Connecticut Radio Information System

The Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum is dedicated to preserving the history of the agricultural industry in Connecticut. The museum contains many artifacts in its Archive Building related to the cigar-tobacco industry in Connecticut. The museum also houses a collection of antique farm equipment used in the growing of shade and broadleaf tobacco here in the Connecticut River Valley. This equipment is located in a beautifully restored shed located next to the archives building.

CRIS Solution

The Windsor Lions Club, in conjunction with the Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum, partnered with CRIS Radio to provide an audio tour of its restored tobacco shed with the goal of making the museum accessible to people who are blind or unable to read due to other disabilities, including low vision and learning disabilities.

“I was really excited about it (the CRISAccess QR Code project). It was so cool to learn about tobacco because growing up in Connecticut, we all know that tobacco was a big deal. But you don’t really know why. So to learn about the history and how influential and all-encompassing tobacco is for the economy and the people of the state [was very informative], but also to be at a museum that – in the grand scheme of all of the museums in all the world – is a small museum. And yet, they bring this huge effort to make themselves completely accessible. And I think of all the places that are much bigger places – and I presume, with a much bigger budget – that don’t make that effort or don’t do it as well. And I also found it very exciting that this [Windsor] Lions Club was so instrumental in helping with that. … so committed to this project and to being as Helen Keller said ‘eyes to the blind.’

- Andrea Giudice, blind since birth and host of “As I See It,”
West Hartford, Conn. Community Television program