The people's city is built by the people, and the people's city is for the people.

On March 31, in the afternoon of Spring Day in Shanghai, a group of people with spinal cord disabilities set off from their homes on their own electric wheelchairs and arrived at the World Expo Museum Station by Metro Line 13. Afterwards, under the guidance of volunteers, they entered the World Expo Museum to visit permanent exhibitions such as " The World Comes Together" and " Moving with Progress".

This is a group of 20 people with spinal cord disabilities invited by the Shanghai Xuhui Mockingbird Public Welfare Development Center, Shanghai World Expo Museum, Arts Access/Fusion Arts and Shanghai Lida College. This time they walked into the World Expo Museum to experience a multi-sensory cultural journey and put forward valuable suggestions for the construction of a barrier-free cultural environment in Shanghai.

The World Expo Museum uses high-tech and interactive methods such as sound and light to tell the historical stories since the first London World Expo in 1851. Visitors can not only see the miniature models of the first World Expos, but also listen to the information from the World Expo through 4D images, sound and see images from 170 years ago. Afterwards, the museum gave a lecture titled "Chinese Traditional Colors" to the invited guests. The lecture started from appreciating the five traditional Chinese color systems and shared the stories of the World Expo collections related to them, so that everyone can better understand the excellent traditional Chinese culture on the basis of enjoying the World Expo culture.

As early as the construction period of the new museum, the World Expo Museum tried to use BIM technology to optimize the physical space, and launched a smart barrier-free navigation applet applied to the entire exhibition area in 2019. Among them, the "Visual Assisted Guide Mode" is specially customized for the visually impaired, which can switch barrier-free guides with one key, and increase the navigation of service facilities such as toilets; It help the guests visually impaired overcome the image barriers during the visit process, enrich the visit experience and make the tour easier.

The organizer of the event, Shanghai Xuhui Mockingbird Public Welfare Development Center is a non-governmental organization organized and founded by the disabled people. The founder, Huang Yu, hopes encourage everyone to go out of the house, integrate into the society and share a beautiful cultural life by organizing this visit to the museum for spinal cord disabled people. At the same time, let these severely disabled people transform from being served to participants in social barrier-free construction through experience feedback

The organizer of the event, Arts Access was established in Shanghai and is committed to promoting the barrier-free environment and service construction of local cultural and art institutions. It has previously successfully cooperated with local art galleries to launch art guides and public education project which has received good social feedback.

Under the leadership of Mr. Bu Zhicheng, the student volunteer team of Shanghai Lida College has been supporting volunteer activities related to barrier-free culture for many years. This time, Zhang Xinyi, Zhou Ziyue, Chen Xixun and Wang Xinmiao provided photography and text support activities.

According to organizers, after the event, the invited guests will submit their thoughts, comments and suggestions on the barrier-free construction of urban public transportation and cultural and museum venues to relevant departments for their reference in improving barrier-free facilities and services.

Title image source: The organizer provides the image

Editor: Yong Kai