Evaluating Accessibility in Museums: A Practical Guide

Evaluating Accessibility in Museums bridges accessibility and evaluation through stories that highlight how diverse organizations have developed and grown accessibility initiatives and the vital role that evaluation played in their evolution. Authors share how they worked from a variety of institutional starting points to design programs, exhibitions, and accommodations for visitors with disabilities and how these initiatives were evaluated both during and after implementation. Read about the impact of this work on disabled (and non-disabled) audiences, what staff learned, and conversations about iterating and moving forward. Each story demonstrates how evaluation created more responsive institutions that value diverse communities, invite communication and collaboration, and more meaningfully impact visitors.

Laureen Trainer is Principal of Trainer Evaluation in Denver, CO. She is editor of the blog for the Committee an Audience Research and Evaluation, a Professional Network of the American Alliance of Museums. She has published 19 blogs to date, starting in 2020, and has worked with over a dozen authors. She co-edited a volume of the Journal of Museum Education, Empowering Museum Educators to Evaluate (Volume 40). She has also been a JME peer reviewer for over a decade. She has been involved in the museum world since 1997, first as a museum educator, and starting in 2010, as a museum evaluator at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. In 2013, seeing the need for evaluation in small to mid-size cultural institutions, she became an independent, external evaluator.