The Americans with Disabilities Act requires public accommodations (businesses and non-profit organizations) to provide goods and services to people with disabilities on an equal basis with the rest of the public.  Museums, like other businesses, that serve the public are to allow visitors with disabilities to fully experience all that museums have to offer, including exhibitions, programs, special events, publications, and videos.

The New York Times wrote an article titled “Welcoming Art Lovers With Disabilities.” It discusses that a museum held public exhibition of original art made in its “Seeing Through Drawing” classes. This exhibit was done to accommodate people who were blind or partly sighted. The art was described to them and they were allowed to touch it as well. Another museum held tours in American Sign Language to accommodate people who were deaf. This museum also had new “multisensory stations” at an allotted time which would allow those with a range of disabilities to experience exhibits though scent, touch, music and verbal imaging, or describing things for people with vision impairment. Another museum provided a wheelchair to accommodate those with mobility impairments. There are newer programs which allow families with children on the autism spectrum and cognitive disabilities to arrive early and receive materials in advance to get familiar with the building and exhibits. A different museum stressed to accommodate persons with disabilities and those without to have access to the same devices and content. Technology has played a huge role in helping to accommodate a larger variety of people with disabilities. Museum efforts to accommodate persons with disabilities are thought to increase due to the increase in the amount of people who have disabilities here in the U.S..

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, museums must make reasonable modifications in its policies, practices, and procedures in order to accommodate individuals with disabilities.  Theses modifications are not required if it would “fundamentally alter” the goods, services, or operations of the public accommodation.  Furthermore, they must provide auxiliary aids and services when they are necessary to ensure effective communication with individuals with hearing, vision, or speech impairments.  “Auxiliary aids” include such services or devices as qualified interpreters, assistive listening headsets, television captioning and decoders, telecommunications devices for deaf persons (TDD’s), videotext displays, readers, taped texts, brailled materials, and large print materials.  Auxiliary aids that would result in an undue burden, (i.e., “significant difficulty or expense”) or in a fundamental alteration in the nature of the goods or services are not required by the regulation. However, a public accommodation must still furnish another auxiliary aid, if available, that does not result in a fundamental alteration or an undue burden.

Here, the museums have been offering modifications through auxiliary aids.  These are wonderful improvements for accommodations. The current drawbacks are that as it stands each museum is only accommodating certain individuals with certain disabilities.  Is it enough to accommodate only certain disabilities, and say that they have been compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act?