Museum Accessibility (DM-GY 9103)

Spring 2024: Access and Assistive Technology in Historic Sites and Museums (Amy Hurst and Tripta Velamoor)

Students worked in teams to develop prototypes for individuals with diverse motor, cognitive, sensory, and behavior-emotional abilities interested in visiting museums, art galleries, and historic sites. 

Students concluded the semester by creating final presentation videos summarizing their goals and progress over the semester. 

Student projects focused on the following topics:

Spring 2023: Access and Assistive Technology in Historic Sites and Museums (Anita Perr and Amy Hurst)

Students worked in teams to develop prototypes for individuals with diverse motor, cognitive, sensory, and behavior-emotional abilities interested in visiting museums and historic sites.  This semester we collaborated with Fort Ticonderoga, the Grey Art Gallery at NYU, and Museum Senses. 

Students concluded the semester by creating final presentation videos summarizing their goals and progress over the semester. 

Student projects focused on the following topics:

Spring 2022: Access and Assistive Technology in Historic Sites and Museums (Anita Perr and Amy Hurst)

This multidisciplinary course allows students from a variety of backgrounds to work together to learn about and develop assistive technology for historical sites and museums. Students worked in teams to develop prototypes for individuals with diverse motor, cognitive, sensory, and behavior-emotional abilities. 

Student projects focused on the following topics:

Spring 2021: Access and Assistive Technology in Historic Sites and Museums (Anita Perr and Amy Hurst)

This multidisciplinary course allows students from a variety of backgrounds to work together to learn about and develop assistive technology for historical sites and museums. Students will work in teams to develop prototypes for individuals with diverse motor, cognitive, sensory, and behavior-emotional abilities. This class is part of an IMLS grant between NYU and the Intrepid museum, and student work was featured in an exhibit on Making History Accessible at the Intrepid museum in Fall 2021.

Student projects focused on the following topics:

Spring 2020: Access and Assistive Technology in Historic Sites and Museums (Anita Perr and Amy Hurst)

This multidisciplinary course allows students from a variety of backgrounds to work together to learn about and develop assistive technology for historical sites and museums. Students will work in teams to develop prototypes for individuals with diverse motor, cognitive, sensory, and behavior-emotional abilities.

Students worked on the following projects to address the accessibility of museum interpretation in collaboration with staff from the Intrepid Air, Sea, and Space Museum and a working group of museum and disability experts. 

This class is part of an IMLS grant between NYU and the Intrepid museum. 

Spring 2017: Cooper Hewitt Co-Lab (Diana Castro, Claire Kearney-Volpe)

This interdisciplinary graduate-level course will bring together students from across NYU to reimagine the collection of the Cooper Hewitt (Smithsonian Design Museum) for museumgoers with disabilities. Through multiple site visits, the Cooper Hewitt (set in the Andrew Carnegie Mansion on the Upper East Side) served as both a client and playground for us to design without barriers. Students will learned and employed a human-centered approach to the design and development of an accessibility framework for their galleries, website, and API to create a more inclusive museum-going experience.

Students worked on the following projects in collaboration with staff from the Cooper Hewitt Museum:

More information can be found on the Cooper Hewitt Blog.