2020 AAM MUSE Award Winner

Photographer: Alison Taggart-Barone

Harpers Ferry Center (HFC) in partnership with the University of Hawaii (UH) has been awarded a Gold place in the category of Research & Innovation in the prestigious 2020 American Alliance of Museums (AAM) MUSE awards for the development of the UniDescription (UniD) project. UniD’s aim is to make official NPS brochures accessible to people who are blind or low vision through audio description—many developed by teams throughout the NPS during annual “Descriptathons.” HFC recognizes its own Michele Hartley and UH’s Dr. Brett Oppegaard for their leadership in this outstanding product.

Annual MUSE awards celebrate scholarship, community, innovation, creativity, education, accessibility, and inclusiveness. Winning projects from nine categories are chosen by an international group of Gallery, Library, Archive, and Museum program (GLAM) technology professionals. This year’s judges recognized “this proof-of-concept project shows the possibilities for museums to make their stories accessible. By including free and open source tools for audio description, it has the potential to be a game changer for accessibility of heritage content.”