A new site for the Museo Omero. Accessibility model

The new Museo Omero website will be presented to the public in a live broadcast on our Youtube channel on Monday 23 November 2020 at 6 pm.

Taking part in the live event will be the technicians and staff of the Museo Omero involved in the project as well as several guests, including Mario Barbuto, the National President of the UICI (talian Blind Union), Luigi Gallo, head of the Direzione Regionale Musei Marche - Mibact, Elisabetta Borgia and Gabriella Cetorelli from Mibact, Luigi Fraccaroli, President of the Italian Esperanto Federation, and other authorities. Aldo Grassini, president of the Museo Omero, moderates the virtual meeting.

The new official website embodies and reflects the philosophy of the Omero Museum which places accessibility at the centre of its reflection and experience. Accessibility understood as a simple, intuitive gateway to content, for everyone, regardless of the devices used. This is possible thanks to the linear architecture of the contents, understandable language, a development code that is scrupulous in respecting, first and foremost, the needs of blind people.

Our old site which is about to retire, was created in 2004 and already incorporated the international, technical, accessibility guidelines. We also introduced further innovations such as site navigation by telephone using a toll-free number and a special version for partially-sighted people with selected colour contrasts and large print.

The technical and IT innovations of recent years have made some features partially redundant and have imposed others, such as the need for the site to adapt to navigation from mobile devices.

The new site will be navigable from both desktop computers and mobile devices (tablets and smartphones), as it was created using a technique known as responsive design. This technique, when applied in conjunction with accessibility strategies, is particularly helpful to blind and partially-sighted people who use assistive technologies, such as speech synthesis, magnifiers and hardware tools such as the Braille bar. The technical side of the site was built by two experts in the field of web accessibility, Fabrizio Caccavello and Roberto Scano, who worked in close collaboration with the Museo Omero Communications Department (Monica Bernacchia, Alessia Varricchio and Damiano Boriani).

Our new site is available in English and Esperanto and has taken on board the latest accessibility guidelines issued by the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities as well as current international standards and national legislation. The website is the result of the work carried out by all the Museum staff during the pandemic emergency, which has created new mechanisms for the collective enjoyment of culture. Being online with a new look will allow us to create a ‘fertile terrain’ for our return and will be a starting point for new digital experiments.

We invite you to connect to our Youtube page on November 23, 2020 at 6 pm.