In 2021, Grigar and Snyder began to envision an enhancement to the Extended eLectronic Metadata Schema (ELMS), developed for ELO's The NEXT, that would address the needs of visitors with disabilities and sensory sensitivities. We refer to this iniatiative as ELMS 3.0.
In fall 2022 our team proposed and was accepted to Triangle SCI, the week-long retreat at Duke University funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to continue our work on ELMS 3.0. Our goal was to build out the metadata needed for visitors to know the kind of experience to expect from a work so that they can make informed decisions about how best to engage with it. Based on a framework of sensory modalities like sight, sound, and touch, the system pairs extended metadata in controlled vocabularies related to disability access with a narrative “experiencing the work” statement. Our descriptive statements are expressed in Plain/Simple English and further detail what disabled and sensory sensitive visitors need to know before encountering a work. You will find the prototype for our controlled vocabularies below.
At the heart of our project is the belief that all visitors should be equally enabled to act upon their interest in accessing works held in an archive.