Museums and the “Digital Curb Cut”

The development of accessible multimedia content to date has largely been considered “a burden and a chore” by technical museum staff and their contracted developers (Clark, 2001). The perceived cost of implementing accessibility has been the largest barrier to date towards creating online cultural education that can be experienced and enjoyed by audiences of all abilities. While museum web sites in general are gradually adopting web and accessibility standards as institutional policy, the same standards are too frequently not applied to multimedia content.

The survey results indicated that accessibility of multimedia is only rarely mentioned in contractual agreements, and typically a text-only version of the media is specified as an accessible alternative. Thus, the great promise of multimedia to provide multi-sensory learning experiences for all persons has largely gone untapped. In fact, the development of accessible multimedia has been perceived as requiring a “specialist skill-set” that few cultural institutions can afford. This perception has led to a failure to consider the experience of persons with sensory limitations in the design of online media. In a recent podcast, Niqui Merret, a German developer, countered this concept by explaining developers need to better understand the needs of the people who use the media that they create; accessibility “is not a weird science and should not be a specialist field” (Heilmann, 2006). Merret admitted that more education is needed, as developers have been prejudiced against technologies like Flash due to historical limitations that are no longer valid. In the same podcasted interview, Aral Balkan provided another perspective:

The biggest problem I see is that we are currently at the point in the accessibility debate where checkbox accessibility has the limelight and we have not yet matured to the point of understanding and implementing a usability approach to accessibility. (Heilmann, 2006)

As demonstrated in the survey, developers are more focused on technical standards than a definition of accessibility that encompasses usability by defining specific use cases that include persons with disabilities; their needs are typically ignored in the design phase and throughout the development cycle. Joseph (Joe) Clark, an accessibility advocate and consultant who has been deemed “the king of closed captions,” lamented the dismissal of accessibility standards for audio and video content:

People have been quite happy to ignore the requirements for captions (for the deaf) and audio descriptions (additional narration for the blind), both of which were required at the lowest accessibility level. (Clark, 2006)

The reasons for this neglect, according to the research presented herein, are largely the result of the lack of time, budgets, and staff rather than the lack of willingness to implement accessible practices. The survey results demonstrated that museums consider accessibility to be essential to accommodating diverse online audiences; however, there frequently was a split in conceptualizing accessibility as intended for the disabled only, as opposed to providing equitable access for all. This division has resulted in differing definitions of what accessibility is and whom it is intended to serve. One camp defines accessibility as a strict interpretation of legal requirements and international standards, intended to make content available to persons with sensory and motor disabilities; the other side embraces accessibility as a practice of universal design, applying the fundamental concepts of access for all as a design challenge to make digital products that will be more usable to all persons in more environments. This debate has been fostered amongst accessibility advocates who maintain strong differences of opinion on the matter. While they all agree that accessibility is important, there is little consensus as to why it is important. For museums and cultural institutions, the changing funding landscape may prove to be the most significant motivation to provide accessible content online in the coming years.

The narrow interpretation of accessibility as serving only the “special needs” of disabled visitors has led many museums to not consider persons with sensory or cognitive disabilities as part of their target audience. The lack of institutional policies requiring accessibility for multimedia content, as well as the perceived lack of enforcement of current legislation (particularly in the United States), have also contributed to the lack of compliance. While cultural organizations in both the United States and the United Kingdom have embraced the practice of universal design in development of physical exhibitions, considerably more attention has been given to accessible web practices in the United Kingdom, as the legal requirements are perceived as less ambiguous and more enforceable than Section 508 in the United States. Moreover, survey results indicated that museums in the United Kingdom are significantly more familiar with accessibility legislation relevant to their country (77% very familiar) than their counterparts in the United States (5%). Overall, there is a great need for web accessibility training in the museum community, as a striking majority (52%) of technical museum staff surveyed were “not at all” familiar with the legal accessibility requirements set forth in Section 508 in the United States. Many museums have chosen instead to rely on their contractors to provide this expertise when needed. However, accessibility consultants in general are rarely contracted to advise on technical projects, as museums are more than five times likely to have a single staff member responsible for accessibility than a committee or hired consultant.

The authors of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG) draft have indicated that accessibility is expected to become an issue of increasingly international significance, as new legislation is under consideration across the globe to address the growing “information apartheid” and discrimination against persons with disabilities:

One assumption that must be made by anyone who creates Web content is that the target audience will include people with disabilities. People with disabilities are to be considered an integral part of all demographics. One cannot exclude people with disabilities from the target audience. (Caldwell, 2006)

Educational psychologist Howard Gardner (1983, p. xix) understood that “one person’s limitations can be another person’s opportunity. Seven kinds of intelligence would allow seven ways to teach, rather than one.” Thus, presenting information through a variety of modalities provides multiple points of entry for all users, in effect allowing individuals to choose the media that best complements their style of learning. Within the museum community, education experts Dierking and Falk echoed Gardner’s theory: “Learning is a highly personal, idiosyncratic process. People have preferred modes of perceiving and processing information” (Dierking & Falk, 1998, p. 59). Some respond best to visual stimuli; others to auditory; others still to some combination of the two.

