Evaluating Accessibility in Organizations
This session will explore lessons learned and best practices for conducting evaluation with people with disabilities. We detail how to share authority with people in disability communities and explore alternative evaluation practices (such as using literature reviews as evaluative tools) that minimize the potential harm that data collection can have on marginalized populations. Session content will be relevant to organizations seeking to expand their accessibility programming and offerings, measure their social impact, and perform evaluation without furthering harms that have happened when people with disabilities are the subject of social science research. Our goal is to inspire attendees to reconsider evaluation as a tool for advocacy and community building while emphasizing the importance of ethical data collection practices like participatory evaluation.
Presenters:
Alyssa Carr (she/her) specializes in visitor research and evaluation in her role as Evaluation and Visitor Research Associate at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO. She prioritizes community engagement and participatory analysis of accessibility and IDEAs centered projects. She has presented on participatory evaluation, evaluation of accessibility projects, and audience research. She is the current chair of the Visitor Studies Association Art Museum Focused Interest Group. Previous focus areas have included early education, military leadership, and youth and adult education. She holds a Master’s degree in Organizational Development, with a Graduate Certificate in Project Management from Avila University in Kansas City, MO.
Laureen Trainer (she/hers), principal of Trainer Evaluation, curated a blog series for the Committee on Audience Research and Evaluation, where she published nineteen blogs and worked with dozens of authors. She co-edited a volume of the Journal of Museum Education (JME), Empowering Museum Educators to Evaluate (Volume 40), and has been a JME peer reviewer for over a decade. Involved in the museum world since 1997, Trainer started as an educator and transitioned to the role of internal evaluator before ultimately becoming an independent, external evaluator. Trainer is passionate about evaluation as a tool for continual learning, adaptation, and engaging stakeholders and community members.
Karen Breece (she/her) is the Audience Research and Evaluation Associate at Conner Prairie near Indianapolis, Indiana. In her role, she oversees 20-30 evaluation projects annually and is proud to work in a museum setting that constantly calls her to use innovative data collection methods. She brings her practical museum know-how gained through roles in museum education, public programs, and exhibit curation to her evaluation work, and strives to center the joy and well-being of museum visitors in everything she does. She holds a master’s degree in museum studies from Indiana University.
Maia Werner-Avidon, principal of MWA Insights, is an established independent evaluator working with museums and other cultural institutions. Prior to starting her firm, Ms. Werner-Avidon served as the Manager of Research & Evaluation for the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and as a Research and Evaluation Specialist at the Lawrence Hall of Science (Berkeley, CA). She earned her bachelor’s degree from Macalester College and Master of Arts degree in museum studies from John F. Kennedy University. Ms. Werner-Avidon served as the external evaluator for the Access from the Ground Up project at the Palo Alto Junior Museum & Zoo.
