Sonic Accessibility: Increasing Social Equity Through the Inclusive Design of Sound in Museums and Heritage Sites

Abstract

Sound and hearing effect everyone, they are not niche issues. Within the inherently multimodal experience of a museum, sound plays a crucial role in defining whether an environment is inclusive or exclusive. Yet sonic accessibility ‐ the multiplicity of ways that sound influences accessibility and social equity ‐ remains under researched in design and narrowly represented in access legislation. This paper charts the contours of sonic exclusion in museums and other heritage sites around three central themes. The first considers the existing relationship between Inclusive Design and sound and introduces the emerging paradigm of ‘auraldiversity’. The second considers the structural sonic barriers that operate outside of the individual in their experience of the museum environment. The final theme attends to the psycho‐emotional sonic disablement experienced by many d/Deaf and disabled people within cultural institutions. The paper serves as a furthering of opportunity to reverse the hegemony of auditory norms within museums and other heritage sites and positions sonic accessibility as a critical pillar in the expanding understanding of the multimodal museum.

Barriers and Facilitators to Cultural Participation by People with Disabilities: A Narrative Literature Review

“…Access to technologies cannot be assumed for all groups, including people with disabilities on low incomes, but Constantinou, Loizides, and Ioannou (2016) suggest that barriers to a more widespread use of technology for access to cultural content and exhibitions in museums is often not the cost, but awareness and willingness (see Weisen 2012). Furthermore, technologies are more typically explored relative to sensory disabilities than other forms of disability, such as ID (Seale et al 2021), and some groups, such as people with ID, neurodivergent conditions such as dementia, and a broad range of cognitive disabilities, are underrepresented in terms of navigational information design (Renel 2019).…”

Collecting and Exhibiting Traditional and Popular Alpine Folk Music in Austria—A Case Study

“…Discussions on the exhibition of music and consequently on strategies of display have been mainly conducted in the framework of museum studies with reference to selected displays of popular music (Cortez, 2019; Fairchild, 2017; Fryberger, 2019; Renel, 2019). Such work has focused primarily on forms of presenting and experiencing sound in museum exhibitions (Both, 2019; Botts & Palmer, 2019; Leonard, 2010; Venso, 2019).…”

“…Practical approaches especially have dealt with the topic by discussing various case studies and exhibition projects on music or the integration of sound into museum exhibitions (Brabazon & Mallinder, 2006;Cortez, 2016;Fairchild, 2017;Fryberger, 2019;Mortensen & Madsen, 2015;Renel, 2019). This work has also focused on the presentation of narratives in popular music exhibitions (Leonard, 2007) and on the sonic artefacts of music (Bubaris, 2014;Leonard, 2007;Mortensen, 2012;Mortensen & Madsen, 2015).…”

Museum as a Sensory Space: A Discussion of Communication Effect of Multi-Senses in Taizhou Museum

“…With the 'sensory shift', modern museums have begun to reconsider their limitations to the sensory use of objects, and they are starting to explore the potential of multi-sensory solutions to improve knowledge transfer in museums and increase engagement with visitors by connecting them with the sensory properties of historic objects, their contexts and the stories behind, also providing emotionally enriched experiences. With increasing numbers of studies indicating that interacting with sensory objects have social, cognitive and even therapeutic value, especially for people with disabilities [46][47][48][49][50][51][52], museums are enhancing their valuation on 'touch' which is regarded as a therapy tool and a cultural communication platform [53][54][55][56], 'sound' which creates a sense of spatial experience [57,58] and 'smell' which triggers personal memories, imagination and emotion [59][60][61].…”