Museum educators have learned that multi-sensory exhibits can add value for visitors of all abilities. B. Davidson, museum educator and accessibility specialist at the Museum of Science Boston, related:

We think of making accommodations for people with special needs, but what we consistently saw is that these modifications constituted significant improvement in length of time spent and learning outcomes for all visitors. Multisensory learning opportunities not only provide a way to reach challenged audiences, but also provide an appropriate challenge for all visitors. (Davidson, 1999, p. 237)

Virtual exhibitions can also benefit from multiple avenues of exploration and modalities. Technology makes it easier to deliver information in redundant formats and to allow for visitors to select media based on their environment, abilities, learning styles and device capabilities. While it is important for persons with visual impairments to be able to access web content via screen reader technology, multimedia content has the ability to make content accessible without the use of specialized and expensive software. Museums have employed Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash and Director for over a decade to produce rich media learning applications for both in gallery and online exhibitions. The research presented has demonstrated that Flash has eclipsed Director as the authoring program of choice, yet both programs are increasingly able to deliver learning experiences that can improve accessibility for persons with disabilities. Accessibility in multimedia is a relatively new concept, as Adobe has only begun to address the need for accessibility through the addition of built-in programming aids, freely distributed Flash players that expose their content to screen readers, and the definition of best practices for accessible Flash development. Director, on the other hand, does not have support for screen readers, yet provides methods for developers to convert text to speech and thus provide “self-voicing” content that replaces the need for screen readers. Disability studies scholar Jason Palmeri (2006) suggested:

Rather than putting the onus on the user to employ adaptive technology to turn text into speech, we might provide audio, textual, and visual versions of the Web content and let all users–even those who do not identify as having a disability–choose the format that is best for them. (p. 56)

As demonstrated in the case study detailing the Tate’s i-Map project, Flash also has the ability to include “talking buttons” and narrative content through embedded audio content. The explicit ordering of tabbed navigation can also be defined by developers in both Flash and Director to ensure that persons who are not using a mouse, due to visual or motor impairments or the limitations of a mobile device, can still access the content.

Unlike html web development, accessibility for multimedia cannot be “added on” at the end of a project in the form of “alt” tags; the entire structure of the application and the user experience must be designed and constructed to allow for these features. Robert Regan, Senior Product Manager for Accessibility at Macromedia (now Adobe), encouraged interactive designers to step outside their visually dominated model of experience and conceive of alternative pathways towards enjoying the same content (Regan, 2004). To avoid costly retrofitting for accessibility, multimedia projects must take all modalities into account from the initial design phase. If planned for properly, experts suggest that providing for accessibility in this manner should not cost more than 10% of the overall project budget and schedule. Yet, the developers surveyed cited the lack of time available in the development cycle as a critical barrier (75%) towards accessibility.

There are two recent developments of note that may prove to be a boon to accessibility-minded media developers. First, the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) just released CC for Flash, a free program for providing captions in Flash through xml time-codes rendered in a standards-compliant DFXP file. This is significant, as CC for Flash increases the accessibility of Flash content in several ways, as explained in the NCAM press release:

Now, millions of users who are deaf or hard of hearing are better able to experience Web-based video in Flash and search engines are able to capitalize on captions as search metadata for SWF content. (Watkins, 2007)

At the same time, NCAM also released an upgrade to their freely available MAGpie software to create the time-codes from a visual interface and export to the DFXP format. A free flash video player has also been developed by NCAM for non-Flash developers to publish captioned Flash videos. This news has created quite a stir in the accessibility forums, as it is becoming easier and cheaper to deliver accessible multimedia content via Flash. This is not to say that creating effective captions and audio descriptions does not take considerable effort and skill; it merely promises to help make accessible, online video a more achievable reality by placing the tools in the hands of more people.

Secondly, there is a movement in development circles away from self-contained Flash development to Flash modules that interact with and are embedded within semantic web content (Mall, 2007). In this hybrid model, the power of Flash to deliver scalable, vector-based content that maintains typographic integrity are complemented by the semantic markup languages of xml and html and the programming strength of php and javascript; information can be freely passed between the technologies, as demonstrated in the Monticello Explorer case study. The Tate’s i-Map project additionally provided a model for embedding Flash content instead of relying entirely on Flash for a fully media-enabled solution. In the future, the expectation is that two versions of multimedia content will become unnecessary; the users’ preferences will drive the serving of content “on the fly” to suit their specific needs. This will become especially important in the deployment of mobile content, as cell phones, pdas and iPods provide inconsistent support for multimedia formats and navigational interfaces.
As this study suggests, a small yet passionate community of developers produce the majority of educational multimedia for museums and cultural institutions; they are technically adept, welcome creative challenges, and have a passion for education and culture in addition to technology. They will continue to push the envelope in spite of under-funded projects. In the near future, many of them will increasingly become aware of accessibility practices by necessity, as more and more institutions will require accessible design to meet the demands of funding organizations and changing international laws.

