Sistema Museale dell’Università di Pisa: accessibilità e inclusione sociale

A welcoming museum is an accessible museum. An accessible museum is an inclusive museum. Making a museum accessible and inclusive is making it available to society. The concept of accessibility must not be limited to the removal of architectural barriers: the museum must remove sensory, cognitive but also cultural, emotional and even economic barriers, so that every user can feel an active part in the museum experience. An accessible and inclusive museum is an empathic place: the active participation is the first strategy for the involvement in such experience. The destination of these projects to all audiences offers an important and delicate opportunity to formulate and re-formulate museum educational strategies. The Museum System of the University of Pisa, including ten museums, promotes inclusion initiatives. Three examples: 1) “Museums and Alzheimer”: since 2014 specific initiatives were dedicated to people suffering from mild Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias and their caregivers, with the aim of encouraging creative expression. 2) “Touch this button”: in 2017, thanks to a collaboration with the Italian Association of People Down of Pisa, the Computer Museum activated a laboratory dedicated to the creation of objects with disused electronic materials. The objects were included in the assortment of gadgets of the museum bookshop. 3) “Botanical Garden in LIS”: an audio-video guide is available in LIS (Italian Sign Language) in 2019. The insertion of subtitles, audio tracks, music and supporting images, make the audio-video guides “for all”: deaf, visually impaired, blind and deaf.