- [Announcer] Welcome to TPGI's "Real People, Real Stories" podcast, where you'll find interesting and diverse stories from folks working to make the world a more inclusive place. - Hey, welcome to the "Real People, Real Stories" podcast, brought to you by TPGI. I'm your host, Mark Miller, thanking you for helping us keep it accessible. Do us a favor. If you're enjoying the "Real People, Real Stories" podcast, share it, tell someone about it. Hey, even link to it from your accessible website. Welcome everyone. I'm very, very excited to be here with all of you today. Particularly excited to have my co-host, Dara, with me. Welcome, how are you? - Doing good. - Excellent. And I know you're particularly excited about our guests today. Would you like to introduce them? - I will, yes. I am a big fan of museums, and both of our guests are very involved with museums. This is Heather Pressman, and Danielle Schultz, and they're here to tell us about accessibility at museums. - Beautiful. - And they've written a book on it. - They've written a whole book on it, that's pretty good. You're pretty serious about your museums, if that's the case. Well, Heather and Danielle, welcome. We really appreciate you joining us on the podcast today. So I'd love to get right into this, and you know, accessibility, obviously that's what we're here for. It's a very important topic to us, and, it's real interesting to me that you guys have zeroed in sort of one area to be accessible. So tell us how that came about, and then particularly, how'd that, like, lead into a book? - That's a great question. I can start. So we both came to accessibility in different ways, but, if you've read the book, the person that we talk about in the very beginning, Jamie, was a friend of mine when I was in college. And so, I had this experience with her, where we went to an institute for the blind in Italy, and she was using tactile 3-D, their plaster cast artworks. And the woman who was guiding her through looking at this painting, took her fingers and showed her how the river in this one particular painting got smaller as it went back, as perspective, right? - Right. - And she was 40 at the time, my friend, and that was like, you could see the light bulb go off. It was the first time in her life she truly understood what perspective was. - Oh wow. - Which blew my mind. And so, that was what really got me thinking about how I was able to enjoy cultural experiences, versus somebody like her who, you know, if it hadn't been for this particular support, this particular program being available, like, who knows how long, or if she ever would've understood perspective. So. - Do you know what's really interesting about that? Is, Italy is where perspective was discovered. - Yeah. - So perfect. - Yeah, through, it's absolutely a perfect story. And just for our listeners, if you're unfamiliar with us, I'm gonna disclose this to you guys. I'm an art geek too, I'm actually a fine arts major, so. - Nice. - Yeah. - I was a minor in college. - Hey, that's great. - But, so, in the Italian Renaissance, I believe it was, or predating the Italian Renaissance, the camera, and I'm using air quotes here, was really invented. And basically, it was a very dark phone booth with a hole, tiny hole poked in the side of it. And then, so cast on the other side of the wall was an image, like a pinhole camera if everybody's heard of that, but upside down, and the two-dimensionalization of the image, it was the first time people had seen that, that's what gave us perspective, and that's what launched all that. So, it's an amazing story, that. So, here's my question for you. I'm assuming this friend of yours, Jamie, you said, is blind, right? - Mm-hmm. - And this is the first kind of aha moment, or light bulb that goes off where this concept of perspective is really conveyed to Jamie, in a way that, that they understand, right? I guess. What was, did you have a conversation of, like, what is perspective to you? Because the interesting thing to me, I guess, was Jamie blind from birth, or? - Yeah. - Yeah, is that, like, just even in the world, looking down a street in real life, as something, so what was their, how did they describe that experience, or describe that epiphany to you? - We actually didn't really talk about it, and you know, in retrospect, I wish we had. But you know, I was just watching, like, watching her, and watching kind of her face, and you know, body language and things like that, and having my own, like, aha moment too, at the same time. So, but yeah, that would've been an interesting conversation to have. - Beautiful. And like the camera inspired an entire artistic movement, pretty much, or was responsible for it, this inspires you, Heather, to think about accessibility in the context of a art museum. - In museums generally, yeah. - In museums generally. And then, so where does it go from there? - So, I moved to Denver, eventually, and had an interest in accessibility in museums, and really wanted to get more deeply into that work. And so, I basically started cold emailing people in town, including Danielle. So. - Yeah, and I kind of came from it, I had my own kind of epiphany. I am also an artist, art background, anthropology, so I was always interested in the role of arts to really help people express themselves. And when I was in graduate school, I worked at a place called The Arc of the Arts in Austin. And it was a community art space that really provided amazing quality arts education to people with disabilities, and really, being able to see the power of art to help people who don't always have a voice, because of, either they don't physically have one, or because it's always been taken away from them, because seen as a person with a disability, they're not always in control of their own agenda. And so, I really wanted to see how the arts, and how museums could be that place. 