The Jodi Awards as a prism of accessible digital culture

For over a decade the Jodi Awards have been celebrating organisations that achieve excellence and push the boundaries of possibility for digital media in increasing participation for everyone. The ‘Jodis’ recognise the best use of digital technology in widening access to information, collections, learning and creativity for disabled people in museums, galleries, heritage sites, libraries and archives. The Awards were set up in 2002 by the Museums Computer Group - a cultural technology community of practice, based in the UK, but with around two thousand participants from around the world. The inaugural awards took place in 2003, the European Year of Disabled People. Today, administered by the Jodi Mattes Trust, a UK registered charity, the Jodi Awards are given in memory of Jodi Mattes (1973–2001). Jodi was a tireless champion of equal access to culture and the Awards were set up to celebrate her passion and energy. In her career at the British Museum and the RNIB (the Royal National Institute of Blind People), her work focused on improving the visitor experience to cultural activities for disabled people and the importance of involving disabled people in programme and project development. Over a decade, the Jodis have not only made an informed and compelling case for accessible design, but they have raised the standards expected from the sector. As well as celebrating success and recognising innovation, the Jodi Awards serves as a body of work through which we can understand evolving practice in the museum sector. In particular they: Demonstrate a growing responsiveness and agility in digital design; Alert us to the digital literacy deficit within museums; Evidence the empowerment of participatory design; Demonstrate the substantives consequence of the sensory turn in museum studies; Expose the limited reach of universal design in museums; Demonstrate a growing confidence in understanding the diversity and differences of disability. Rather than disability being something to be understood or accommodated, disability instead here becomes a mature, informed, nuanced, present, established place from which to reflect upon practice, and on the museum as a whole. This is disability academically activated for museums and Museum Studies.