Blind and Visually Impaired Visitors’ Experiences in Museums: Increasing Accessibility through Assistive Technologies (original) (raw)
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Despite the growing concern and several efforts to make museums accessible to visually impaired publics, their participation in these institutions is still limited, frustrating their desired inclusion. These visitors often experience multiple barriers in museological environments, and there is a lack of assistive technologies to promote access to exhibits, allow contextual information, and support mobility and orientation inside museum spaces. This paper presents the accessible, interactive, and multisensory exhibition “Mysteries of the Art of Healing”, which is organized in ten moments of an on-site visit to a history and science museum in Portugal, mediated by a set of technological solutions: an interactive 3D layout plan of the museum, seven high-fidelity prototypes of accessible interactives with thirteen 3D replicas, and one mobile application that acts as an assistive navigation guide during the entire visit. For its development, several principles proposed by a group of 72 blind and partially sighted persons to improve their autonomy during visits to museums were taken into account, namely: to provide sensory, intellectual, and physical access throughout the entire museum experience. Evaluation results with 25 visually impaired participants revealed the applicability of the developed solutions within this museum visit context, and global satisfaction results showed to be very positive and correlated to four variables: pleasantness of interacting with digitally fabricated objects, entertainment provided by the ten experiences, interaction with the developed accessible interactives, and pleasantness regarding the handling of manually fabricated replicas.
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Human's involvement with culture is a vital part of his life, but what happens when someone is blind or visually impaired (VI) and how Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) help the access to cultural locations? The difficulties and limitations that blind and visually impaired (BVI) persons face while visiting museums or art exhibitions are of high importance. These limitations concern both the access to the location and the perception of the exhibits. This bibliographic research is divided into four main parts. In the first part of our paper we will analyze the difficulties that these people face as visitors in art exhibitions and how their disabilities affect an autonomous visit. Afterwards, we will refer to the importance of the disability arts when combined with ICTs. In the next part, we will mention the projects that are already applied or those for which efforts have been made globally for their implementation. These will be accompanied by recorded feedback from blind and visually impaired visitors. Finally, we will make a scheduled visit to the Tactual Museum of Athens in order to collect material on practices used in their exhibition and we shall record reactions from visually impaired visitors.
9th International Conference on Software Development and Technologies for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusion
Although the growing concern to make museums accessible to individuals with visual impairments, their participation in these institutions is still limited, given the multiple barriers they often experience and the lack of assistive technologies to promote access. This research investigates the perspectives of 72 blind and partially sighted individuals on enhancing their visiting experience in museums. A co-created framework to improve visitors' autonomy is proposed, concluding that sensory, intellectual and physical access must be integrated into the pre, on-site and post phases of visiting museums. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Accessibility; Interaction Design.
Procedia Computer Science, 2018
Blind and visually impaired visitors experience a lot of constraints when visiting museums exhibitions, giving the ocular centricity of these institutions, the lack of cognitive, physical and sensorial access to exhibits or replicas, increased by the inaccessibility to use the digital media technologies designed to provide different experiences, among other constraints. This paper aims to present the design and implementation of an exhibitor to communicate original museum samples to blind and visually impaired patrons, without the need to be replicated, that interactively "tell stories about their lives" whenever picked up. Tests performed with 13 partially sighted and blind participants at the main exhibition museum space, demonstrated very positive evaluations regarding pragmatic and hedonic qualities of the interaction, a positive capacity to mentally conceptualize the exhibits according to the audio descriptions, and how to enhance the experience of using more exhibitors like this one during a future visit to the museum.
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The subject of study in this paper is the material created by visually impaired participants in two workshops and the approach of bringing participatory design to museums for this particular user group. These two workshops were organized as part of the research activities of the project Äänijälki 1 .
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The goal of this paper is to support the social rehabilitation of blind and visually impaired persons by making them feel confident museum visitors and by providing them with the chance to comprehend their museum tour more fully. Accordingly, this paper will show that the blind person has been given abilities by the all-powerful God, but if he desires it and has the motivation to do so, he can invest these abilities to enable him to live independently without the need for anyone else. However, this is only possible when the society makes him feel like a member of it by involving him in the community. How many healthy individuals lack the drive, imagination, and productivity that those who are blind do? Making Egyptian Museums more accessible for blind or visually impaired visitors is a desired goal. Encourage them to visit the museum without a help from anybody through designing a special lane "Tactile Paving". This demonstrates that our ability to produce in life is ultimately determined by our inner intelligence, psychology, soul, and inner strength, not by any physical limitations or external factors.
In this poster we trace the discovery and initial design phases for a digital museum guide for visitors who are blind, for use at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto. Our design goal was to create a prototype for a handheld device that would provide contextual, descriptive, and historical information about artifacts in the museum’s permanent collection. First, we reviewed existing assistive technologies. Second, a participatory design approach was identified as a useful methodology to understand the specific characteristics of the context of use and the unique perspectives of the users in this study. Third, in collaboration with participants who are blind and museum staff, we developed a medium-fidelity prototype. Using a simulation technique with participants in situ, we created rapid iterations of our prototype. Here, we present our key findings and recommendations.
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Purpose This paper aims to report the findings of a systematized literature review focusing on participatory research and accessibly in the context of assistive technologies, developed for use within museums by people with sensory impairments or a learning disability. The extent and nature of participatory research that occurs within the creation of technologies to facilitate accessible museum experiences is uncertain, and this is therefore a focus of this paper. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a systematized literature review and subsequent thematic analysis. Findings A screening of 294 research papers produced 8 papers for analysis in detail. A thematic analysis identified that the concept of accessibly has nuanced meanings, underpinned by social values; the attractiveness of a technology is important in supporting real-life usability; and that the conceptualization of participation should extend beyond the end users. Social implications The argument is made that increas...
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Three-dimensional printing, or 3D printing, has been used toward the educational, cultural, and social participation of individuals who are blind and partially sighted (BPS) by providing sensory access by touch. This study describes an example of the use of 3D printing technology to make museums accessible to visitors who are BPS by creating a three-dimensional printed artifacts museum (3D-PAM) that exhibits 3D printed replicas of artifacts from famous museums around the world. Specifically, the aim of the study is to identify the definitions of museums and the general experiences of museum visits by people who are BPS, to have them visit a 3D-PAM, and to unravel their reactions to this experience and their future suggestions for 3D-PAM. Eleven individuals participated in this basic qualitative study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to uncover their understanding of the experience. Results show that people who are BPS have a negative perception of museums because they are often inaccessible to this group and that the 3D-PAM in our study offered a pleasant experience that contributed to accessibility. These results suggest further that 3D-PAMs, either as an alternative and separate museum type or integrated into existing museums, are highly important for people who are BPS.