The Museums of Sitges include sign language for the first time in an audiovisual project

The Office of Cultural Heritage of the Barcelona Provincial Government deployed, during 2007, a series of actions to narrow the gap between museums and their legacy and society at large. All are included within the program La Mirada Tactil, carried out with the assessment of the Catalan Federation of the Deaf, which is centred in the deployment of museum equipment for tactile presentations related with the collection and content of different museums, as an inclusive element to insure cultural accessibility to all visitors.

The actions of La Mirada Tàctil are distributed around different museums across the country, and, from the end of 2019, also count with the participation of Museums of Sitges.  Specifically, with two videos in sign Language about the trajectory and the collection of the Maricel and Cau Ferrat Museums. The documents are available for free at the webpage and the Mobile application of the Museums and also at the platform VisitMuseum.

This is the first time that the Museums include this communication system based on gestuality and visual elements on some of their educational contents. The people appearing on the video are part of the same inclusive program carried out by the Provincial Government of Barcelona which funded their creation.

The Museums of Sitges have been working for a long time to make their works of art accessible to visitors with any type of functional diversity. The first step, with the reopening on December 2014, was to improve the accessibility of the Maricel and the Cau Ferrat Museums to visitors with reduced mobility thanks to the installation of ramps and lifts. The next step are the aforementioned videos, but there’s a long way to go.

The intent is to carry out an action plan to solve cognitive accessibility. In this respect, all participating parties want to agree which are the potential publics in the first stage and from here, find out which are the most adequate activities for them. The intent is to carry such a task with the help of centres and specialists.

One of the proposals which is already in agenda is to use sign Language in presential actions at the Museums of Sitges. The Provincial Government of Barcelona offers the service to the Museums of the Network of Local Museums, but right now only in guided tours.

The Catalan sign Language, usually known with the acronym LSC, is the Language of the deaf and deaf blind capable of communicating with signs in Catalonia, which is used for Communications in their social and familiar milieu. The LSC, as other sign languages, is capable of achieving all possible communication functions and, as a perfectly alive Language, incorporates several self-distinguishing features. The Catalan sign Language has evolved from its beginnings and is in continual evolution according to the current society which is based on knowledge and communication.