Category Archives: Uncategorized

Information policy

policies, Uncategorized
This version adopted by the Board Winter 2010-11 Next review due on or before Winter 2013-14   We aim to keep the information we hold relevant and fit for purpose.   In line with our purpose ‘to advance the education of the public’ as stated in our Memorandum of Association, we will publish suitably-reviewed information we have that is relevant to our mission where it is both practical and legal so to do.   We are also keen to ensure anyone with an interest in our mission can find out about our policies, ways of getting involved and what we are doing and will therefore publish relevant documentation.   To implement our policy we will  
  • Obey all laws concerning the dissemination of information, in particular the UK’s Data Protection Act
  • State openly our attitude and practices as regards data related to a person
  • Regularly review the information that we hold and/or publish to check its currency, accuracy and legality
  • Publish information via our website or other electronic, publicly and widely accessible means
  • Keep our information securely
  • Treat sympathetically requests for information in other formats, subject to the practicality (including cost) of such provision

Policy on Equal Opportunities, Diversity and Harassment

policies, Uncategorized
Policy on Equal Opportunities, Diversity and Harassment Adopted by the Winter 2010-11 Board meeting Next review due on or before: Winter 2011-12   In line with its status as a charity set up to help inclusion within society, AACT confirms its commitment to a comprehensive policy of Equal Opportunities in which individuals are selected, developed, appraised and otherwise treated on the basis of their relevant merits and abilities and are given Equal Opportunities within the Charity.   The object of this policy is to ensure that:   no applicant, volunteer, trustee, director, member, student intern, supplier, provider, contractor or user of facilities shall be discriminated against on account (for example) of his or her sex, sexual orientation, gender identification, marital status, Civil Partnership status, family responsibilities, race (including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origins and citizenship), religion or belief, political belief, membership (or non-membership) of a Trades Union, disability (including HIV status), age or socio-economic background.   AACT opposes any form of discrimination on these stated grounds unless it can be objectively justified as genuine, substantial, reasonable and within the law.   Evidence of discriminatory behaviour (including harassment) will be treated as a potential disciplinary matter and could result in cessation of the individual’s association with the Charity. The effective implementation of this policy can only be achieved by all those associated with AACT acting appropriately. The implementation of this policy will be aided by publishing it and by drawing attention to it in other communications as relevant.

Volunteer agreement template

documentation, Uncategorized
This template is based on the Volunteer Agreement proposed by Volunteer England as at July 2010. It may be worth checking there are no significant changes to this when drawing up a new agreement. It is very important to use wording which could not be interpreted as leading to a contract of employment. This includes: don’t use legalese; don’t imply any material reward to the volunteer (this includes not offering training unless it is directly needed by them in this volunteer role).   Volunteer Agreement for VOLUNTEER   This Volunteer Agreement describes the arrangement between Access-Ability Communications Technology (AACT) and you. We wish to assure you of our appreciation of your volunteering with us and will do the best we can to make your volunteer experience with us enjoyable and rewarding.   The organisation Your role as a volunteer is as a position. It starts on date. (It may be helpful to the volunteer to mention a possible end date if this is a fixed-term project role, but Volunteer England does not recommend stating fixed times, so consider this and possibly discuss with the volunteer to help them plan their time). Your main Contact will be name.   The volunteering role described here is designed to help AACT in its current situation as a small, largely voluntary organisation realise one of its immediate objectives. This objective is to …….   You can expect AACT to 1. Induction and training
  • outline AACT’s mission and ways of working
  • provide relevant documentation, ….
2. Supervision, support and flexibility
  • organise meeting and working alongside main Contact to help….
  • be flexible in agreeing when you and main Contact will work together. Possibly outline here any constraints or things we are aware of which we’ll take into account
  • be clear about what tasks we’d like you to do
  • make you aware of the insurance cover available while undertaking the voluntary role
  • make you aware of relevant Health and Safety policies.
3. Expenses
  • pay, if you wish, your travel expenses to get from your home (state here where you understand this to be at the time) to us at the standard rail/bus fare rates if you provide us with suitable documentation including receipts showing the actual expense you incurred.
  AACT expects you to
  • help it fulfil its aims by acting as a volunteer
  • perform your volunteering role to the best of your ability
  • follow the relevant area Health and Safety policies while in AACT’s office and elsewhere on University of Reading property. Should it be necessary to undertake the role elsewhere, main Contact must make any relevant Health and Safety policies clear.
  • maintain the confidential information of the organisation and of its clients (if there are special conditions, for example the volunteer will have access to sensitive personal date, then refer to the Information Policy to judge whether a confidentiality agreement may need to be signed)
  • meet the time commitments and standards which have been mutually agreed to and to give reasonable notice so other arrangements can be made when this is not possible
  • make yourself familiar with our Volunteer Policy (available on our website) and raise any issues you feel unsure about with main Contact.
  This agreement is binding in honour only, is not intended to be a legally binding contract between us and may be cancelled at any time at the discretion of either party. Neither of us intends any employment relationship to be created either now or at any time in the future.   Schedule of work to be undertaken   The main objective is to (make this and any secondary objectives as clear as possible).   Your role is to
  • list tasks as explicitly as possible, but leave room for them to alter as time goes on or the project progresses
  Currently your normal place of volunteering is expected to be main place (if there is one). Outline possible variations to this.  