'Cause I loved going to museums. I had a wonderful experience, but I went to a lot of them, and realized after working a lot with these folks, that they're really unaccessible, and really not made for diverse experiences. And so, when I was in Denver, I was working at The Denver Art Museum in accessibility, and connected with Heather, because we both were really interested in this, and I think what's fascinating is that, you know, the museum world is relatively small. Museum education is even smaller. And then accessibility within museum education is really tiny, so you do get to know the same folks. And also, just because there aren't that many of us doing this work, we're also really looking to find those connections and collaborations. And so when Heather and I started talking, we realized that there wasn't a lot being shared about best practices around museum accessibility. And so, we started putting our heads together, and saying, well what can we do to help this? And so, we kind of came up with a presentation that was kind of, what are 10 ways that you can make your museum more accessible? And we started kind of taking that out to different museum conferences, small scale, up all the way to the American Alliance of Museums Conference, which is kind of the like annual big museum meeting. And it was just fascinating, 'cause as I said, we just kept talking to more and more people who were enthused, and were like, yeah, I don't have anyone to talk to about this type of stuff, and I don't know where to go when starting this. And so we realized there was really a need to have just a single place to have a lot of this information, because we would really just be calling each other, and being like, do you know about this? Do you know about that? Oh, okay, I found this article. Or I, you know, have this group that I've been talking with. And so, it was really just trying to kind of connect the dots. - What do you find are some of the unique accessibility challenges to a museum? You know, or museum, or the experience of experiencing art, or something like that? Like, I guess that top 10 list that you're talking about. Like kind of, what kind of stuff falls in that? - Yeah. I mean, I think what what's interesting, too, is, Heather and I come from similar but different perspectives, which is great, is that, I'm more, much more arts, and she's historic in history and so. But with both of them, there's, I think this, in some ways, this kind of set expectation on how you do things. Well we've been doing things like this forever and ever, so that's how we have to continue it, so that even though we're in these creative fields, there's sometimes, yeah, kind of an ignorance of like, well, can we try something different, or could we do something different? And that comes a lot with, I think the kind of fear of like, oh, you can try something. Go ahead, Heather. - Oh I was gonna say, yeah, I mean, historians and preservationists are absolutely the worst. Because, this is how we've always done things, like, that's historical, so why should we change? - Makes sense for a historian, doesn't it? - Right. - Well, I guess that makes me wonder, how do you pitch it to them? That like, change in this area, even if in no other area, how do you pitch that, change in this area is good, and you should do it? Like how, what's the way you convince them of that? - Yeah, so I mean, like Danielle said, you know, we had done this presentation, and we saw that there was an interest, and so it's actually not, it's not hard to get people interested. The bigger barrier is, just getting them to understand that like, it doesn't take millions of dollars to do this. Like, it can, and if you have it, great. Spend it. You know, but one of the things that we sort of preach a lot, is, it's better to do something than nothing. And so, and there's a ton of free and low cost things that you can do, to even just get the ball rolling at your organization. I reminded Danielle of a memory that I had from one of the first times we did the presentation, which was, little old lady who came up to us, and was like, I work at a volunteer-run historic site in, you know, the western slope of Colorado. Here's my problem, like, what do I do? She's like, cause we don't have any money. And so we helped, you know, give her a few ideas to at least get something going, so that she could get more buy-in from the people who she works with. - Mm-hmm. But I think to your question, Dara, of, what are the things we do, and, we do this from the beginning of the book, we also got inspiration of this from Betty Siegel, who is a great proponent from the Kennedy Center on accessibility, and, it's these kind of five pillars of, you know, number one, it's the right thing to do. Right? Like