Description:

Bristol’s M Shed museum, which opened earlier this year, is celebrating after receiving a Jodi Mattes Trust Award for Digital Access onsite.

The Jodi Mattes Trust’s vision is of a world in which disabled people enjoy full cultural equality, a world in which disabled people hold equal access to information and cultural experience through and within digital media, but also enjoy equal opportunity as participants, creators, co-creators, artists and employees in the cultural sector.

Digital technology provides opportunities for disabled people to share experiences of libraries, archives, museums, galleries and heritage collections through the use of assistive technology, e-books, websites, mobile technology and interactive displays.

The Jodi Mattes Trust Awards celebrate the use of existing technology to widen access to information and collections for disabled people more effectively and creatively.

The M Shed received its award for its PenFriend Audio Access project; the PenFriends are audio devices, designed by the RNIB, which allow visitors to the M Shed to listen to stories in the galleries; the service is free for visually impaired visitors and for those who have difficulty in reading print. The PenFriend project cost £2,000 and around 31 days of staff time to set up, it was completed in September. During a time when funding is scarce the M Shed’s PenFriend project has demonstrated that audio access for the visually impaired and other museum users can be provided at a very low price.

For further information about the Jodi Mattes Trust, including details about the PenFriend project, please visit www.jodiawards.org.uk; to find out more about the M Shed museum please visit www.mshed.org.

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