Accessibility and Archives: “If I should tell my history…”

In this blog, Philip Milnes-Smith reviews the recent connecting and sharing event organised by the UK Disability History and Heritage Hub (UKDHHH).

A conference with a difference recently brought together students, academics, archivists, curators and others with an interest in disability history and accessible heritage at the Manchester Deaf Centre.  The organisers had formed the UKDHHH in 2022 (following the Invisible and Under-represented online conference), to ensure the disability, neurodivergent and d/Deaf history conversations did not stop.  This ‘Connecting and Sharing Event” was their first hybrid meeting, and had sessions on 1) arts, activism and organising, 2) interpreting sources and accessing archives, 3) researching and presenting disability, deaf and neurodivergent histories, 4) material culture and museum experiences and 5) disability, deaf and neurodivergent histories in the heritage sector.  Importantly, it included deaf, neurodivergent and disabled people among the presenters.  

Although conferences sometimes include lightning talks or poster sessions as part of a broader programme with longer papers and keynote speakers, this was (for me, at least) a first in terms of consisting solely of short presentations.  This allowed a wider range of topics to be addressed in the time.  With five themes addressed across the day, longer talks would have significantly reduced the number of people whose work could be included.  It also imposes a lighter vocal demand on the presenters – although five minutes is not very long to say what you want to say, so the intellectual demand in preparation could be higher. An associated innovation was the decision to exclude questions from the sessions, prioritising instead more individual interaction in the breaks.

The in-person event appeared to be a model of accessibility (including the important but easily overlooked fact that the event was offered free, through the generosity of funders).  The entire venue from reception to the meeting room and toilets enjoyed step-free access.  Individual chairs, rather than pew-like rows of interlinked seats, or packing the space with tables, facilitated the inclusion of wheelchair-users.  A Zoom option was available for attendees unable to travel to the event.  Fourthly, a pair of BSL interpreters took it in turns throughout the day, both visible in the room, and to viewers online.  Finally, I suspect I was not alone in benefiting from the Speech-to-Text-Reporting which displayed human generated live captioning of the speakers:  when trying to hear and note-take a list of ideas, for example, it was so helpful for them to have been captured on-screen and displayed to all (not just a singled-out individual). 

I spoke in the second session, mostly about my work as the Digital Archivist at Shakespeare’s Globe in helping to ensure more accessible collections through both the creation of accessible recordings, and the collection of ephemera from accessible events, as well as the creation of a dedicated finding aid that highlights the contributions of disabled performers and creatives over our history and the presentation of disability in our production history.  However, it will also use a disability lens to introduce readers to disabled characters within the plays:  recent reviews suggesting Richard III was Shakespeare’s only disabled protagonist are far from the mark and an important function of the guide is to repopulate the plays with the disabled characters who were always there.  They, indirectly bear witness to the existence of the many disabled people that we have got used to overlooking in early modern London.

However, I was also able to highlight the Accessibility workstream of ARA’s Diversity and Inclusion Allies, including the production of these blogs.  A couple of previous contributors were in the room (Gill Crawshaw and Ella Clarke) but it would be invidious to pick out other individual contributions for mention, and also wrong to ventriloquise the work of others. 

I am not a natural networker, but I was glad to speak in person to others in the room (some of whom I knew only online), and to make new connections – some of whom I hope will contribute to this blog series.  It was also gratifying to hear from someone who had been following it from outside our profession. I look forward to following up with participants (and to being followed up).  But if you were not there online or in person, I urge you nonetheless to be part of this ongoing conversation – making our collections accessible matters and disability history is an important strand in the history of all of us.  Look out for an online UKDHHH event planned for 2025.

Guest blogs are welcome.  Please email diversityandinclusion@archives.org.uk.  We would also like to hear from you if you have found one of the Allies’ blogs helpful to your work.