CONTACT:  Emily Stehle, APR

Phone: (727) 895-7437, ext. 207

 

 

St. Peterburg, FL (Feb. 6, 2010) - The Pier Aquarium’s Deaf Docent program has received a $2,000 grant from the Pinellas Community Foundation to further enhance the visitor experience.

 

The program, which supplements the aquarium’s Touch Tank Experience, centers on a Virtual Tour Guide for the Deaf developed in late 2009 by staff, students and teachers from Blossom Montessori School for the Deaf and technical partners at SRI St. Petersburg. The state-of the art multimedia guide, still in alpha testing phase, will be available on handheld, portable media tablets that combine high resolution digital images with information about the critters in the Touch Tank.

 

The guide presents a split screen in a streaming video format. One side views an animal; the other shows an American Sign Language interpreter (a student or teacher from Blossom Montessori) signing information about the critter. Eventually, any visitor will be able to check out a guide for free with a valid driver’s license, passport or other photo identification. Teachers from the School for the Deaf and the Family Center on Deafness in Pinellas Park, a new partner of The Pier Aquarium, will provide their teaching expertise to reach a greater, and more diverse, audience of the deaf or hard of hearing.

 

The "Deaf Docent Guide” was initiated in 2008 with funding for special audiences provided by an Accessibility Grant from the Pinellas County Cultural Affairs Department. It was supplemented by a $1,000 award, the 2009 State of Florida Division of Cultural Affairs and VSA arts of Florida Inclusive Culture Award, for Best Practices in Access. A $1,500 grant from the Community Foundation of Greater St. Petersburg, a division of the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay, for the Deaf Docent Program was in October.

 

The first two grants provided for new exhibit graphics – electronic fish identification signs – on digital photo frames at the Atlantic Ocean and Invertebrates tanks. The photo frames display looping slide presentation about the living collections and add a new layer of technological innovation to the exhibits. The technology also allows aquarium staff greater flexibility in tailoring displays for special needs visitors, special events or custom educational programing. Other items purchased through the grant – hand-held lighted microscopes, magnifying viewing boxes, biofacts (shells of animals that have molted) and even life-life plastic replicas of the aquarium’s most popular critters (hermit crabs, sea stars and horseshoe crab) – are now available during touch tank time and used as teaching tools with school groups and teachers.

 

 

 

 

This is the mission of the Pinellas Community Foundation, a public foundation built by individuals, families and businesses that care about community. These groups donate their time and resources to make Pinellas County a better place to live – now and in the future.