Life Experience Informs Museum Accessibility Advocate

An alum turned accessibility advocate is helping UC’s Teece Museum of Classical Antiquities and the wider heritage community to enhance accessibility.

Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury (UC) graduate and former Teece Museum gallery host, Amy Boswell-Hore, was engaged to investigate ways to make the UC museum more accessible to the disabled community, and to provide recommendations that could be used in other heritage buildings.

"Accessibility isn’t just about putting a ramp in. It’s also how you interact with disabled people, and the accommodations you make to your practice and environment, so that the person visiting the museum has as good an experience as a non-disabled person,” Boswell-Hore says.

Drawing from her family's diverse experiences with disability and her own travels to museums, galleries, and cultural sites worldwide, Boswell-Hore offers best practice recommendations based on these insights through her business Access Quest New Zealand, which she launched to advocate for disabled people.

“My dad is blind, my mum has a chronic illness that affects her mobility and hearing, my late sister was a wheelchair user, and I’m autistic, so I’m really used to the realities of accessibility,” Boswell-Hore says.

It’s almost impossible to visit a museum or gallery in Aotearoa New Zealand without facing a barrier, she says. “The way these institutions are designed means that they focus on a person being able to see, which means that they are inaccessible to a wide variety of people including my blind father. On top of that, exhibitions are made inaccessible by design elements like platforms, lack of seating, and loud noises or bright lights. Even a shiny label can make it difficult for people to enjoy the space. Unfortunately, people aren't trained to know how their designs affect the disabled community."

Boswell-Hore says people often shy away from thinking about accessibility issues, expecting it will cost too much and be too difficult. Architects and designers don’t always have the training to think about disabled people and their needs. However, 2013 Statistics New Zealand figures indicated that 24% of New Zealanders identified as disabled – a figure increasing with our aging population demographic, she points out.

The Teece Museum was designed to house the University’s rare Logie Collection in a space where visitors can explore more than 3,000 years of history through a collection of Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Near Eastern artefacts. The boutique museum in UC Arts City Location, at Te Matatiki Toi OraChristchurch Arts Centre, is named after the Teece family who generously supported the new facility.

“The Teece Museum curators are doing some really amazing things already in this space. The effort and attention towards people with disabilities was very clear. Even so, sometimes someone who has lived experience themselves can point out things they might not have considered,” Boswell-Hore says.

“With the Teece there are some things that will be fairly easy to implement; for example signage changes, and painting a support beam in a different colour so people don’t walk into it in an all-white room. Other things like Braille signage and a series of New Zealand Sign Language videos describing artefacts could be considered for the future. Often small inexpensive changes will make the biggest differences for some people.” 

A Christchurch City Council intangible heritage grant funded the accessibility audit at the Teece museum, and UC funded a focus group of people with disabilities to give their feedback and recommendations.

Following the audit, the Teece Museum hosted an accessibility workshop for museums and galleries in association with Arts Access. Boswell-Hore will give a public talk, Accessible Heritage: Opening heritage spaces to the disabled community, as part of the Christchurch Heritage Festival on Thursday, 24 October, 5.30 – 6.30pm at the Teece Museum of Classical Antiquities, UC Arts City Location, The Arts Centre, 3 Hereford St, Christchurch. 

UC is committed to improving accessibility and to reducing inequalities. Find out more about disability at UC.  

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