Working with AACT

Uncategorized
Agreed by the Board Winter 2010-11. Next review due on or before: Winter 2013-14 AACT does not have its own employees. Rather, it is helped towards achieving its aims by people holding various other types of role. The aim of this short document is to list the Charity’s policies relating to: trustee-directors, volunteers, paid consultants, student interns, organizations. The documents giving further information relating to each role are named here. They are published through the Charity’s website. While the roles differ, all outputs must relate directly to AACT’s mission and priorities. Anyone doing work for/on behalf of AACT should enter into an appropriate agreement including to abide by any relevant AACT policies.

Trustee-Directors

Directors are elected by the members of the Company as detailed in the Memorandum and Articles,simultaneously becoming a trustee of the Charity. All must follow the agreed policies documented in Responsibilities and duties of Trustee-Directors.

Volunteers

The Charity and the Volunteer must abide by the policies documented in the Volunteer policy. Apart from ad hoc one-off help (e.g. help at a fundraising sale) there must be a Volunteer agreement in place which lists the activities the Volunteer will undertake. The agreement must have the approval of a Trustee-Director before any activity commences.

Paid consultants

Individual’s circumstances differ and there will be occasion when special contractual conditions will apply. However, the type of agreement we normally require with a self-employed consultant is shown in the Consultancy agreement template. The outcomes expected from the consultancy and the payment terms must be clearly agreed and the agreement signed by a Trustee-Director on behalf of AACT and by the Consultant before work commences.

Student interns

An individual associated with AACT may be prepared to take on a student intern. The situation will differ from that of a volunteer in that there will be some agreement with the student’s host institution (for example: on giving feedback on performance). Whether the individual concerned is prepared to spend the time on supervision, monitoring etc required is a matter for them but as in other cases, any agreement with both student and institution must be clearly understood and agreed by a Trustee-Director before commencement. Particular care will be exercised in making any agreement on accepting an intern to ensure all parties understand there is no payment associated with the role and to be clear that the student’s institution covers insurance issues appropriately.

Organizations

We understand that organizations providing goods or services may have their own form of contract and we therefore do not have an AACT ‘standard’. Any contract must clearly state the goods or services to be provided, must be clear on matters such as insurance and must be agreed and signed by a Trustee-Director before commencement of delivery of any of the goods or services.

Copyright as an accessibility issue

generalimuse, Uncategorized
This is a tentative post because there are complex issues surrounding copyright which iMuse would not claim to have grasped fully. BUT, looking back on what we’ve done over the last few months, and are currently planning in the three museums/galleries we’re working with at the moment, it seems we are being driven at least partly by copyright issues. The primary iMuse ‘idea’ is that smaller museums might be able to help visitors engage more, and get better accessibility, by using their own mobile equipment – especially smartphones, and increasingly, tablets. However, in each site so far we’ve encountered copyright problems that mean material can be used in-gallery but not outside. This means publishing openly via the web is ruled out, so the simplistic (sounding) ‘put your material on the web and show visitors how to access it on their phone’ or ‘don’t write (or pay for) posh native apps – do simple web apps with a bit of HTML5 etc’ becomes impossible if you want to use some in-house material. And this doesn’t just apply to images of objects, but in some cases to text. Even the text of in-gallery labels was so heavily copyrighted that in one museum iMuse was not allowed to demonstrate how an iPad could help by blowing the text up. In another, although the artist had been dead for 2.5 thousand years, visitors were not allowed to take photos of a loaned pot as ‘ownership’ rested elsewhere. Thus copyright is working against accessibility. What to do? Well, we need to think more than we already have on this issue and work on it right from the start in projects. What has actually happened, rather subtly, is that iMuse is falling back more and more on the rather old-fashioned model of the museum providing the equipment for the visitor. There are some pluses to this approach of course. We have complete control over the interface, and while at this experimental stage, can afford to loan one or two high-resolution iPads to the museums. However, this approach doesn’t scale or encompass the generality of devices that visitors will increasingly bring along. For example, we have implemented ‘mini apps’ using the Kiosk Pro app as the ‘host’ on iPads. This works pretty well, getting over other problems, particularly patchy or non-visitor centred wi-fi. BUT this app is iPad specific. We are subtly getting further sucked-into the Apple ecosystem by using other special features too – the Guided Access mode is one and using iBooks Author in a gallery which has existing Mac experience is another. Have others already studied (and resolved…) ‘copyright as an accessibility issue?’. Copyright is not iMuse’s area of expertise – we need help!

