FACS - Full access to cultural spaces: towards an integrated, comprehensive model for accessibility to museums and exhibitions

This project aims to tackle the virtually unexplored field of accessibility to museums and exhibitions from a truly interdisciplinary perspective. The project itself has been conceived not simply as inter-, but transdisciplinary from the very onset, as a full integration of competences, knowledge and experiences is in its very essence. As for its development, after evaluating current practices, experiences and the state of the art in international eesearch in access services, the project aims to take a twofold, empirical path. First of all, it aims to provide an interdisciplinary analysis of two, important museums selected as case studies (Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Torino, and Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Ancona), from the linguistic, technological, museological, architectural and cognitive points of view. The main focus will be on technologies used for accessibility and their possible simplification and standardization. Secondly, the project involves a series of eye-tracking tests within the same museums, in order to identify the saliency of elements on display and the overall fruition of selected sections by tracking the movements of the eyes of a selected sample of visitors. Both empirical paths involve the recourse to qualitative as well as quantitative analysis. The data from empirical analyses shall subsequently be combined, with the support of international advisors, in order to draw up a comprehensive, integrated and user-friendly model for universal accessibility to museums and exhibitions. The ultimate aim of the project is to optimize all variables in the provision of appropriate, innovative access services: from the technologies used to their effective usability, from the texts designed for access to their appropriate reception by diverse categories of the population. In line with the principles of universal design, and taking into account the increasing need for easy-to-use, smart technologies, this project wishes to contribute to making accessibility more and more a reality, a priority and a true form of inclusion.