The accessibility of visually impaired people to museums and art through ICTs (original) (raw)
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Abstract: The access of people with disabilities to museums has become a major issue of interest for museums. Individuals with visual disabilities, which is one of the target groups of the present project, face many barriers regarding their access to museums, since museums are considered as spaces " of seeing " and " do not touch ". The present project titled " Bridging the Gap between Museums and Individuals with Visual Impairments " aims to support museums to develop various practices in order to enhance the access and inclusion of people with visual disability into their context and content. Museums, as audience-centered spaces, are required to enhance the access and inclusion of individuals with visual disability. However, this is a challenging task for museums and requires the collaboration between museums and organizations involved in the education and the protection of individuals with visual disabilities. This need for collaboration and interagency partnerships is the basis of the project, which aims to bridge the gap between museums and individuals with visual disabilities.
Create your own visit: a Review of Visually Impaired Visitors access at Museum
International Journal of Eco-Cultural Tourism, Hospitality Planning and Development
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.
International Journal of the Inclusive Museum , 2020
People with visual impairments generally experience many barriers when visiting museum exhibitions, given the ocular centricity of these institutions. The situation is worsened by a frequent lack of physical, intellectual and sensory access to exhibits or replicas, increased by the inaccessibility to use ICT-based local or general alternative or augmentative communication resources that can allow different interactions to sighted visitors. Few studies analyze applications of assistive technologies for multisensory exhibit design and relate them with visitors’ experiences. This article aims to contribute to the field of accessibility in museums by providing an overview of the experiences and expectations of blind and visually impaired patrons when visiting those places, based on a literature review. It also surveys assistive technologies used to enhance the experiences of visitors with vision loss while visiting museum exhibitions and spaces. From this, it is highlighted that adopting hybrid technological approaches, following universal design principles and collaborating with blind and visually impaired people, can contribute to integrate access across the continuum of visits.
Accessible Museums for Visually Impaired: A Case Study from Istanbul
Journal of Tourismology, 2019
Freedom to travel is a fundamental human right. Thus, disabled people should be able to travel. Disabilities are divided into subcategories, whereby vision disability is one of them. In the context of museums, there are some implementations for visually disabled people. However, there is still limited empirical investigation on the expectations, satisfaction, and challenges of visually impaired travelers. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine the expectations, needs, and challenges of visually impaired people visiting museums. In this vein, the study draws on a qualitative research approach employing data from visually impaired individuals to understand those individuals' perceptions, needs, and challenges. The study offers several practical implications to help museum managers enhance the experience of visually impaired visitors.
ALTER, European Journal of Disability Research 9, 130-143. Abstract: The research aim of the present study was to investigate the experiences of individuals with visual disability regarding their visits to museums. To obtain relevant information, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 Greek individuals with visual disability aged between 19–59 years. The participants highlighted issues relevant to factors which facilitated or/and hindered their accessibility to Greek museums, such as escorts, museum tour guides, tactile access, prohibition signs “do not touch”, museum services and museum websites. Also, they referred to positive and negative emotions which were associated with their museum visits. Finally, they made suggestions aiming to improve the participation of people with visual disability to museums.
ÄNIJÄLKI Opening Dialogues for Visually Impaired Inclusion in Museums
This paper describes the project: Äänijälki, keskustelun avaus (Sound-trace, Opening the dialogue). The project is used as a case study for analysing visitor experience enhanced through active participation in museum exhibitions. While walking through an exhibition, visitors have access to the message from the museum. The experience is more engaging when visitors go to an exhibition with a friend that knows about the subject exhibited. The whole practice refreshes when someone tells the visitor something that connects her own life with the exhibition in an informal language with personal opinions. The idea of the project is to open this dialogue with other, possibly anonymous, visitors in order to augment users' experience. The way this idea takes shape is creating a social tool for exchanging comments about the experience of going to and being in an exhibition, leaving audio traces in the process. These traces allow a dialogue within visitors that are not necessarily present at the same time in the exhibition.
Ideas for future museums by the visually impaired
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 .
Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. User and Context Diversity, 2022
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.
Development of Accessible Museum for Blind Tourists
IJDS Indonesian Journal of Disability Studies
As we know that museums store a lot of visual objects. So that blind people who do not have vision will have difficulty enjoying the visual objects of the museum. This study discusses the tourist attractions of the museum that can be enjoyed by blind tourists. To support this research, a qualitative research method with a case study approach was used. The results showed that blind tourists enjoyed museum attractions in two ways, hearing and touching. Information will be received by listening to museum educators explain stories about visual objects. Then to add information, blind tourists can touch the visual object. Accessibility that needs to be developed in Museum of the Asian African Conference is guiding block, braille, and audio media. Museum educators can be trained to be able to guide blind tourists properly.
Visual Art for the Visually Impaired
2016
One of the many issues that museums and art galleries face today as public spaces is the issue of accessibility. One of the roles of museums in society is providing access for all visitors to their exhibitions and artefacts regardless of age, education, language or disability. However, the museum as an educational institution and preserver of history has become established on a fundamentally visual notion. Museum experiences rely heavily on the visual sense, from observing artefacts behind glass to reading information packages off plaques and because of this has established inaccessibility for the visually impaired community. Museums have so far addressed this issue with audio guides, braille description and special guided tours. However, museum culture in recent years have begun to change, acknowledging that learning experiences can be improved through accessing knowledge through the other senses. For the visually impaired community, there has been an emphasis on touch. However, al...