in Spain, the Fundacion Orange supporting the sign-guide service at the Altamira national museum and Research center

August 17, 2009 - After the Reina Sofia National Center for Contemporary Art and the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Madrid, and the national museum of Roman Art in Mérida, a fourth Spanish museum has been equipped with sign-guides: Altamira national museum.

Available free of charge since July 20 this year, this service has been made possible thanks to close cooperation with the CNSE Foundation, a benchmark for sign language standardization, which is working to eliminate obstacles to communication, translating the content of the sign-guides and subtitling them. Technical developments are being handled by the company Antenna Audio.
Sign-guides are multimedia terminals equipped with a screen for viewing videos illustrating a number of selected pieces in Spanish sign language and subtitles. The aim is to ensure independence for deaf and hearing impaired people visiting the museum, with simple and practical navigation.

The sign-guides accompany visitors for 45 minutes throughout the permanent exhibition – “Times of Altamira” – enabling them to easily find out about the prehistoric period. During the visit and in the various exhibition rooms, sign-guide users are able to encounter hunter-gatherers who lived 15,000 years ago in Altamira, learning a range of facts about their day-to-day life and the items on show.
Not only has the Altamira Museum been designed without any physical barriers, but every effort has also been made to ensure that the scientific information and content illustrating the history are easily accessible for as many people as possible. By making brochures in Spanish sign language available to visitors, the Altamira Museum is a pioneer in the fight to bring down barriers for the deaf and hearing impaired. In this way, setting up the sign-guide system represents a further step forward in welcoming these people, while adding to the list of actions carried out by the Orange Foundation in terms of accessibility.



find out more
Orange Foundation
the Fundación Orange website (in Spanish)
the Fundación Orange at the national museum of Roman Art in Mérida
Altamira national museum website