DESIGN FOR ALL/UNIVERSAL DESIGN
- Access to Art History through the web

"Design for all" standards for accessibility respond to the need to shift from the traditional approach of defining elaborate technical product standards to the establishment of user requirements, more compatible with a fast and ever-changing information society.

Accessibility and "Design for all" are cornerstones of designing future network services. The joint research, training and application development project of the Finnish National Gallery and the Media Lab at the University of Art and Design Finland centers on researching and producing applications for presenting visual arts and museum services to as wide a range of audiences as possible. The three-year research project will be launched in Autumn 2001 and it will be implemented as a research and training project of the Media Lab. The project will focus on researching and mapping out general strategies for designing network services from the perspective of accessibility. In question here is not only a design concept for services directed to special groups but also a more general research of the principles of usability, accessibility and information design in network services.

top

Universal access to Finnish visual arts

Through the Internet the Finnish visual arts have become accessible to new audiences from a variety of backgrounds - worldwide. Although new visual arts audiences are reached through the Internet, the content supply is not necessarily accessible to the same degree. Thus more attention needs to be paid in the content design phase on who is using the network, how, where and why. Information on the arts, especially on the web sites of art museums, has traditionally been conveyed through pictures and visual narration.

Information provided in this format falls beyond the reach of, for example, visually impaired users. At the same time, rapidly evolving multimedia narration and technology could offer new options for relating and teaching visual arts in different, multi-sensory ways. By making use of these options and challenges (Design for All) access to the world of visual arts could be extended to a wider range of audience groups - from the perspective of their own needs and interests.

In network contents designed with the "Design for all/ Universal design" approach accessibility means, however, more than the practical consideration of persons with disabilities and their special needs. The approach essentially points to a more profound, universal right of access to the contents of visual arts - despite social or cultural barriers and restrictions. Bringing cultural heritage to the reach of all citizens is a central point of departure in promoting an equal society and equal welfare.

The "Design for All" project proceeds from the need to examine how the new technologies can be used to establish virtual exhibitions that approach the visual arts through multiple routes and ways. The project aims to create new forms of encountering the arts, alongside and/or around a museum visit. Moreover, it aims to consider how material provided through the web could be used to support both formal and informal learning and different ways of receiving the arts.

The project will research and create new ways of relating the arts that are at the same time both visually interesting and accessible in terms of contents. The web material produced in the project will take into account both multi-sensory access and the information, cultural and technical aspects of accessibility.

top

"Design for all" - web site exhibition

Concurrently with the concept design, a virtual theme exhibition will be opened on the web site of the Finnish National Gallery around the theme of artists self-portraits. The exhibition presents an art historical cross-section of self-portraits from different times. By examining the portraits, the exhibition puts forth the changing issues and values connected with artistic expression. Model cases will be used to ask what the artists have at different times wanted to convey with their self-portraits. How does a self-portrait serve as a mirror of an artistÕs intellectual landscape? The presentation of the works sets a temporal perspective both to the art world, changes in self-image and to social and cultural history.

The exhibition draws on the collections of the three affiliate museums of the National Gallery, the Ateneum, the Sinebrychoff, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma: it has FinlandÕs most extensive selection of art from the Middle Ages to the present at its disposal.

This project is in line with a central aim of the strategy of the Museum Pedagogic Unit of the Finnish National Gallery to extend the audience reach of visual arts and to make them more accessible by providing a diverse supply of art pedagogic activity and material. Along with an accessibility project launched in 1999, the concept has taken concrete forms in the museum environment as, for example, new services. The "Design for all" project will extend the concept of accessibility to the virtual visitors interested in the art historical material on museum web sites. The project was piloted by the exhibition See, Hear, Imagine (www.fng.fi/hugo.htm) that was published in 1999 as the worldÕs first web exhibition for the visually impaired.

top

Media Lab UIAH: "Design for all" - three-year research project

The broad objective of the project is to create new media concepts which help citizens with special needs, namely, persons with physical and mental disabilities, the elderly and the long-term bed-ridden, to take full advantage of the benefits that the new information technology can offer them as a factor of social integration and improvement in their quality of life.

The project will be implemented as a three-year learning and research project of the Media Lab at the University of Art and Design Finland, starting in the Autumn term 2001. At the initial stage of the project students will produce, through workshops and lecture series, plans and ideas for different web-based applications using the "Design for all" approach.

Also new forms of international cooperation with European museums that are interested in the concept of accessibility are aimed to be built in the context of the project. Foreign guests will be invited to attend the lecture series and workshops and the aim is to establish networks with other museum projects that might be launched around the same time.

The application that will be produced in the project will be written in (comprehensible) Finnish, Swedish, English and sign language.

Other Museo projects and cultural heritage projects in MediaLab

* Kansallismuseon nyttelymultimedia (2000, Marjo Mäenpää ja Maari Fabritius)
* Valokuvataiteen museo -www-konsepti (2000, Matti Väisänen)
* Helinä Rautavaara -museo (1999, Lily Diaz)
* Illuminating History (1996-, Lily Diaz)
* Semana Santa -exhibition (1999, Lily Diaz)
* Ruotsinpyhtään Ruukin Ekomuseo (2000-, Päivi Romppanen, Tarja Toikka)
* Katumuisti (2000, Maari Fabritius)
* Elokuvantaju (2001, Antti Raike, Timo Viikari, Karri Laitinen)
* Lasten Ateneum (1997, Antti Raike)
* Loisto (Asta Raami, 1997)

top

Contact persons:

Marjatta Levanto Finish National Gallery
Marjatta.Levanto@fng.fi

Antti Raike UIAH, Media Lab
Antti.Raike@uiah.fi

Riikka Haapalainen Finish National Gallery
Riikka.Haapalainen@fng.fi

Marjo Mäenpää UIAH, Media Lab
Marjo.Maenpaa@mlab.uiah.fi

top