Three Years of Learning: What MuseIT Taught Us About Co-Creating Accessible Culture

When MuseIT began, we did not start with ready-made answers, we started with questions:

How can cultural experiences become genuinely accessible for people with disabilities? What does it mean to co-create, rather than simply consult? And how can technology, policy, and cultural practice work together without reinforcing existing barriers?

Over the past three years, we have explored these questions through research, experimentation, and, most importantly, collaboration with our target groups: people with disabilities & cultural organisations, across different cultural contexts. The result has not been a single solution or tool, but a body of shared learning about how inclusion actually happens in practice.

Learning by Doing — and by Listening

One of the clearest lessons from MuseIT is that accessibility cannot be added at the end of a project. Whether we were working with museums, performing arts professionals, technologists, or researchers, the same pattern emerged: meaningful accessibility only happens when it is embedded from the very beginning.

Co-creation proved to be both essential and demanding. It requires time, trust, and a willingness to question assumptions. In several cases, what professionals believed to be “intuitive” or “minor details” turned out to be real barriers for participants. Conversely, some of the most impactful solutions were simple, low-tech, and rooted in lived experience rather than innovation for its own sake.

Mistakes were part of the process. We repeatedly reflected on moments where things did not work as planned, whether due to unclear communication, inaccessible formats, or over-reliance on technology. These moments were not failures, but

learning opportunities that reshaped future decisions.

From Experience to Guidance: The Do’s and Don’ts

To make these lessons usable beyond the project, we worked together to translate their experiences into the MuseIT Recommendations Booklet.

Rather than offering abstract principles, the booklet presents practical do’s and don’ts tailored to four key groups:

• Technological professionals

• Museums, cultural institutions, and performing arts professionals

• Performing arts professionals specifically

• Social Sciences and Humanities researchers

This format reflects a core insight from the project: professionals do not need rigid rules, but clear, experience-based guidance that helps them reflect on their choices, avoid common pitfalls, and adapt practices to local contexts.

The recommendations emphasize collaboration across disciplines, accessibility-first design, transparent communication, and the recognition of people with disabilities as experts of their own experiences. They also highlight what to avoid: tokenistic participation, last-minute fixes, one-size-fits-all solutions, and treating accessibility as optional.

Extending the Learning to Policy

MuseIT’s work also made clear that many of the barriers encountered are not only practical, but structural. Fragmented funding, weak institutional continuity, limited data frameworks, and the absence of accessibility as a core cultural right all constrain what professionals can realistically achieve.

For this reason, MuseIT also produced three policy briefs, each addressing a different dimension of cultural accessibility at the European level:

1. Gaps in existing EU policies related to accessible and multisensory cultural experiences

2. The role of data, metadata, and digital infrastructure in accessibility technologies

3. The need for a systemic, rights-based approach to cultural accessibility and participation

Together, these briefs argue for a shift away from short-term, project-based solutions toward institutionalised, sustainable approaches grounded in Universal Design and co-creation.

Designing Culture With People, Not For Them

Perhaps the most important learning from MuseIT is also the simplest: inclusion is not about anticipating needs from a distance, It is about building relationships, sharing decision-making, and accepting that expertise comes in many forms.

The MuseIT Recommendations Booklet is not an endpoint, but a contribution to an ongoing conversation. It reflects three years of collective learning and invites professionals, institutions, and policymakers to continue asking critical questions;

All our publications, including the Recommendations Booklet and policy briefs, are available here: https://www.muse-it.eu/outcomes/publications