Accessibility and Archives: Strong smell from the conservation studio! Creating sensory maps at the University of Edinburgh

In this guest blog, Daisy Stafford (Archive & Library Access Manager, Heritage Collections at the University of Edinburgh) discusses sensory maps, an example of user-centred inclusive practice.

I’ve had a focused interest on accessibility since the start of my professional library career. My postgraduate degree is in Book History & Material Culture and whilst my peers wrote their theses on volvelles in scientific manuscripts or the reading habits of Scottish medieval nuns (much better pictures, to be honest), my research led me somewhere more contemporary and practical. Namely, what access barriers – social, spatial, practical, and perceptual – exist which prevent people experiencing homelessness accessing public libraries. Although I now work in a heritage collections research centre within an academic library, as Archive & Library Access Manager my role still focuses on ensuring everyone can make use of our spaces and services.

To this end, I lead an Accessibility Working Group, which attempts to do just that through actions such as staff training, audits, internships, and other ad hoc projects. The intention of the Group was to centralise and formalise existing pockets of work in this area and to embed, expand, and sustainably fund it. It is purposefully led by frontline staff, so as to be an empowering opportunity for them to use their expert knowledge of our user groups to effect change. We have a small annual pot of money which we stretch as far as we can to make tangible change and improvements. Our first intern created several videos about our services in BSL and our upcoming third intern will be writing and recording Audio Descriptions of the objects in a small exhibition to make it more accessible to blind or partially-sighted visitors.

For the rest of this blog, I’m going to tell you about the road to and results of our second internship, which grew quite organically out of our staff training programme. Francesca Fotheringham, of the University’s Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, delivered a Neurodiversity Awareness session for us and, during the discussion portion, made the suggestion that we might conduct a walkaround of our spaces from the viewpoint of a neurodivergent user, to identify and address existing barriers.

This led us to Aimee Fletcher, an autistic postgraduate researcher at the University of Glasgow, whose work looks at co-creation strategies to make museums more accessible for neurodiverse adults. Her research builds on the existing practice and literature in this space, which has tended to focus on making museums more accessible to neurodiverse children and has not included autistic people in the planning or evaluation stages, and so was a perfect fit for what we were hoping to do.

Visitors enjoying an interactive exhibit at St Cecilia’s Hall: Concert Room and Music Museum

Steered by Aimee, a group of us walked our way around each of our four sites (comprising three library/archive reading rooms and a public museum) noting the sensory, physical, informational, and social barriers we encountered. Although our primary goal was to address barriers that impact accessibility for neurodivergent visitors, we employed an intersectional lens and universal design approach in order to be mindful of overlapping accessibility needs and positively impact as many people as possible.

At the end, we discussed possible solutions or mitigations. Some were satisfyingly quick and easy (e.g. sticking strips of foam around the edge of our lockers to stop them slamming shut) whilst some were more difficult to change (e.g. fluorescent lighting??) Those relating to the infrastructure of the building were trickiest, as there was a limitation to what we could do, due to practicalities/money/the limits of my power. Instead, we grasped Aimee’s recommendation to make sensory maps of our spaces to let visitors know what to expect in advance and allow them to make decisions about if/when to visit.

Next step: benchmarking! I’m neurotypical and had never seen or used a sensory map before so we were led by Aimee’s list of best practice examples. At the top were the maps at the National Museum of Scotland and the generous Lynsey Anderson, Learning & Engagement Officer, not only led us through the creation process but also agreed to share their sensory symbols with us, both to speed up our development and to create a common ‘language’ of symbols through the city.

Now that we had funding, an understanding of the process, and vector files(!) in our backpack, we were ready to start and we advertised a six-week student internship to create sensory maps of our public sites. By providence, a couple of months before the intern was due to start we also had an exceptional work experience student dropped in our laps. Marina Gonzalez-Figueroa, a Library Masters student from the University of Strathclyde, spent a portion of her degree placement creating a draft map for St Cecilia’s Concert Hall & Music Museum. This was absolutely invaluable and gave us a much-needed template for Ailsa, our intern, to draw from.

I’m not going to describe the minutiae of the internship in too much detail, mostly because Ailsa has already charmingly done so (in an adventure quest format no less) in this blog post. I would encourage you to hear it from her instead. Suffice to say, complicated building floor plans were our biggest nemesis. Nevertheless, we ended the internship with seven draft sensory maps!

A Sensory Map of the Ground Floor of St Cecilia’s Hall: Concert Room and Music Museum

Apart from the maps themselves, we also included a page of ‘Good to Knows’ with information that couldn’t be easily communicated in symbol-form (e.g. the daily 1 o’clock canon from Edinburgh Castle resounds loudly in our New College Library Reading Room and still makes me jump!) The maps then went to an internal graphic design team for a bit of tidying and branding and are now available on our website and in print at all of our sites.

As a person without lived experience of neurodiversity, I was very conscious of the negative impact my ignorance might have on the project. However, ultimately I was the one with the resources and the authority to drive it. I navigated this by doing as much learning as I could whilst putting myself in the role of facilitator and letting Marina and Ailsa lead. I am grateful for all the knowledge-sharing I received throughout, first from Francesca, then Aimee, then Lynsey.

I see this as a first step in making our spaces more accessible to neurodivergent visitors. The sensory maps describe our Reading Rooms, but these sit within many floors of a vast library building and I am advocating for the maps to be extended to include other floors, as well as the many site libraries. We have also created a set of visual guides and I hope to expand our pre-arrival information further with video guides. In last years’ annual report for Euan’s Guide, an Edinburgh-based accessibility charity, 91% of 6000 respondents said they try to find disabled access information before visiting a new place and a further 62% said they’re more likely to visit somewhere new if they feel welcomed by staff or the venue appears to care about accessibility. We have fantastic, unique, inspiring heritage collections at University of Edinburgh and I won’t let the fluorescent lighting stop us!

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.