you want to be, people need to be able to access things. But then, because even though museums are nonprofits, and so they are mission-based and vision-based, you do still have to speak to the bottom line. So you also have to make the business case. And the business case is that, one in four people in North America have some sort of disability. So then, regardless of what state or city you're in, you can look at demographics and you can say, this is X amount of people who are not coming to your museum if it is inaccessible. And then, expanding upon that is, what are the friends and families of folks who have disabilities, who are also not coming, because they know that their loved one, or their family member has been excluded, so they're not coming. So if you're saying, this is really an untapped audience, or like, an undertapped audience, that you can really engage with. Then of course, there's the legality, you know, and that's been coming into stark clarity over the past couple years, especially around online and digital accessibility of people's websites, and making sure that those are legal, 'cause people can be sued for that. So those are the ways that we really try and pitch it of, getting people on board, and to understanding. But then to Heather's point, once people are there, then it can become overwhelming. Because if you don't start incrementally, it's like, how do you go from zero to a hundred? That becomes overwhelming, and a lot of places, honestly, We'll just stop and just say, it's too much, we can't do it. And so what we've tried to do in the book, is, to portion out, like, here are just incremental steps you can do, that any museum of any size, any scope and scale can do. And to Heather's point, on the range of, really on the cheap, to having a lot more money. And that's, again, where it's interesting to think of that, you can't use that as an excuse if you're a small volunteer-run museum. Well, we have no support. Like nope, you can still do something. - Yeah. Dara and I are nodding our heads, because like, you're just sitting there point by point, saying, essentially, the exact same things that we do in digital accessibility. - Yeah, like that is the TPGI marketing. - That's the yeah, that's the way it is. And I think one of the most important aspects of all this, is that concept of doing something. That you're, you know, you're absolutely right. Whether it's digital accessibility, whether it's the accessibility of museums or anything, improvement is just incredibly valuable in and of itself, and perfection is sort of, just like a fool's game, right? - Yeah. - Like if you sit there and go, we gotta be perfection, we gotta do everything, like of course, you're gonna be overwhelmed, so. - And it's almost impossible, right? - It is impossible. - 'Cause what is gonna be perfect now, in five years, is gonna be totally different. - And that's exactly, I mean, and you think about how rapid, like, development is, right? Like, your five years is our few months. - Exactly, yeah. - So it is important to do something, and it's also important to do something that's sustainable, and it's important to continue to keep an eye on it, and your reasons, I mean, you're, you know. It's the right thing, the ROI behind it, you know, one out of four people with disabilities. Like, it just that, the way you're evangelizing, I think is just transferrable all over the place. And it's fantastic to see it being used in specific scenarios like yours. - Curious. - So I dunno if you have any questions, Dara, but I'm, I'm dying to find out, like, how did you go to like, we're interested in this, like, hey, let's write a book. Right? Like, that's a huge thing. - Yeah, that was Heather, man. - Yeah. - Heather's our, like, hey you wanna try this? Hey, you wanna try this? - Yeah, yeah. I was at the American Alliance of Museums Conference, and they had posters around that were basically like, hey, have a book idea? Pitch it to us. So I remember getting back from the conference, and sending Danielle an email, and I think the subject line was something along the lines of like, it's okay to say no, or tell me I've lost my mind. - Am I nuts for doing this? - Right. - I said, so, here's what I saw. What do you think? And they, you know, they were very enthusiastic about the pitch idea, and so we you know, spent a year-ish, writing the book, it was definitely a labor of love. Lots of late nights, but. - Yeah. Yeah. - So, but totally worth it. So. Yeah, I mean we really took the presentation that we had been doing, and broke it into chapters more or less. We changed a few things, but, that was sort of how we approached the publisher with it, and said, you know, here's our idea. Here's why it's important. What do you think? - And I think what. - And fortunately, they said yes. - Yeah, yeah, fortunately, fortunately. And I think what really, and now after reflecting on it, since it's been out for over a year, and looking at other books in the field, it is, you know, it is narrow that it's museums. But of course, I think you could still make the case that it's for cultural sector organizations. 