Eureka! is a vibrant, colourful, bustling, exciting place – that’s why children (and we) love it!
We know that visitors with sensory conditions can find certain elements of any environment – let alone an interactive children’s museum – overwhelming at times. This is one of the many reasons that we work hard to make visiting Eureka! accessible for as many families as possible – work led by our Inclusion Manager Trizia, and our Inclusion Enabler Lorraine.
As part of our support for visitors with autism, we train our staff in autism awareness, have ear defenders and a Chill Out Room available, and have a sensory guide which we send out to visitors who request it, or they’ve been able to download a copy from our website. That is, until today…
The Eureka! Story
The Eureka! Story
We launched version 1 of The Eureka! Story booklet back in 2013, having worked on the content with some of our visitors with autism to ensure that we were giving them all the information that they wanted and needed to prepare for their visit.
Since then, we’ve given out hundreds of copies, as well as being approached by other museums and visitor attractions hoping to develop their own sensory guide.
The problem with leaflets? Things have a habit of changing, and while you can update online PDFs it’s a bit tricky to retrospectively add in a Changing Places loo, new galleries, exhibitions etc. Also, let’s face it, PDFs aren’t the most accessible format, so we decided to take our sensory guide online…
Launching the Eureka! Online Sensory Guide
We’ve worked with our digital agency Rubber Cheese to launch the Eureka! Sensory Guide – a microsite packed full of information, images, videos and even sounds to help visitors with sensory conditions to plan and prepare for their visit. Their designer dived head-first into researching accessible design (it’s definitely worth reading their blog on accessible web design) and produced a clean, concise design, using an autism-friendly colour palette, incorporating a logical step-by-step navigation with clear calls to action and contact routes. We love it, and we hope you do too.
- Visit the Eureka! Sensory Guide
More importantly, we hope that visitors with sensory conditions find it a useful resource!
So what’s next?
Basically – lots of testing, feedback and updating, ad infinitum.
First thing’s first – we’ll be working with some of the families that come along to our free clubs for disabled children to get their feedback, and we’d also love to hear your thoughts.
If you’ve got any feedback or suggestions, please get in touch.
Happy World Autism Awareness Day!
