Museologist Notes 8

Accessible Evacuation Procedures Part 1

Part 2 of the Accessible Evacuation procedures article can be found here.

I recently had the occasion to attend a webinar on Accessible Evacuation Procedures hosted by Artsbuild Ontario. It was very informative it was both a run down of the laws in Ontario surrounding fire safety codes and ways to improve the accessibility of your disaster plans.

This is something that has been on my mind for some time: the gallery I currently work at is located on the third floor of a historic building. We don’t have a safe refuge point for wheelchair users. The gallery doesn’t have those new fangled elevators that can be used by lay people in an emergency. We don’t have big, strong employees that can safely help disabled guests out. What can we do in a fire situation?

Where to Start?

As with any task in museum accessibility the first question is “where do I start?”

The start for me at this gallery for updating our fire safety and disaster plans is: read the old ones. That’s fairly simple, ask my boss for the files, read them through and make notes for improvements and changes. Not all museums have fire safety codes in place yet, especially new ones. Or they have codes that haven’t been updated in a frightful long time.

If that is the case in your museum, contact the local emergency res ponders. In Ontario, fire departments have ‘fill-in-the-blank’ plans, I would be very surprised if other locations didn’t have similar materials available. You will have to make changes to their plan but it makes for a great starting point.

But how do you make an accessible evacuation plan? As always with museologist notes my best advice is community consultation. This time, however, I need you to consult with disabled people and your local emergency services.

I also recommend reading over the SPECTRUM guide for emergency preparedness (available in English and French). Spectrum is the product of the UK’s Collection Trust and many DBMS can be Spectrum Compliant, though many museums don’t need a spectrum compliant DBMS.

The four broad steps discussed in this article are:

1. Brain storm
2. Run consultations

The next article (Museologist Notes 8.5) will cover:

1. Follow through
2. Potential Costs
3. Train your staff and volunteers

Brain Storming

Do what works best for you. A lot of people I know love and swear by mind-maps. To me they look like so may squiggly lines. I, instead, list things with bullet points. Do what works for you and your team. This might mean that each member of the team tackling accessible evacuation write their own notes or it might mean having an active google doc that all can contribute to between other tasks. Just so long as it works.

Here you can see the same information laid out in two formats. The second format, list form, can be easily duplicated on a shared document. However, not everyone thinks in lists like that. Some people prefer the Mind Map. Though I have never used it I have heard good things about MindMup, an online mind mapping resource. It looks like you should be able to make them accessible to your team.

This isn’t a situation where you can say ‘what works for the majority is what we will go with!’ and dismiss the concerns of the other contributors. My disability makes traditional mind maps incredibly difficult to understand. However, other disabled people prefer them. By restricting your team to a single brain storming method you actively exclude disabled voices from your accessible evacuation plan.

Some things to think about:

• What are the challenges? (i.e. third floor, no refuge point)
• What could some solutions be?
• Who should you contact for consultation?
• How can you best utilize your budget?
• etc.

Other things to consider might include how you will advertise your new accessible evacuation. As well as how you will train your staff and volunteers on the new procedures.

Once your brain storming is underway you can start your consultations. I recommend overlapping the steps and inviting your consultants to brainstorming sessions. This way you won’t forget important points and your consultants can help you figure out things you either missed or erroneously included. I, for example, completely missed that having visual (written or signed) announcements is very important for Deaf and hard of hearing guests.

Consultation for Accessible Evacuation

Here your brainstorming comes into play: who do you think you need to consult with? Here are a few of my suggestions, what you need may be different.

• Members of disabled communities around your museum
• Parents of disabled children
• Disabled children – if it is ethically possible for you to speak to them
• Teachers and special education teachers*
• First respondents such as firefighters, ambulance drivers, and police
• Contractors such as builders and building inspectors

*The term used in my part of Ontario for teacher who specialise in teaching children with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities

Some people you may want to talk to farther down the line might include your sign makers and interior designers or painters.

How are you going to handle the consultation? Will it be one-on-one meetings? Focus groups? surveying guests? Perhaps something not listed here. What ever it is I suggest having a few different methods. Not so many that you loose track of things but don’t limit yourself to a single method.

Conclusions

There aren’t any yet! This article got a little bit too long and I had to split it in half to keep it from turning into a novella. Follow this link to read the second half of Museologist Notes 8: Accessible Evacuation.

Have you been working on an emergency procedure? Did you include accessible features? Do you believe that a blind individual can successfully leave your space, unaided in the event of an emergency? Let me know in the comments below! I love to hear from you guys.

Become a Patron!

Resources

Spectrum 5.0 As stated above this is the UK standard for collections and it is increasingly used globally. Have a look through their website.

MindMup I really think that this program can help people with their brain storming. For any project but especially evacuation plans!

Your Own Emergency Services. As stated above, your local resources include the emergency services. They can work with you to help you understand the laws, their procedures and how you and your staff can best help them in an emergency.