Thwack! Don’t forget to punch in. The time clock starts your tour when you enter the National Museum of Industrial History in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Housed in a 1913 Bethlehem Steel machine shop, NMIH is a Smithsonian Affiliate. Their exhibits encourage visitors to engage with the past and get inspired by America’s manufacturing ingenuity.

Visitors laugh as they play with gears and attempt to generate horsepower by hand – a quick way to appreciate the might of machines. This authentic factory space is filled with colossal industrial equipment. Of course, it’s nowhere near as noisy as it would have been in the old days, but the occasional motion-detector triggers the clangs and hiss of a steam hammer.

Voices of past — and present – workers, innovators, and families are central to the National Museum of Industrial History’s programming and exhibits.

One challenge NMIH faced from the outset was how to tell stories and have them heard above visiting groups and other ambient noise in a big industrial space. For the last five years the answer has been Vista Group’s SoundStik handsets. The handsets offer personalized sound that is ADA compliant.

“Our SoundStiks are teamed with BrightSign systems and pushbuttons,” commented museum preparator Frank Sattler. “They hold up to lots of use and abuse. Sometimes we serve 1,500 school kids in a month!”

Creating compelling audio for NMIH has been a team effort. Talented museum staff helped record lively first-person accounts of people who worked in the silk mills. Local politicians told how they helped the Bethlehem community transform a heartbreaking former brownfield into the thriving arts hub of the SteelStacks. And a professional voice actor recreated Ulysses S. Grant’s speech at the 1876 Centennial Exposition opening. Grant helped start the huge Corliss steam engine that powered most of the exposition’s exhibits. A similar Corliss stands at NMIH, ready to roar to life on demonstration days.

In its smaller changing exhibition gallery, audio elements from one show can be seamlessly adapted into the next. In a past exhibit about radio, a series of lift-the-flap elements treated visitors to loudspeaker music from different eras. Today, these same audio components add the impact of sound to a new graphic panel in the Robert Fulton Industrious Revolutionary exhibit (through August 13, 2023). Now visitors can push a button to hear witnesses describe their personal experiences at the launch of Fulton’s famous Claremont steamboat in 1807.

Construction is underway on an exciting second floor of exhibits and educational spaces, expected to open in 2024. The museum’s original design team, Metcalfe Architecture and Design and ArtGuild, are back to ensure historic factory feel and dynamic exhibits. The new second level will offer expanded exploration of Lehigh Valley’s famous silk and textile industries.

“We hope to get our historic jacquard loom operating, making ribbon with programmable patterns,” explained Sattler. “We’re working with experts at Bally Ribbon Mills.”

It’s a fitting collaboration. In the 1800s, the mechanism and products of a jacquard loom were cutting edge, and today, the newest generation of looms at Bally weave textiles for aerospace. This next stage of NMIH is sure to wow and inspire future generations.

COMING SOON AT NMIH: Check out the events calendar for everything from an opportunity to operate a 1941 Whitcomb diesel-electric locomotive to a presentation on how the Bethlehem plant helped build New York City’s Lincoln Tunnel. For families, don’t miss the S.T.E.A.M. into Spring Break Youth Series from April 6 – 14. You might even catch that Corliss engine in action.

The Redesign Project of the Museo do Ipiranga, in São Paulo Brazil, one of the most important in Latin America, integrated dozens of listening handsets by Vista Group into its inauguration event and exhibit.

“THANK YOU VERY MUCH!”
— Marcelo Jarbas Atendimento
Rua Ada Negri, 82, São Paulo, 04755-000, Brazil

by: Noelle Child —

When does a wheelchair make you think of accomplishment instead of limitation? Perhaps when the wheelchair belonged to Governor of New York and longest-serving US President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Visitors are encountering new perspectives at the  Disability Rights Employment Awareness Month (D.R.E.A.M.) Exhibition at the Empire State Capitol Building in Albany, New York. The exhibition’s centerpiece, a wheelchair likely used by FDR during his time as Governor, shakes up lazy thinking at first glance. Paired with an intimate family photo — a rare glimpse of FDR with wheelchair in view — this universal symbol of disability takes on a new role. It challenges visitors to reject old associations with disability and connect to the value, strength, and potential of all people.

Created in honor of National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM), the exhibition highlights the influential role of New York State and its people in the disability rights movement. Eight elegant panels of text and images share stories of several remarkable New Yorkers with disabilities who became agents of change. One example is Bernard Carabello, who survived childhood in a notorious institution before becoming a leader in the disability rights movement. Displays also explore national efforts, including the rough road to deinstitutionalization in the mid-1900s and critical national protests, such as the “Capitol Crawl,” that helped revolutionize perceptions of people with disabilities throughout the late 1900s.

Faithful to the inclusivity at the heart of D.R.E.A.M, the exhibition’s design aims to provide access to people of all mobilities and abilities.

“We always consider people with disabilities when designing exhibits, but it felt especially significant in this case,” says Joe Madeira, Director of Curatorial and Visitor Services. “We wanted to be sure to serve people with low vision who couldn’t read the text.”

One solution was audio. Visitors can choose to listen to the exhibition’s messages using either SoundStik® handsets or QR codes. The handsets also include hearing-aid compatibility to benefit visitors with both vision and hearing impairments. To help visitors with low vision locate audio access, Madeira placed handsets and QR codes in consistent locations and called out audio access points with high-contrast speech bubbles. The exhibition’s modular display stands and SoundStik® handsets can be reused for future exhibitions at the Capitol.

A portable version of the exhibition greeted attendees at New York’s first annual D.R.E.A.M. Symposium in the Empire State Plaza on Tuesday, October 4^th. New York’s D.R.E.A.M. symposium was created to help educate employers and service providers on the many benefits of including people with disabilities in the workforce, especially in roles that go beyond minimum-wage jobs. It concluded with a virtual job fair on Tuesday, October 11^th.

People with disabilities form the largest and most diverse minority in the US and in the world. This is also the only minority group that any of us could join at any point in our lives.

The Disability Rights Employment Awareness Month Exhibition is on view now through November 4^th, in the Governor’s Reception Room on the second floor, Empire State Capitol Building, Albany, New York. Too far to travel? Visit https://empirestateplaza.ny.gov/dream to experience the exhibition online. Audio access is included there, too.

Also at the Empire State Capitol Building: Flag in the Map, an international exhibition from the Gilbert Baker Foundation that documents people around the world flying the original rainbow Pride Flag – in some cases at risk of arrest or attack. Flag on the Map is on view Monday, October 17 to December 31, 2022, in the Capitol Building’s East Lobby, 2^nd Floor.

Learn more:

• About New York State’s commitment to disability rights and employment awareness in this ny.gov announcement
• About NDEAM’s 2022 theme, Disability: Part of the Equity Equation, the critical role of people with disabilities in the creation of a diverse and inclusive workplace today at the US Department of Labor Blog
• About the history of disability and disability advocacy at this virtual museum