Seeking partners

oldblog, Uncategorized
Are you a resource-challenged modest-sized museum? trying-out low cost ways of engaging visitors via smart phones and/or iPads etc? or thinking about it but worried by the potential financial implications? We are seeking small museums which would like to try some things out with us museums and groups that would like to explore setting-up a peer-support advisory service Is this a good idea? would you like to explore further? or is it already being done? Please contact Annette Haworth via admin (usual at sign) aact.org.uk or comment here. Thanks! (AACT is a tiny volunteer-run charity currently managing the iMuse Programme).

RSA Fellowship Catalyst Grant for iMuse

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From: https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/rsa-blogs/2012/10/the-imuse-project—using-apps-to-transform-accessibility-in-museums

RSA Catalyst awarded a grant to Fellow Annette Haworth for her project iMuse. The projects seeks low-cost ways that mobile devices can help museums become more accessible. In this guest blog Annette sets out her progress so far and how Fellows can help and get involved.

“The good news is you’ll be working with iPads; the bad news is it’s in a museum”.

This was the message relayed to a 16-year old about his work-experience placement. What is it that makes a flat piece of plastic and metal so intriguing and a whole building-full of 3D objects so unappealing? While that’s too complex a question for my little iMuse project to solve, it seemed safe to take as a given that mobile technology has terrific appeal. Can museums use it to make themselves more engaging, and perhaps more accessible to more people?

Large museums may have the resources to experiment with new technology; the British Museum’s Samsung Digital Centre and the Museum of London with its Street Museum have some intriguing examples. But there are many, more modest, museums, without dedicated IT teams or the resources to commission high-cost apps. Set against that, there seems to be masses of potential in commonly-used systems such as Youtube and Wikipedia, together with the rapid rise in visitor-owned mobile devices. The Jodi Mattes Trust, which awards museums who increase accessibility by using technology, has found some great low-cost examples such as the MShed’s RNIB Penfriend project. I wanted to investigate whether there is potential in pushing these low-cost ideas further.

The good news is you’ll be working with iPads; the bad news is it’s in a museum

The Museum of English Rural Life housed us. RSA’s Fellowship Catalyst fund helped with fees for museum-learning and e-access consultancy. Reading Borough Council, the Vodafone World of Difference scheme and the Foyle Foundation helped fund some IT support. Access-ability Communications Technology, a small volunteer-run charity, provides the project board. Serendipitously, three of us are RSA fellows. The Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology and the animator, Steve Simons, wore an iMuse iPad in the Houses of Parliament as part of the Cultural Olympiad, Stories of the World presentation.

All this has been terrific fun, provided work-experience and internships for six young people, four with disabilities, and tried-out different ways of presenting museum information from the Great Reading Cheese Mystery, to an Ancient Olympics trail. The big message has been that young people will become more engaged when they are involved, for example in a trail’s creation. Indeed, our trail-making booklet, ‘Release your inner geek with iMuse’, was partly written by young-people.

The big message has been that young people will become more engaged when they are involved, for example in a trail’s creation. But it’s still not entirely obvious that this approach is sustainable in practice. Copyright, technical, physical, cultural and support issues will need consideration in individual museum environments. With the RSA’s help, iMuse will be seeking a couple of moderate-sized museums which would like to help investigate the practicalities further to see if there is an evidence-based case to create a national advisory service to help increase museum-accessibility and hence engagement.

iMuse where have we got to?

