Janice Majewski was the accessibility coordinator for the Smithsonian between 1991 and 2001 and founded the Institution’s accessibility program. In this role, she worked with the Smithsonian’s museum and the National Zoo to increase accessibility throughout the Institution. Majewski also led the teams that wrote the Smithsonian Guidelines for Accessible Exhibition Design, the first comprehensive set of U.S. museum exhibition universal design guidelines, and Part of Your General Public is Disabled, the museum training manual. She joined the Smithsonian’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education in 1978 as the coordinator for special education and later became the office’s director of outreach programs.
Following her long career with the Smithsonian, Majewski worked as an accessibility specialist in the disability rights section of the United States Justice Department. Today, she is the director of inclusive cultural and educational projects at the Institute for Human Centered Design.
She earned a Master’s in Education of the Deaf degree from Smith College.
Related Resources
- Janice Majewski, Director, Inclusive Cultural and Education Projects, Institute for Human Centered Design
- Majewski, Janice. “Blind People Can See Your Collections With a Little Help From You” The Docent Education 1, no. 1 (Autumn 1991): 8-10.
- “As the Smithsonian starts to reopen, a small team takes on a big question: how to keep coronavirus concerns from taking away accessibility?” by Theresa Vargas, 25 July 2020, Washington Post
- “Tour of Art Lets Blind Use Mind’s Eye” by Lisa Chedekel, 11 April 1994, Hartford Courant
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