Art, memory, information and disability: art libraries and the democratization of knowledge

Abstract

This research has as its central theme the discussion about accessibility in art libraries in the context of visual impairment. Starting from a critical fortune about the assimilation of disability as a social production that delimits certain bodies in their possibility of action in the world, we will investigate how libraries have been engaged in lowering their barriers of exclusion and striving to promote inclusion and accessibility for blind people, or with low vision. In this context, we discuss an inclusion production path in tune with a culture digitization movement that uses assistive technologies and cyber resources to promote accessibility and in contrast the design of collective agency strategies for experimental accessibility projects aware of the secrecy of bodies and their narratives, resistant to the objectifying technological pragmatism of inclusion production. Analyzing the inclusive measures of the Fine Arts University library and Dorina Nowill library, we will exemplify this discussion by thinking about the applicability of these strategies in the context of the art libraries. In addition, we will discuss the results of the initiatives and challenges ahead in the field of access to information in art libraries, especially in the context of visual impairment, thinking about how these spaces can diminish inequalities and democratize and pluralize the means of accessibility to information in the contemporary field.