Digital Adaptation of the Portuguese Museums Educational Service in a Pandemic Context: Case Study

Abstract

The promotion and dissemination of cultural heritage, exhibited in Portuguese national museums, are of great importance, mainly in its educational aspect, but also as a foundation for the perpetuation of memory, both for the population in general and, above all, for children, adolescents and young adults. In this article, the main objective is to investigate the digital adaptation, resulting from the technological innovation implemented in six Portuguese national museums, namely in their educational services, as a way to overcome the problems created by the COVID-19 pandemic, problems that were aggravated during periods of lockdown and closure of these museums. We also intend to analyse the problem of accessibility to digital information and to understand how the institutional web contents of these educational services of the museums under study, which depend on the Direção Geral do Património Cultural (Directorate General for Cultural Heritage), comply with the accessibility requirements contained in Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), as set out in Directive (EU) 2016/2102 of the European Parliament and the European Standard EN 17161:2019. The final analysis revealed several weaknesses that affect the interest and motivations of users, given the wide range of museum product offerings.