Press the “Listen” button below to hear the story text, read by reporter Jonaki Mehta.

PHILADELPHIA — About a dozen visitors pause at the entrance to a gallery filled with statues of 42 men who had gathered here more than two centuries ago for the signing of the U.S. Constitution. The statues appear to be in motion, in conversation or deep in thought.

Standing among and touching their life-size figures, hands and faces drops visitors into that consequential historic moment.

“They feel like real people,” Grace Engle, a museum educator at the National Constitution Center (NCC), says to the tour group. “Except they might let you touch them a little more than your average individual might on a first meeting.”

As America recognizes 250 years of existence, this museum in the nation’s founding city has begun offering guided tactile tours aimed at blind and low vision visitors in a gallery called “Signers’ Hall.”

Left: Simon Bonenfant works with the organization Philly Touch Tours and helped train the museum educators leading the tours.
Right: Bonefant engages with George Washington’s face and head.

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The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 required most public institutions like museums to make buildings themselves accessible, but access to exhibits inside is often still limited. The NCC joins a growing number of museums nationwide that have, in recent years, incorporated accessibility options like sensory-friendly days into their programming, though “touch tours” are less common.

Visitor Tim Kelly Jr. runs his fingers over Benjamin Franklin’s figure. “Everything feels so distinct on him,” he says. “He’s seated. I could also feel the wrinkles on his face because he was 81 years old at the time of the convention.”

Kelly says it’s refreshing to experience a tour tailored to the way he learns: The museum’s guides provide detailed descriptions of what can be seen and felt, while weaving in a history lesson. Pointing to Eldbridge Gerry in one corner of the room, Grace Engle says, “He is who you have to blame or thank for the beauty of gerrymandering,” explaining that Gerry had once redrawn a district in the shape of a salamander. “And so then a cartoonist deems it gerrymandering.”

The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia is participating in the nation’s 250th anniversary, in part, by expanding access to their exhibits to visitors with disabilities.

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At other moments, museum staff trace visitors’ hands over the expressive faces, clothing and hands of the statues, all while guiding them safely through the crowded space.

Kristina Marinello, senior director of museum experience, says this gallery has long invited touching. “Ben Franklin’s hands are super shiny because people have kind of always touched him no matter what. Kids like to sit on his lap.” But the center only began offering these tours officially in April, after staff trained with Philly Touch Tours, an organization that works with museums far and wide to make them more accessible.

Left: Replicas of artifacts are available as part of the tactile friendly tours the NCC now offers.
Right: Jeff and Sharon Clark touch the replica of an antique fabric. They have been to the NCC before it offered tactile tours and say the experience now is much improved.

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Trish Maunder, one of the group’s founders, says “Our mantra is ‘seeing may be believing, but when you touch, you know.’” Maunder, whose daughter is blind, calls touch the “mother sense,” one she thinks people lose connection with as they get older. She hopes tours like this become more prevalent and will help sighted and blind people alike reconnect with that sense. “Your body holds on to that sort of muscle memory, so now you carry that with you.”