generalimuse, Uncategorized

At the start of 2012, we adopted some ‘principles’ – a rather grand name for a list of things we were trying to do and how. It’s somewhat past time to have look back to see where we are and whether we’ve stuck to these or think they should be altered.
Here we go,original wording in blue italics:
We aim to help moderate size museums become more accessible by using mobile devices.
By ‘moderate size’ we meant museums which don’t have there own IT teams or large budgets (average app apparently costs ~£30,000) for software development, but which do have some effort – whether staff or volunteer – to put into creating some mobile device-based museum experiences.
By ‘mobile devices’ we meant those that are now consumer, high-street, web-enabled devices (iPads and similar tablets and smartphones). It was pointed out that other, more specialised, mobile devices (such as Voca) might be included, but we have not done that specifically.
What have we done?
We have tested several things in and around two ‘moderate sized’ museums: the Museum of English Rural Life and latterly, the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology.
Have we helped them become more accessible? Not yet on a sustained basis.
We will:
-experiment quickly/iteratively (fail fast, fail often!)
Yes, we have done this, with more than a dozen activities tried out, and iteration, particularly in relation to the use of QR codes and symbolised labels.
-test in the field and with ‘real’ users
Yes, we have done this, with lots of people trying our various activities. However, there have been very few trials where we have known for certain that a visitor has a particular disability or none. Most of the activities have been by mixed family groups with us participant-observing rather than formally set up, controlled sessions. 
-aim for sustainability by leveraging visitors’ own equipment,
almost everything we have done is driven through the web so could be accessed using visitors’ own phones/tablets. BUT we have done almost no design specifically for visitors’ phones and, while some logs show visitors’ using their own phones in the MERL, there has not been any sustained info available about how to connect to the in-gallery wi-fi or any handouts on what is available. Much of what we’ve tried has been on our iPads loaned to visitors during special events (such as half-term family activities).
-using freely available systems
almost everything we have done is through freely available systems, with a minor (cost-wise) exception of Kiosk Pro for iPad (to enable use without network access in the MERL temporary exhibition area) and of course some bits of code (albeit laughingly simple HTML/Javascript, they none the less would cost if you didn’t have the right sort of volunteers!)
-and don’t rely on full wifi/wireless coverage
this is a hard one, and still a very real problem for some sites, thick walls being a museum speciality. We’ve got round it by (1) carefully choosing the actual places to put e.g. QR coded labels where there is a signal (2) use of Kiosk Pro 
-link (dynamically if possible) to existing museum content [this is a request from museum curators who are concerned about various non-updated copies of catalogue info being promulgated]
Well, we have in our ‘layered’ version of a couple of trails, linked a further info button or a QR code to the museum catalogue entry. This can work and actually be quite helpful (e.g. the visitor can get the iPad to read out the entry – though the fact the iPad can’t pronounce ‘Boeotian’ was of great concern to one ex-curator…) However, unless there is some ongoing agreement about methods of accessing the catalogue being sustained, the ground can shift under your feet and there is no more guarantee of sustainability than if one were using copied data (we have experienced this with the MERL/University Library aggregation system interface changing. Outside iMuse, there is work on directly feeding the Historypin data from museum catalogue. This all gets quite technically sophisticated and likely to be outside the range of smaller museums.)
-involve visitors in digitising content, recording videos, acting as guides
So far, the only real experiments on this have been with a few young people, where we found involving them in creating content by taking photos and videos did seem to increase engagement greatly. We are, early in 2013, part of an ACE project, Stories of the World, where 3 schools (one a special school,14/15 year olds) will create content based on myths and objects in the Ure Museum.
We have found that more minor involvement, simply being ‘in charge’ of an iPad with it hung around your neck, or being able to change a trail in a small way by selecting the relevant objects from a set for the Olympics trail did increase engagement, and led to greater interaction within groups. The novelty of simply ‘scanning’ a QR code, getting an iPad to ‘beep’ and finding another clue had a hugely engaging effect on 2-82 year olds, with great excitement and chatter from all abilities. Whether that indicates any engagement with the actual objects….
-possibly better to use photos [rather than symbols] as interface.
We have iterated quite a bit on the symbol/QR code/label combinations – cutting down the use of more ‘abstract’ symbols considerably.
-design so the least able in a group can do something
The tethered iPad-on-a-box on a trolley did enable more to join in some trails (it helped: child in wheelchair, learning disabled group [who chose to re-view and re-view a video], young person using walking frame with poor hand coordination, people who find iPad too heavy, got round difficulties of aligning device on a code, people with VI).
We have adopted a layered approach to access to information, starting with the label and going through other levels through scanning and key-on-screen taps so that visitors of different abilities can choose what they look at/hear. We managed to get some analysis of the QR code use done (note coming out in Journal of Assistive Technologies, in print).
Most recently, the text-free Ladybird book (an iPad bound to look like a Ladybird book, with the original artwork pictures and sounds associated with tapping the animals etc) has proved enormously popular with visitors of all types.
……………………….

So,on the face of it, we seem to have followed the principles more or less.
BUT where does this leave iMuse? It needs to find a way to encourage museums to become ‘mobile device’ friendly. Trying fun things out in a couple of museums does not lead to anything sustainable. We are looking for ways to encourage others to try things, for example by setting up an advisory service in partnership with other organisations.