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Making Your Exhibition Accessible: Getting Started

Most of what matters costs nothing and has to be decided early — label contrast, a seat, a written description of the sound, and a route a wheelchair can take. Retrofitting any of it after the build is where the expense comes from.

7 min read

You have an interactive piece going into a space. Someone asks whether it is accessible. The honest answer, for most new-media work, is “partly, by accident.”

This is a practical starting point: what to decide, when to decide it, and which things genuinely cannot be fixed later.

The one principle that saves money

Decide accessibility while the work is still changeable.

Almost every accommodation is cheap during design and expensive afterwards. Label contrast is a choice when you set up the document and a reprint once it is mounted. A seat is a furniture decision early and a floor-plan renegotiation late. An alternative way to trigger an interaction is an afternoon of code before the build and a rewrite after it.

The second principle, and it is the one that changes how you think: accommodations are rarely used only by the people they were designed for. Captions get read by people in noisy rooms. Seating gets used by anyone tired. A tactile model gets touched by everybody. This is the curb-cut effect, and it means accessible decisions usually make the show better rather than merely more compliant.

Start with the route

Before anything about the artwork: can someone get to it?

  • Step-free route from the entrance to the work, and to everything you expect people to read
  • Clear path width throughout — and remember that your own cable runs, plinths and crowd are what narrows it
  • Turning space at dead ends. A corridor that terminates at your piece needs room to turn a wheelchair around
  • Thresholds and cable crossings. Gaffer-taped cable is a trip hazard and a wheel obstacle. Use proper cable ramps or route cables overhead
  • Lighting on the route, especially where level changes

Walk it yourself, slowly, then walk it again imagining you cannot step over anything. Most problems are found this way in ten minutes.

Labels and text

The most common accessibility failure in art spaces is text nobody can read, and it is entirely self-inflicted.

  • High contrast. Dark text on light, or light on dark. Grey-on-grey labels are a design affectation that excludes people.
  • Large type. Err considerably larger than looks elegant in your layout program. Print one and read it at the height and distance a visitor will.
  • Mount at a readable height — within reach and sight for someone seated as well as standing
  • Matte finish. Gloss laminate under gallery spotlights is unreadable at the exact angle people stand.
  • Plain language first. One clear sentence about what the thing is, before the conceptual framing. This helps everybody, including people who speak your language as a second one.
  • Large-print copies of all wall text, available at the entrance. A ring-bound folder costs almost nothing and is the single highest-value accommodation per pound spent.

If your work has sound

Sound-based and audio-reactive work needs specific thought, because the default assumption is that everyone hears it.

  • Write a description of the sound. Not a track listing — a description of what is heard and how it behaves. This is the audio equivalent of alt text, it takes fifteen minutes, and almost nobody does it.
  • Caption any speech. If a work contains spoken content, it needs captions or a transcript. This is not optional for the work to be legible.
  • Make the sound visible somewhere. If visuals respond to audio, the relationship can be the accessible route in — but only if the correspondence is clear enough to read.
  • Consider a hearing loop if your venue has one, and ask; many do and nobody mentions it.
  • Keep levels sane. A piece that is painfully loud excludes people with hyperacusis, people with hearing aids, and people who simply do not want it. If loudness is the point, say so at the entrance.

If your work is visual

  • Describe it in words, somewhere visitors can get the words. A short written description of the visual content, available in print and on your site.
  • Tactile alternatives where feasible — a 3D print of the sculpture, a textured version of the image, the physical object the projection is of. For digital work, the tactile version is often easy to fabricate and disproportionately valuable.
  • Do not rely on colour alone to convey information. The standard contrast guidance for digital interfaces applies to projections and screens in a gallery too.
  • Avoid flashing. Rapid flashing can trigger seizures. If your work flashes, that is a warning at the entrance and a decision about whether the flashing is essential.

If your work is interactive

This is where new-media practice has the most to fix, and the most room to do it well.

Offer more than one way to trigger it. A piece that only responds to a hand gesture at a fixed height excludes anyone who cannot make that gesture at that height. A second input — a button, a proximity sensor, a longer dwell time — is usually a small change.

Check the physical demands. Reach, grip strength, standing duration, head movement. Ask yourself which of these your piece requires and whether it has to.

Allow time. Interactions with short timeouts exclude people who move or process more slowly. Generous or absent timeouts cost nothing.

Seating within the work. If your piece takes six minutes to experience properly, someone needs to be able to sit for six minutes. A single stool changes who can engage with it.

Say what the interaction is. A clear instruction at the entrance to the piece — what to do, what will happen — removes the need to work it out by trial and error, which is harder for some visitors than others.

Things that cost nothing

  • A seat in the room
  • Large-print wall text in a folder
  • A written description of sound and visual content
  • Telling people what is in the show before they arrive — levels, loudness, flashing, floor surface, whether there is seating, where the toilets are. Publish it on the show’s page. This is called an access guide and it lets people decide for themselves rather than find out.
  • A quiet moment or a quiet route — somewhere in the building without your soundtrack
  • Asking your venue what they already have. Loops, wheelchairs, staff trained in assistance, relaxed-opening programmes. Venues frequently have provision that artists never ask about.

Things to budget for

  • Captioning and transcripts if there is substantial speech
  • Audio description for visually-led work, which is a professional skill and worth paying for
  • BSL or sign-language interpretation for openings and talks, booked well ahead
  • Tactile fabrication
  • Sensory-friendly or relaxed hours, which cost staff time rather than money

Most arts funders will support these costs, and several expect to see them in the budget. Writing them in strengthens an application rather than weakening it — see our guide to grant writing.

How to check

Ask disabled people, and pay them. Consultation is work. An access consultant or a paid access advisor will find things in an hour that you will not find in a month, because they are reading the space with a different set of constraints.

Run the simple checks yourself first, so you are not paying someone to tell you about your label contrast:

  1. Print a label and read it at visitor distance in the actual lighting
  2. Traverse the whole route without stepping over anything
  3. Experience your own piece seated
  4. Turn the sound off and see what remains
  5. Close your eyes and ask what a companion would have to describe
  6. Time the interaction and double it

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