the prominence that it so rightly deserves.
Recently, I had the pleasure of attending a programmatic accessibility course hosted by the National Center on Accessibility. The course provided an introduction to accessibility for our structures and programs. The class was helpful in that it reminded me and everyone in the class of their legal and moral responsibilities to provide universal access to our facilities and programs.
Programmatic accessibility, as the label suggests, focuses on making services, both personal and non-personal, accessible to those with disabilities. For example, audio visual programs, a staple of almost every park or center that you visit, should have open captions, an audio description, and an assistive listening devices. A film that would be inaccessible for someone with hearing or vision loss could at the very least accommodate those who would have been unable to experience an important visitor service. So, the question becomes, why do we need to go to the time and expense to do this?
We are obligated to accessibility because it’s the law. In 1968, the Architectural Barriers Act became law, requiring all federal buildings to be accessible, creating a series of guidelines that are the basis of what have become accessibility guidelines. Five years later, Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act that provided guidelines for federal programs to be made accessible for all. In 1990, the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, which basically held the private sector accountable for making accommodations for physical and programmatic accessibility if they accepted Federal Funding. Programmatic accessibility is specifically mentioned in both the rehabilitation act and the ADA. In summary, this body of law prohibits excluding people with disabilities from the benefits of services, programs, and activities that serve the entire population. The bottom line, then, is that the personal and non-personal services that we provide must accommodate people who have disabilities.
Programmatic Accessibility also happens to be good for business. The root of the word accessibility is, after all, access. Regardless of who we work for, the profession of interpretation is all about that: access to our resources, access to our employees, access to our media, and access to the opportunities we provide for meaningful interaction with the resources that we protect. We need to think of the work we do as providing universal access to all populations. By not only acknowledging the spirit and intent of the laws, but incorporating the theories of universal design, we can provide this. For example, tactile elements in exhibits provide opportunities for interpretive insights that are just as compelling as visual elements. Moreover, tactile exhibits not only serve the blind, but also those members of the population that learn through touch and feel.