'Cause I have folks in the botanic gardens field who have talked about how it's been impactful, libraries, but that what I think our book does that is different, is that, it's much more practical. I mean that's in the title, right? Practical. - Have we said the title? - Oh, yeah, we should say a title. - They're like, what is this book that's on here? - Dara, you say the title. You've probably already started reading the book. - It sounds silly. I never actually wrote down the title. - Yes, you did. You gave it to me. - There we go, Heather has it. - Really, I did? - "The Art of Access: A Practical Guide "For Museum Accessibility." I guess I could have read it from there, instead of over here, I know. - It's all good. - Yeah, you did. But if you're like me, you just, you know. Speaking of disabilities with my ADD, and my dyslexia, stuff jumps outta my head like that. - That's okay, yeah. - I've gotta have notes. But yeah, so that's, so the practical, the word practical in that title is really where you guys were focused. - Yeah, 'cause we really wanted to focus on the audience being people like us, who are actually in the museum field, who want to do this. Because what happens a lot, I think it's changing, but what happens a lot, is, there's usually one person who works in a museum, and access has been added on to what they're doing. So you work in education, usually. Okay. Accessibility is also gonna be part of your job. And because of that, it's usually people who don't always have experience, they might have a lot of passion, but it's really hard to know where to start. And so, that's what we wanted to provide, was something for people, who, either they're starting out, or they're like us and they've been doing it for a while, but they really wanna know the practical. The theory, as we said at the beginning. Like the why? People get the why. But then it's that next step that, really, we didn't see a resource for, and that's what we really wanted to provide. And yes, Heather said, thankfully, people. And we've gotten some good feedback, that it has been helpful, which is great. And it's also opened up, you know, I think great conversations, which is what a book should do, of like, well what else could you explore? Or, what more resources are there? Or, what other questions are not answered? - Well I'm actually curious to bounce back to what you said earlier about, that it can help more people be able to go to the museum, and enjoy the museum. You, I read up on how you did low sensory mornings at the Denver Art Museum. And did you, when you were there, did you see people who had never showed up to the museum before, being there during that time? I'd love to hear more about that. - Absolutely. Yeah, so our low sensory mornings, that are now called sensory friendly, are really intended to be times when the museum was open, and really, just dedicated to people with neurodiversity, or folks who either are on the autism spectrum, or have some sort of sensory sensitivities. And I would say, by far, the vast majority of people coming would be first time visitors who never felt comfortable coming to an art museum. 'Cause that is what is unique, is, there's a lot of these types of programs at children's museums, at history museums, nature and science museums, 'cause those are always seen as much more hands-on, family-friendly museums. And art museums just aren't, 'cause art museums, for the longest time, and we're still really pushing against that, are seen as this white box place that is for people who have PhDs in art history, and you have to know a certain amount, and you're not supposed to talk, you're not supposed to touch, you're not supposed to do anything. And so we, when we started the program, and we really thought about how are we creating a space that's welcoming and barrier-free for folks who just don't feel comfortable in this? You know, we turn down the sounds, we turn down the lights as much as possible, we limit how many people can be in this space, we're training the staff who are there to make sure to understand how they are approaching people if they do need to speak with them. We're providing, like, fidgets and other hands-on materials that if people need them during their visit, they can, to just accommodate them. And we've seen just wild success. But it is mostly first-time visitors. We're starting to see people coming back, and return visitors, which is the sign of success. Because part of it is, we wanted to build up a confidence in coming back, and saying, I feel like this is a space for me. Because, it's hard. And I mean, Heather can speak to this, 'cause she's, you know, she's a mother of a neurodiverse son, and so she knows that it's tough coming into places like my museum. - He's also seven, so. But yeah, yeah, there are certain places that we just don't go because it's, it's too hard for us as a family, to have a good experience all around, which just means that yeah, there's certain places that we just don't go. But when places do have supports in place, specialized programs, things like that, it makes it a little bit easier. And just also, from a parent perspective, it's great to be around people who get it. Like that's honestly, like, part of why some of the places that we don't go to, it's because we just don't wanna have to deal with the people who don't get it. - You just wanna have a, for lack of a better way to say it, a regular experience, and you don't wanna have to explain yourself all the time, over and over again, yeah. So