During her long visit to the museum, Verena Bentele keeps her cane folded up in her backpack the whole time. The guidelines for the cane are quite sparse in the newly designed exhibition rooms. The Deutsches Museum in Munich deliberately did without this tactile guidance system, which helps visually impaired people elsewhere.
But Verena Bentele, who was blind from birth, shows understanding in this case. “In a museum like this, there are so many branches that a tactile guidance system cannot replace the attendant anyway. After all, you want to be surprised in a museum and spontaneously follow this or that content.”
Accessibility is more than just a ramp for wheelchair users
Accessibility plays a major role in the modernization of the Deutsches Museum, explains General Director Wolfgang Heckl. In the original building from 1925, some areas, such as the mine or the planetarium, could only be reached by stairs.
“As part of the future initiative, which is intended to bring us up to date in terms of construction, technology and content, the accessibility of the rooms is an essential part,” says Heckl. In the first, completely renovated part of the house, which opened last July, you can experience this throughout. You can now access all exhibitions and all intermediate levels by elevator, ramp or lift. There are also many inclusive offers ranging from tactile models to guided tours in sign language to “simply explained” texts.
An important medium is the free “Deutsches Museum App”, which, with its numerous functions and content, helps ensure that all visitors really have easy access to science and technology.
Van Gogh’s Sunflowers accessible
On her tour of the museum, Verena Bentele feels some surprises that she did not know. Above all, the famous Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh. For a long time, her fingers glide over a bronze relief that reproduces the forms of the painting in three dimensions. Verena Bentele is amazed at how delicately she can reproduce van Gogh’s brushstrokes. She also got a feeling for the background of the sunflower picture for the first time.
