Learning About Inclusiveness: Experiencing Life With Disability

It’s never too early to begin teaching children about inclusiveness, and the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia is a great place to start. Exhibits throughout this fun, hands-on museum provide the opportunity to gain insight into the lives of peers with a variety of disabilities.

Children get to see what’s it’s like to walk in each other’s shoes for a day. The museum’s AccessABILITY exhibit presents people living with disabilities as participants in the world. It features fun and engaging activities designed to show the similarities and differences in how people go places, communicate, have fun and learn.

Getting a glimpse of what it is like to live with a disability allows children to relate and sympathize with each other. Each of the displays and exhibitions are fully interactive and accessible to all visitors. Children with disabilities enjoy the museum alongside their peers, and the museum even has a Therapeutic Membership specifically for them.

Programs like this have great promise for the wheelchair community, and we believe that education and interaction are the key to better understanding how disabled persons live.

Here are a few of the exciting exhibits from the Please Touch Museum website:

• Going Places: Explore a wheelchair obstacle course and a multi-sensory City Walk.
• Talk with Me: Learn phrases in American Sign Language, type your names in Braille, and communicate using pictures.
• Just for Fun: Try a hand-pedaled bike, and create art using sight, touch and sound.
• Think about It: Test your attention and memory skills with brain teasers and puzzles.
• Invent It: Experience design challenges, discover multiple ways to accomplish tasks, and learn how things can be designed to work for the largest number of people.
• Resource Area: Learn more through books and online resources.