there's something that we talk about a lot in digital accessibility called the Curb Cutout Effect. Right? And you got, so you're nodding your heads. So listeners, if you're not familiar with the Curb Cutout Effect, it's this phenomenon where curb cutouts, those little kind of tiny ramps in the sidewalk were created, primarily for people in wheelchairs, and that needed that ramp access versus, you know, they couldn't step up over a bump. And the reason why it's called the Curb Cutout Effect, is because, people without disabilities started using it. Right? Pushing strollers, roller bags right up it, they even did a study where 80 something percent of people without a reason to use it, just somebody walking would move over to the curb cutout to walk up, versus stepping up on the curb, right? So, it's a case where, making accommodation for a person with a disability actually created something valuable to everyone, right? So listening to you, listening to you talk, you know, Heather, about sort of you as a family, and then, and Danielle, this idea of access, and you made a really interesting comment about like, people felt like they have to have a PhD to go to a museum. In a way, there's almost an access issue across the board, sometimes, in museums. Like, just from that perception standpoint. This is my long-winded way of asking, have you seen, through this effort, kind of a curb cutout effect? Have you seen people who maybe don't have disabilities, or just are adjacent to somebody with a disability kind of have that first time experience, and realize that they can go to a museum and enjoy it, that hadn't before? We're all thinking. - It's a good question, yeah, I'm trying to think if there's, I mean. - I mean maybe you haven't, like. - I have, I also just realized I talk a ton. We're both educators, so I'm trying to make space for Heather. Yes. - You and I both, you and I both. Right? I'm always trying to stay quiet, so Dara can jump in. - I know. - But I have seen it in terms of wall labels. And so, I think this is a really good thing, and of course I'm gonna sing the praises of my museum, 'cause I've been working there for seven years, so they're doing something right. But we have a style guide for our labels, and I honestly, I cannot remember when it was instated, but, we did go across the board and said, labels need to be designed in a way that, essentially, it's people with like an eighth grade education. - Yes, I'm so passionate about this as a concept. - You know about that, right. And like, it seems, and even I think, we might have even taken away the eighth grade, 'cause that's, even in itself, could be limiting and a barrier. But it's saying, if you're using art vocabulary, how are you explaining it? How are you making sure that the content is something that people can engage with? Because if not, yes, there are some people who, they go to a museum and you wanna just look at whatever it is, whether it's the artwork, whether it's the space, and then you read the label secondary. But some people, they want to read that to get more information. And so when we do have that, how are you making sure that everyone, or that the most people possible are able to engage and understand? And that is something that I don't think came, specifically from accessibility, but it was this understanding of like, how are we just making sure that the most people can use this? So kind of like the curb cut. - It was the, yeah, it was the attitude shifts that started to benefit. - Yeah, it was, and I think it was seeing, you know, that we were hearing, again and again, that people were seeing us as very exclusionary, very elitist, and you know, and if you're a museum that is meant to be for your community, and then you also see that, again, the bottom line. You see ticket sales going down, and people not coming, and so you're like, well let's put two and two together. - Yeah, and I can appreciate that because, you know, my wife, like, just flat out sort of gets annoyed and I think has stopped asking me what I think in a museum, because I start to prattle on like the, you know, fine arts major that I am, and she's like, I just thought it looked good. - Right. - You know? Like, all those words, all that stuff you just said, it doesn't matter to me. - Yeah, which is like, it's fine. Yeah. - But she's expressing exactly what you expressed. She's saying, hey, all that stuff is not accessible to me, and it doesn't enhance my enjoyment of it. And, but it's been very good. I mean, all joking aside, it means that we've had to come to, you know, there's a place there, where if the language is changed, if the way I speak about it is changed, and accessible to her, she actually can, you know, we can meet somewhere in the middle. - Right. - And create enjoyment, and it sounds like that's exactly what you guys are trying to do with everyone, not just people with disabilities, particularly people with disabilities. - Yeah. - But what I'll say, oh, go ahead. - Oh, go ahead. - No, no, no, no, no. I'm switching gears a little bit. - No, I was gonna say, we had something similar. I mean, one of the silver linings of COVID was that, so I work at a historic house, and, you know, pre-COVID, the only way to see the house was a 45-minute guided tour offered every half an hour. And when we came back from being