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Dr. Richard Nevell

@RichardNevell

@RichardNevell@mastodon.social

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VocalEye’s mission

We believe that blind and visually impaired people should have the best possible opportunities to experience and enjoy art and heritage.

Our mission is to increase those opportunities, make them as good as possible, and ensure that as many blind and visually impaired people as possible are aware of them, and that the arts and heritage sector know how to create them, and welcome blind people as a core audience.

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Heritage Access 2022

Research into accessibility at UK museum and heritage sites

Carried out in 2018 and 2022

Surveyed online access information for >3,000 sites

Data gathered by 61 volunteers over 6 months

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Heritage Access 2022 – the results

  • More accessibility information is available online than in 2018
  • 19% of museums and heritage sites have no access info on their website

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More details at https://vocaleyes.co.uk/research/heritage-access-2022/

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Heritage Access 2022 – the data

Volunteers gathered a lot of information:

  • Names of heritage sites and museums
  • Their location
  • Type of museum
  • Who runs the site
  • Facilities such as step free access
  • Provision for neural diversity at sites
  • Awards for accessibility

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The list of sites was created from a number of sources, including Wikidata

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Heritage Access 2022 – the plan

We want to add some of this to

Wikidata.

  • Names of heritage sites and museums
  • Their location
  • Type of museum

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  • Who runs the site
  • Facilities such as step free access
  • Provision for neural diversity at sites
  • Awards for accessibility
  • Website address

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Adding missing sites to Wikidata

Enhancing existing Wikidata entries?

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Heritage Access 2022 – the challenges

  • Data about what a site is (type, location) is relatively straightforward.
  • Other types of information posed challenges.
  • It may apply to part of a site
  • The data applies to a point in time
  • Wikidata may not have a way to express the information
  • Key concern: because this data is highly shareable we need to think about how it could be used out of context

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The approach

  • Select what data to share
  • Data cleansing
  • Using OpenRefine to reconcile the CSV file to Wikidata
  • Import selected data
    • Blue badge parking on-site
    • The presence of accessible toilets
    • The presence of Changing Places toilets
  • Plan reuse

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What we learned about Wikidata

  • Wikidata has good coverage of UK heritage sites (about 95%)
    • But should there be a distinction between buildings and organisation?
  • Wikidata has very little information about accessibility
  • We need to plan for data sharing

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Key takeaways

  • Wikidata is under construction
  • Wikidata may be a useful source of information when starting
  • Wikidata is reusable: when VocalEyes run the project again, they can refer to Wikidata as a starting point
  • Planning a data structure can help others and highlight gaps
  • Sharing data can motivate change

More reflections at https://wikimedia.org.uk/2023/05/vocaleyes-wikidata-accessibility-information/