Inclusive Interpretive Signage

Lincoln Park Zoo researchers worked with people with disabilities to cocreate signage that teaches guests about animals and conservation in a fun, inclusive way.

About This Project

Cultural spaces like zoos, aquariums, and museums serve as important gathering spaces in their communities, where millions of guests go to learn, spend time together and enjoy themselves. Though these institutions believe in being accessible to all, people with disabilities nonetheless sometimes find they cannot engage as fully as other community members. Physical accessibility of spaces, crowd sizes, and noise are just some of the barriers that dissuade people with disabilities from visiting zoos and similar institutions.

Beyond the physical layout of spaces, one of best ways we can make a zoo visit more accessible to all visitors is thinking about how animal information is presented to guests. Moving away from a purely visual-text format toward a multi-modal design enables more folks to access the information the zoo shares. This project utilized proven practices in cocreation and universal design to create new inclusive exhibit signage that would both enhance the visitor experience and deepen our knowledge of accessible signage for future projects.

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Why Signage?

Like other zoos and aquariums, most of Lincoln Park Zoo’s exhibits rely heavily on text-only interpretive signage. Unfortunately, this reduces visitors’ ability to engage with the content through their preferred method of informal learning. Exhibits with text-only graphics can be especially ineffective for guests with certain cognitive or physical disabilities. While physical accommodations have provided people with disabilities greater access to exhibits at zoos and aquariums, research indicates that their engagement in learning still lags behind those without disabilities.

At Lincoln Park Zoo, staff have seen how interpretive elements that offer opportunities for hands-on interaction, have scalable content, or include mixed modalities like print and audio features draw visitors deeper into the wildlife experience. They help to make nature and science topics clear, relatable, and fun for everyone. And while many guests—both with and without disabilities—enjoy learning directly from zoo educators, not everyone opts into these experiences, nor are they ubiquitously available. Thus, enhancing exhibit signage is a critical component to widening the accessibility of Lincoln Park Zoo storytelling.

The Cocreation Process

Utilizing processes tested by Lincoln Park Zoo’s community engagement initiatives, the team involved members of the disability community in the entire process of creating these signs. It started by hosting input sessions with more than 70 individuals with disabilities to better understand the challenges, frustrations, successes, and opportunities involved when people with disabilities visit zoos. From there, smaller brainstorming sessions and a design charette helped everyone narrow down the kinds of signs and at which exhibits.

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The team then selected eight partners from the disability community who would each work on one to two of the signs. These partners were integrated into the development and design process at the same level as other subject matter experts, such as animal curators or zoo scientists, thus giving the disability perspective an equitable voice on the project. They attended all brainstorming and planning meetings, during which the team determined what messages would be shared in the signage and what kinds of design elements could best tell those stories. The partners participated in prototyping the signs with guests and helped make iterative changes based on prototype results.

Composition of the New Signs

Each of the three new installations tells a deeper story about the animals in that habitat. They utilize a variety of physical interactives, including spinners, flip panels, body-part replicas, and caretaking tools, placed at heights that work for a variety of audiences from children to people using wheelchairs to adults who have trouble bending down. In the case of the gorillas and seals, the signs are the size, shape, and proportions of the animals themselves, helping to communicate more about the animals to folks who are blind or have low vision.

Additionally, each of the signs is accompanied by a QR code that leads to a webpage full of accessible resources, including audio files of the signage text being read aloud and a supplementary video available with captions, American Sign Language interpretation, or audio description.

Gorilla Wayside signage, outside entrance to Regenstein Center for African Apes

Seal Wayside signage, outside Kovler Seal Pool

Giraffe Wayside, outside Regenstein African Journey

Staff

Allison Price, Senior Director of Learning and Guest Engagement
Bill Green, Hart Prins Fund Manager of Accessibility and Inclusion
Kathy Kiser, Manager of Evaluation and Learning Research
Heather Brousalis, Manager of Guest Engagement
Hyson Gibbon Newson, Production Manager
Ben Hunt, Interpretive Content Developer
Joan Raia, Designer
Sean Raju, Video Creator and Editor

Funding Statement

This project was funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services under Grant No. MA-249076-OMS-21. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute for Museum and Library Services. The project was also supported by the John Hart and Carol Prins Fund for Visitors with Special Needs.

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