closed, we were like, we can't have staff and volunteers in those positions leading tour groups. So, we actually shifted to a self-guided tour, and it's been interesting, because, we now have guided and self-guided options available, but the self-guided option is a great choice for people, because you know, like I always recommend it whenever I get emails about, you know, if we have people who have sensory sensitivities or something like that, I'm like, you can move at your own pace. Like, you know, things like that. If you know, like your wife wanted to just see the house, and not stop and read everything, like, that's an option, and then they can rejoin. So there's just so much more flexibility. - I'll let her know. - Yeah. Yeah, next time you're in Denver. So, I'm glad that we've kept it, because I do think it makes it more accessible to a variety of people, and then the other interesting thing that we saw coming back, once we started offering the self-guided tours was that, we saw an increase in, like, Hispanic families coming, which, we have no idea if that's because it's self-guided, or what it is, but it was an interesting shift that we saw only once we started offering self-guided tours. - Hmm, that is interesting. It'd be interesting to find out why. - So your place is called the Molly Brown House. Right? - Mm-hmm. - Who is Molly Brown? I've been wondering that. - So Margaret Tobin Brown is best known for surviving the sinking of the Titanic. She was a first class passenger, but she was not always wealthy. She was born to Irish immigrant parents. And then she ended up marrying a miner who happened to invest, slash, to help find the largest vein of gold and high yield copper in North America at that point in time, and so they became very wealthy in a short amount of time, but yeah. Mostly she's known for surviving the Titanic, but she did a lot to help women's rights, workers' rights, she helped establish the juvenile justice system in Denver, things like that, so. She did a lot. More than we can tell you in a 45 minute tour. - And that's in Denver? - Mm-hmm. - Interesting, that's an interesting story. - So, the house is a Victorian, you know, home that's been restored to about 1910. - We could, you know, if we could turn this into a history podcast, I think we could just go down a deep rabbit hole there. I kinda want to, but. - Oh yeah, I could talk about Margaret for hours. - I'm sure. - So one thing I wanted to, I know this is kind of backtracking, but you mentioning that kind of curb cut effect. What I think is of interest is, seeing how we've been promoting more accessible practices, and awareness, and understanding has also reached to our staff. So what's been interesting is, I think we're always so focused on visitors, and their accessibility, and their importance, and now I think museums are reflecting a lot more internally. And so, an example is that we have, started with our sensory friendly mornings, but we have these sensory bags, or sensory tools that we provide folks who come to visit. And a lot of museums have these. The Molly Brown House has these items too, that people can engage with. They might look like noise reducing headphones, weighted lap pads, weighted neck pads, fidgets, things like that. But as we were talking to staff about rolling these out, making sure that we'd have these available for visitors, some of our staff, and especially our front facing staff who are working a lot with visitors said, hey, actually we're really, could we have some of these? Like, we would actually really need them. And I think that's important, if, again, we're saying one in four people in North America has a disability, that means one in four staff that are working at these organizations are having them. So I think that's an interesting shift, is that, focusing a lot on what we're providing for visitors is also building the awareness in HR of like, how are we also supporting accessibility of our staff, and especially those with disabilities to feel confident in their work? And that's just been an interesting, yeah, kind of increase. - I know we're getting closer to the end, so I wanted to make sure we talk about this before we finish. I read up, Heather, about the accessibility lounge that you have at the Molly Brown House. And I just wanted, I wanted to hear you talk about that a bit, and and share with everyone. - Yeah. So like I said, pre-COVID, the only way to see the house was on this guided tour. As a historic house, we try to be as accessible as we can, but you know, we're limited to keeping the historic integrity of the house intact. So only the main floor of the house, and then our basement exhibition space is accessible to people who have mobility devices, or just can't do the stairs. So, the board made the decision to actually install a lift that goes to those two spaces, removing part of the back porch area, which didn't really have a whole lot of historic significance, so, that's why. But you know, we wanted to create this welcoming space for people to hang out and wait while they waited to rejoin their tour. So we have a historic bookcase back there that's got some exhibit cases, essentially, like installed on the shelves. We have a box with tactile things that you would see up on the second and third floors. So two of the historic bedrooms