This is reposted from the Ohio Museum Association’s blog, written by Burkart.

This past April I had the opportunity to attend and work for the Ohio Museum Association (OMA) during their 2024 annual conference in Sandusky on the topic of Sustaining Museums for Future Climates. Not only is this my first ever conference, it was also the first time I have had to document an experience like this.

The Saturday tours were so interesting and immediately have some great opportunities to consider how to improve the accessibility of the often older sites, like the South Bass Island Lighthouse and the improvements in progress at others like the Duff Homestead, who were waiting on the permit to install a ramp.

On Sunday, I chose the workshop on “Audio and Deaf Cafes: Disability Centered Programs for All,” in which we focused on the values of Art Possible Ohio: inclusivity, flexibility, and possibility. Speakers Elizabeth Sammons and Mania’ Pathorski. What really interested me was the idea of welcome over access, meaning that rather than just having access (ie. the bare minimum) for those who need it, it should be highlighted that they are welcome explicitly, with visible accommodations and even programs or exhibits that are meant for those with disabilities and/or sensory needs. This sort of theme is prevalent throughout the conference, as is online accessibility. This includes print and digital marketing, color contrast, sans serif fonts, straight lines, capitalizing hashtags, and, of course, alternate text.

Concurrently, my first session on that Monday was on “Inclusive Connections: Accessible Social Media Best Practices for All,” something I felt I should expand upon as the acting OMA social media ambassador and the social media manager for the BGSU Department of History. This session covered how to specifically make social media posts, videos, etc. more accessible for all users, something I am personally interested in improving in my own social media activity. There were many sessions throughout the morning and afternoon, and all significant, but I was drawn to sessions that would be as inclusive in their representation of accessibility needs as possible, including “Ensuring Epic Experiences for All,” which focused on autistic representation and welcome within museum and other historical-cultural sites, “Accessible Exhibitions: Collaborative Design for Blind/Low Vision Museum Goers,” which highlighted 3-D printed copies of artifacts that allowed those with sensory needs to experience the often visually-centered exhibitions (though also giving opportunity for guests with tactile sensory needs or preferences to have a more fulfilling experience), and “History Where it Happened: Crafting Engaging Walking Tours,” which discussed how to make walking tours more inclusive and how to create a more engaging and historically accurate (but respectful) tour, especially when considering the ever-popular “ghost” tours. These sessions also solidified the fact that even though accessibility and accommodations are often initially meant for those with disabilities or sensory needs, they can be used and benefited from by all, including ramps instead of stairs for the not-necessarily-disabled elderly or tactile exhibits for non-necessarily-disabled children, who often benefit from exploring by touch as well as sight.

Speaking on themes, after the “welcome > access” theme, another significant take-away I felt this conference gave me was the obvious significance of disabled voices in spaces of museum accessibility, a realm the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) is versed in. Katie Shelley, the Manager of Access Initiatives at the TMA was one of the featured speakers of the conference and it is a worthwhile goal to pursue this sort of commitment to accessibility in all spaces, but especially cultural and historical sites. Though I am not a part of any museum or historical site, thus am not currently seeking to apply any physical accessibility or inclusive exhibitions, this does give me inspiration and an expansion on my accessibility training within social media and the possible future opportunities I hope to have in curating exhibits (as someone who is planning to enter graduate school for a museum studies degree) and working to make it enjoyable and explicitly for everyone.