May 18 of every year is International Museum Day initiated and founded by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and it is a major festival for museums around the world to discuss and explore a common theme of the year and to communicate and interact with the public. This year’s theme “Museums for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion” aims to unlock museums’ potential to serve society and encourage museums to reach more diverse groups of people with a more open and inclusive attitude by breaking thresholds and definitions, such as age, identity, and physical condition.  

Guided by the annual theme, theme activity “Barrier-free Love, Walk into Jinsha” is also launched in Jinsha today. This activity will release tour videos with sign language, “Chinese + sign language” bilingual live streaming video, offline interaction with sign language, and other forms, linking museum and audience and offering the disabled convenient visitor services.

Barrier-free love, perceive Jinsha from explanation with sign language

The day before the May 18 International Museum Day is exactly China’s National Disability Assistance Day of 2020, under the shadow of Sun and Immortal Birds Dome, a special interactive event is being held. Shi Yuming, the only sign language guide among museums in the province currently, in collaboration with a sign language interpreter, guides the audience on spot, describing “Sun and Immortal Birds” and other simple terms of cultural relics with finger gestures. As a person with hearing impairment, Shi Yuming entered Jinsha in 2011. He not only painstakingly studied how to use Chinese sign language to “explain” Jinsha, but also learned international sign language by himself, thus setting up a soundless path to mysterious ancient Shu for visitors with hearing impairment at home and from other countries, including Slovenia and Japan. 

However, after all, one man’s strength is limited. To enable more people with hearing impairment to visit on their own, Jinsha Site Museum officially releases sign language guide mini program today. When visitors visit the museum, they only need to enter the WeChat official account of “Jinsha Site Museum”, click “Audio Guide”—“Sign Language Guide”, then they can watch videos of 31 major cultural relics and sites. Sign language videos, captions and voice-overs in these videos can serve visitors with hearing or/and visual impairment and normal visitors simultaneously. It is learned that this is also the first barrier-free guide mini program put online among all museums in Sichuan Province.