The Sorolla and Lázaro Galdiano museums incorporate the first multimedia guide with universal accessibility

The Sorolla Museum in Madrid has hosted the presentation of an initiative that will allow various house-museums of the Ministry of Culture to have state-of-the-art audio guides to guarantee universal accessibility to its collections, especially for deaf or blind people.

The Sorolla Museum in Madrid has been the setting chosen by the Spanish Government to present its initiative to implement multimedia guides aimed at the general public, but provided with universal accessibility, in several museums dependent on the Ministry of Culture during 2011 y 2012.

The project to implement these audio guides has been developed in the year 2011 in the Sorolla Museum and in the Lázaro Galdiano Foundation-Museum. and in 2012 It is planned to be installed in three other house-museums dependent on the Ministry of Culture: Romantic Museum, Cerralbo Museum and Museum of Decorative Arts.

The implementation of these devices is part of the “Spanish Comprehensive Culture Strategy for All” that he 29 last July approved by the Council of Ministers and which is a joint initiative of the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Health, Social Policy and Equality. This document aims to guarantee the accessibility of people with disabilities to all areas of culture., both as viewers and creators, taking into account the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of which Spain was one of the ten countries in the world to ratify and the first to comply with its obligations.

The production of the guides for the Sorolla Museum and the Lázaro-Galdiano Foundation Museum was commissioned by the Royal Board on Disability of the Ministry of Health, Social Policy and Equality to one of its Advisory Centers, the Spanish Center for Subtitling and Audio Description (CESyA). Each museum will have 10 devices and more 400 resources in the form of locutions, images, interactive maps, animations, subtitled, sign language, audio descriptions, magnifiers and help menus on all screens, among other accessible resources.

The guides also have an indoor location system and offer a large touch screen, as well as an easy-to-use button panel for the elderly or people with physical disabilities.. This is an innovative project in the field of mobile technologies applied to accessible culture and tourism., where Spain is a pioneer with projects like these guides GVAM. These devices are the result of several years of research funded by the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce in a consortium formed by the Carlos III University of Madrid, the company Dos de Mayo, ONCE Foundation and CNSE Foundation.