Eric Coburn, Data Standards Administrator at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Murtha Baca, Head of the Getty Vocabulary Program and Digital Resource Management, suggested: “Museum information has a history of being hoarded if not outright hidden in curatorial files” (Coburn & Baca, 2004, p. 14). The growth of broadband Internet has made it possible to bring this vast treasure of knowledge with the citizens of the world. However, providing accessibility for underserved audiences is not strictly motivated by altruism: rather it is essential to the long-term survival of museums (Falk, 2006, p117). “Museum boards are now expected to ensure that the museum is accessible to as wide a public as possible.” Falk continued to explain: “Museums cannot be all things to all people and should not try to be. But museums can be more things to more people than they currently are” (p. 101). The significance of the aging Baby Boomer generation to the financial health of museums cannot be underestimated. Volunteers, supporters, donors and board members will be drawn from this generation; they will be more comfortable with technology than their predecessors and their expectations to experience educational content online will likely increase despite their declining vision, hearing and motor skills. Falk encouraged museums to not be neglectful of the needs of this generation:

Members of the Boomer cohort are already major constituencies of the museum community and as they find themselves with ever greater time and discretionary income they are likely to become many a museum’s new best friends. (Falk, 2006, p. 61)

These “new best friends” may also provide museums with greater opportunity to test their technology projects with diverse audiences. On average, museums currently conduct accessibility testing less than 30% of the time, and typically through automated means instead of with actual persons. As noted in the Monticello Explorer project, many museums do not have funds dedicated to user testing of any sort and instead rely on the recruitment of visitors to their museum and web site. The value of usability studies for web sites, conducted with both disabled and “temporarily-abled” visitors, is just beginning to be recognized within the museum community. Andrew Pekarik, Program Analyst, Office of Policy and Analysis, Smithsonian Institution, related:

It took many decades of visitor studies and research to reach such a level of understanding of museum visitors. The pace of technological change and the expense of designing and building effective museum Web sites argues for a more aggressive research agenda in the case of the Web. Museums cannot afford to take the Internet lightly, I think. (Pekarik, 2003, p. 78)

Research conducted by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) in 2004 suggested that web accessibility not only increases the organization’s reach to a more diverse public, but also provides clear business motivations for providing a return on investment. According to the PAS 78 (Howell, 2006), accessible web sites are easier and less expensive to maintain, while also resulting in increased web traffic. The Human Rights Commission (HRC) in 2006 reiterated these statements in a press release in defense of their position that web accessibility is a basic human right that should be backed by international law. Perhaps in the coming years museums will not only come to accept the challenges of delivering accessible multimedia for legal, moral or financial reasons, but may also come to understand “disability as insight” into improving learning experiences on the web for everyone (Brueggeman, p. 371). Including persons with disabilities in the design and testing of multimedia is only the beginning, as disability studies scholar Jason Palmeri (2006) suggested:

Ultimately, technical communicators must move from seeing disability accessibility as a concern particular to a subset of users and begin to reimagine it as a source of transformative insight into deep practice for all. (p. 57)

It can be expected that the role of technology in our lives will continue to expand; multimedia content has already been unleashed from the desktop environment and is becoming readily available on an ever-increasing variety of mobile devices. In a knowledge economy, choice and flexibility in the delivery of content will be essential for every citizen, not just those with disabilities. The latent benefits to be realized will greatly outweigh the initial effort to overcome technical hurdles and provide accessible content, as Powlik and Karshmer of the National Science Foundation (NSF) eloquently explained:

We all benefit from a world that views accessibility and usability not as extra effort but as an accommodation of the greatest of all human abilities: the willingness to try. (Powlik & Karshmer, 2002, p. 222)

Lastly, it must be remembered that the need for “curb cuts” to be built into sidewalks was challenged and resisted by the majority of American cities and towns. The idea of providing disabled persons with equal access to city streets, public facilities and transportation was certainly radical in the early 1990’s; yet society as a whole has benefited from these simple provisions for inclusion. Gregg Vanderheiden, Director of the Trace Research and Development Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, remarked on this phenomenon:

Although curb cuts were put in for persons in wheelchairs, it is estimated that for every individual in a wheelchair using a curb cut, somewhere between ten and one hundred bicycles, skateboards, shopping carts, baby carriages and delivery carts use the curb cut. (Vanderheiden, 1990, p. 11)

While it is difficult to imagine all the ways that multimedia will be accessed in the future, museums and cultural institutions must be encouraged to seek out new digital pathways to invite their diverse audiences to experience the cultural knowledge they collect and preserve for posterity.