Tips for Making Human-Centered Museums

by Joel Sanders, FAIA, JSA/MIXdesign (a resource from the March 18 webinar, "Making Inclusive Museums Now")

• Overlapping Needs: Unlike most accessibility standards in the USA that tend to focus on people with physical disabilities alone, it is vital to consider the needs of a broader spectrum of the population based on the conviction that human experience is constituted by a variety of overlapping factors. For this reason, we consider the relationship between disability neurodiversity, gender.

• Beyond Code Compliance: We advocate for an alternative to the approach that is characteristic of most accessibility standards which tend to provide separate accommodations, like accessible entrances and ramps, that isolate and as a consequence stigmatize people who are different than the norm. Instead, our objective is to create spaces that allow the maximum number of people—individuals, friends, families, and caregivers—to share the public spaces that shape our daily lives while also providing options for people who have unique functional, religious, or privacy needs.

• Designing from the Margins: Human centered design promises to be a catalyst for creativity, so long as we make sure to invite the diverse users who have historically been excluded to the table and allow them to share their unique perspectives. People with different physical, sensory, and social abilities as well as people from different racial, ethnic, and religious communities who engage with the built environment using different faculties, senses, and customs  provide valuable insights that spark design innovation, lessons that will allow us to reimagine museums as immersive, multisensory environments places that welcome each one of us, no matter our identities or embodiments, to encounter works of art using multiple sense perceptions: sight, sound, and even touch.

Human-Centered Museum Resources

Click here to access the Making Inclusive Museums Now report.

View the entire webinar recording of "Making Inclusive Museums Now" (3/18/25) now! 

Joel Sanders, FAIA, is the founding Principal of JSA/MIXdesign, an architectural studio and inclusive design consultancy dedicated to making everyday building types accessible and welcoming to people of different ages, genders, abilities, cultural identities, and religions. In addition to being Principal of JSA/MIXdesign, Sanders is a Professor at Yale School of Architecture and Yale School of Public Health, where he teaches classes that examine the intersection of architecture and mental and physical health. His projects have been featured in international exhibitions and the permanent collections of MoMA, SFMoMA, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, and the Carnegie Museum of Art.