Cultures of accessibility: Translation making cultural heritage in museums accessible to people of all abilities

If one is to think of a ‘turn’ in this twenty-first century, it will be the rise of a collective awareness towards inclusion and the provision of equal access to all people in a vast array of contexts, from health to education; from work to entertainment; and from travel to the media, among others. It is true that all that flourishes today stem from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the numerous laws, regulations, charters and agreements that have since come into force in an effort to afford all people their intrinsic rights as free human beings. However, only in the last decades has there been a significant boost in putting such principles into practice. This happens particularly in contexts in which people in general have seen their basic needs covered, or, in other words, in the most developed parts of the world. In some instances, these are large-scale actions with universal impact, as happens with the implementation of the W3C/WCAG 2.0 guidelines1 for access to the web and digital content, for instance. In other cases, change happens through quite discreet efforts made by small groups of people wanting to make their local contexts more welcoming to all, and especially to people with specific needs.