have actually damask, we say damask wallpaper, but it's really just damask fabric. So samples of that, we've got some pieces of plaster rose up that you would see on the ceiling, like around the light fixtures. Some of the light switches 'cause we have like, four different kinds of light switches in the house. So there's like the push button kind, which are always fun to play with. You know, a variety of tactile elements like that. And then we worked with a volunteer who had a videography background to create a video tour of the second and third floor, which we just, we have an iPad stand, and an iPad, and we just put it on there and people can choose which room they wanna look at, and you know, it basically shows you everything you would've seen had you gone up to those spaces. So while we can't make it physically accessible for everybody to get up there, you know, our goal was to create as equitable experience as we could. - Nice. Well we do have to start wrapping up. Before we do, Dara, is there anything else that you're dying to know? - I would like to know, you know, since TPGI is a digital accessibility company, I am curious about, when you look at museum's websites, when you're talking about accessibility, what are the most common accessibility errors that you've seen? - Ugh, yeah. - Contrast. - Yep, yep. Contrast is so hard, 'cause everything has to be beautiful, and so there's always really fun colors. I think not having alt text. Honestly, if that's something that you guys would want to do as a big project, is like, figuring out best practices for describing artworks in a short alt text format. 'Cause that is so difficult, and it's on staff to do it. And it's like, how you're condensing something that's so, it's so abstract in some ways, and so complex, into something that could be just easily digestible. I think that's really, that's really tough. - Yeah. I'm really imagining that for like, some art pieces. That would be like. - It's really tough. - For like, for abstract pieces of art, you know, that are like, it's all about the vibes. How do you express the vibe, like? - Exactly, yeah. - Well, and do you express the vibe, or do you create the same opportunity to interpret a vibe, because? - Yeah. - That is where. - I don't wanna beat your vibe, right? - Exactly. And that's where honestly, yeah, another 45 minute podcast to be about, how do you interpret? Because right, like if you're wanting to provide an equitable experience, you just describe how, what it looks like. But then when you're in the museum, you do have ways where people tell you about their interpretation, so. - So my next disclosure about myself here, that I've, I didn't really hold it back, I just forgot about it. I spent five years publishing a magazine on art, theater, literature, music, and was the art writer. So I feel like maybe I'm the one. - Hey, you're the one. - The two sides of it. - Let's talk after this. - I'm gonna send you some artwork. - Yeah. - Well great. Is there anything Heather and Danielle, that you guys, that you'd like to wrap up with? Unfortunately, we can't sit here. I feel like we could sit here and talk about accessibility longer and then we could just sort of move right into history for a while, and then hey, let's wrap it up with art. But we can't do that. Maybe those are spinoff podcasts. - Exactly. - Is there anything else that we just didn't, that you wanna make sure people are left with, either emphasize, or that we didn't quite hit? - I mean, I think the other thing that we, you know, we always say doing something is better than doing nothing, but also just a reminder that the ADA is like the bare minimum of what you should be doing. There's a couple of great sort of ways to think about that. And you know, one as we say, you'll hear like, it's the bottom floor, it's not the ceiling. But one I heard recently, which I just love, and I think is really easy for people to conceptualize, is that, you know, doing the bare minimum the ADA requires of you, is like getting a D in class. It's enough to pass. - It's the A-D-A. That's good. - And then, yeah, in addition to that, it's just that every accessibility is everybody's responsibility. It's not just the person who has it as part of their title. It is the tech team doing digital accessibility. It is the educators, it's the accountants making sure that they're, you know, having vendors who maybe are from disability-owned organizations, things like that. 'Cause I think so much it can be like, well that's not my job, that's someone else's. And trying to say, this is everyone's responsibility. It's important, but. - And the only thing that I would add to that, Mark, is that accessibility is ongoing. It's not just like, check a box and you're done. Like it's something that you need to continually be thinking about and reviewing. - Beautiful, wonderful points to end on. What a fun discussion. I really, really appreciate it. And it's always great to get on the phone with accessibility, and art geeks, and history geeks too, right? - Yeah. - So thank you so much. This is Mark thanking Heather, Danielle, and Dara, and reminding you to keep it accessible. - [Announcer] This podcast has been brought to you by TPGI, the experts in digital accessibility. Stay tuned for more "Real People, Real Stories" podcasts coming soon.