This work was supported by a grant from Shalem Fund
Akim Israel in collaboration with the National Insurance Institute of Israel, the Shalem Fund and the Ministry of Social Services initiated and launched a unique project for the cognitive accessibility of museums. Four museums participated in the project, and a fifth museum was used for comparison. In the present study the level of learning and satisfaction of Intellectually disabled visitors was assessed before and after the accessibility process of each museum. The quantitative findings confirm that the change in knowledge is greater in the accessible museums in the non-accessible ones. At the same time, knowledge remains low There was no confirmation that the accessibility of the museums increases satisfaction. Satisfaction was found to be very high prior to making the museums accessible, and it was found to be related to other components like: length of tour, group size, degree of physical access, transitions within the museum, space allotted for guidance (open / closed), accompanying support staff, use of participant name tags, nature of training, using aids, linguistic simplification, using symbols, active learning and creating a fun visiting experience

For the Full text in Hebrew press here
For the English Abstract press here

Key words
People with intellectual developmental disabilities
Accessibility
Museum
Evaluative research
Knowledge assessment
Satisfaction
Language simplification
Shalem Fund study