Interactive Pathways:
Designing Accessible Museum Experiences

The CMA is one of the leading art museums in the southeast. It has over 20,000 square feet of gallery space. This research looks at different interviews with CMA staff including Glenna Barlow, Curator of Education.

CMA focuses on physical accessibility, inclusive programming, and educational transformation. They use tactile materials, ASL interpretation, and teacher feedback to refine experiences, but face resource constraints and structural limitations like high display cases. They're rethinking field trips to foster critical thinking and empathy instead of rote learning.

The High Museum of Art (HMA) is located in Atlanta, Georgia. It has over 52,000 square feet of gallery space. Though school groups do not use the Greene Family Learning Gallery, its iterative, feedback-driven design offers valuable inspiration for how museums can revise experiences for K–12 students on structured visits.

HMA’s Greene Family Learning Gallery has evolved through iterative testing and user feedback. Although not designed for school groups, its process, guided by visitor behavior research (FLING study), community input, and prototyping, offers a model for responsive educational design. They learned to let real user needs, not assumptions, drive change.

The Frist Art Museum (FAM) is located in Nashville, Tennessee. It has over 24,000 square feet of gallery space. While the Martin ArtQuest Gallery was designed primarily for families and individual visitors to engage in self-directed art-making, its development process offers relevant insights for museums seeking to enhance experiences for K–12 school groups.

FAM’s Martin ArtQuest Gallery prioritizes hands-on learning and inclusive visuals. Their renovation process centered visitor input, accessibility consultants, and cultural representation. The use of high-quality materials and digital companion content offers a model for scalable, interactive programming.

The Museums: Make / Matter study by Katie Covey Spanier explores how university art museums are rethinking their role in society through human-centered design with the context of limited budgets and infrastructure. Many of these university museums actively engage with K–12 school groups.

University museums show that modular design, co-creation with students and communities, and low-cost iteration can foster accessibility. These institutions often innovate out of necessity and serve as valuable examples of inclusive programming without extensive funding.

Museums can implement affordable solutions, such as tactile elements for visitors with visual impairments, pre-recorded ASL video tours or captions, and adaptive tools designed to support a wide range of physical and motor abilities. 

The Frist Art Museum successfully pursued this approach by partnering with the Tennessee Disabilities Coalition (TDC) to identify and implement low-cost accessibility improvements.

Museums should integrate interactive, choice-based learning tailored to student needs. 

According to the CMA’s focus group feedback, museums should provide pre- and post-visit materials to reinforce learning outcomes. 

In addition, according to the University Museums Case Study, museums should introduce object-based learning (OBL) to promote active engagement. Museums can accomplish this by leveraging existing collections and integrating them into new lesson plans rather than curating new exhibits.

A.J. Paul Getty Museum Survey

Financial barriers remain a major obstacle for schools. 

Museums can offer free or reduced admission programs for students and low-income families, such as the Columbia Museum of Art’s Free First Thursdays and summer access for South Carolinians. 

They can also partner with local businesses or foundations to fund field trips. In these partnerships, outside sponsors would cover costs like admission and transportation, reducing the burden on schools and increasing student access.

Museums must actively engage with local communities to develop relevant, inclusive content. By partnering with local cultural organizations museums can co-develop exhibits (HMA, FAM). 

They can conduct community focus groups to ensure exhibits reflect diverse perspectives like the CMA with educator related focus groups. Offering bilingual interpretation and signage can accommodate diverse audiences.

Effective wayfinding enhances accessibility and visitor experience. For instance, color-coded pathways and clear directional signage are strong examples of wayfinding (HMA, FAM). 

This can also take the form of interactive maps and mobile guidance apps. Museums should ensure seating areas are available throughout the museum for visitors who need rest (CMA). This disproportionately affects elderly and disabled visitors. 

The American Alliance of Museums’ 2024 Visitor Engagement Study found that visitors who rated museum staff as highly engaging were twice as likely to return compared to those who found staff interactions lacking (AAM, 2024). This highlights the importance of proactive staff training. 

For instance, empathy training ensures that museum staff and volunteers facilitate welcoming experiences. This can take the form of visitor observation studies, focus groups, or shadowing to understand how visitors interact with museum spaces.

MoMA: Disability Equity and Museums Series training

Museums that employ iterative design processes see a measurable increase in visitor engagement. This suggests that low-cost prototyping, visitor surveys, and small-scale exhibit tests can significantly enhance engagement before large-scale implementations. 

Designers can adapt exhibit content based on behavioral analytics and observation studies. This way designers can tweak existing spaces rather than making large redesign investments.