Accessibility, in its most general meaning, refers to the lack of barriers and obstacles of any kind in the provision of any right to individuals to enable them to participate fully in society. The goal of the entire accessibility framework is to ensure that persons with various disabilities can enjoy the same products, services, and opportunities as any other person, including the museum sector.
The need to consider digital accessibility starts from the quasi-omnipresence of the digital into our lives during the last decades. Digital accessibility is not mere web accessibility as the concept refers to the accessibility of all digital materials, irrespective of the storage medium, be it on the World Wide Web or a hard drive, be it audio, video, image or text, electronic documents, mobile applications, platform, interface, info kiosk, animation or even artificial intelligence.
Digital accessibility has extended to the museum sector as well and has become an important feature hereof. Therefore, when designing digital content, one needs to take visitors’ capabilities into account, paying particular attention to persons with various impairments and their specific needs. Moreover, such content and the related devices need to be extremely user-friendly and take the daily routines and expectations of all end-users into account.
To understand the digital capabilities of museum visitors, one should consider not only their age group but also social background elements such as their rural or urban origin, work profile, and various living habits.
American author Marc Prensky introduced the concept of “digital native” to refer to people who are particularly skilled in using digital technology, as well as the one of “digital immigrants”, which he used to designate people born before the advent of the internet and whose early life was mostly marked by print and television.
Digital natives include Millennials or Generation Y (born between 1981 and 1996), Generation Z (1997–2012), and Generation Alpha (2013 onwards). People from Generation Z and Generation Alpha easily consume information through various digital channels; however, they are also known for frequently becoming addicted to such technology.
One question that we should ask ourselves is whether the digital instead of helping people risks to become a hindering element, even a disability for those who find it difficult to use it. In the context of the rapid evolution of technology and its nowadays omnipresence in our lives, official statistics of the European Union consider the adaptability to such progress as manifested by people of various generations, and the conditioning of a whole series of economic, geographic, and demographic factors, pointing out the rather large differences in the individual’s digital skills, as shown in the report.
Thus, in 2023, 44% of the total EU population lacked basic digital skills, while more than 90% used the internet at least once a week. The highest rates of digital technology usage were recorded in the Netherlands (83%) and Finland (82%), followed by Ireland (73%), Denmark (70%), and Czechia (69%). In contrast, Romania (28%) and Bulgaria (36%) were at the lower end, which can be attributed to significant differences between urban and rural areas in access to the digital world.
In their efforts for accessibility, museums should consider the differences between the above-represented profiles of their end-users to provide digital content adapted to their capabilities.
References:
Marc Prensky, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, 2001, in On the Horizon, Volume 9 Issue 5, MCB University Press, Oct. 2001
Digitalisation in Europe – 2024 edition
Accessible EU, June 29th 2023
