III. Turning a Blind Eye to Design: Technology and Visual Impairment In Modern Museums

The modern museum, ideally, is a bastion of accessible design and planning. Through it, guests are encouraged to explore their interests without limitation – though some find this more difficult than others. Those with visual impairments often find museums unwelcoming and even hostile environments. It requires no great stretch of the imagination to discover why: filled with inscrutably small label text, inadequate (or nonexistent) audio tours, obtuse floor plans, and objects displayed with only the needs of the sighted in mind, some museums seem almost purpose-built to turn away visually impaired visitors. Despite how it may seem, this does not have to be the case. Clever implementation of long-existing techniques and the new technological advances alike are providing museums around the world with exciting opportunities to engage those with visual impairments through more nuanced approaches to wayfinding, audio description, and tactile feedback. Though individual exhibits and museums often demonstrate an extraordinary attention to the needs of visually impaired visitors, broader adoption of both high- and low-tech solutions is necessary to bridge the gap between museum collections and visually impaired persons who want to explore them. This paper will explore some of the exciting advancements, like haptic feedback systems, enriched audio descriptions, and self-directed audio tours, that are currently being employed at institutions in our field.

Defining Visual Impairment

Though they are often conflated, not all persons with visual impairments are blind. “Visual impairment”, “low vision”, “partial sight”, and other terms have historically been used to describe a condition “in which visual acuity is 20/70 or poorer in the better-seeing eye and cannot be corrected or improved with regular eyeglasses”.¹ Though neither “visual impairment” nor “legal blindness” are functional definitions of any condition – and a range of severity exists within the classification of “visual impairment” – for the purposes of this work, “Persons with Vision Impairment” (PVI) will be used to denote any persons for whom visual perceptual difficulties hinder their ability to interact with a museum environment.² According to the American Association of Museum’s Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, approximately 12% of visitors to museums self-identify as “blind or low vision”.³ During their museum visits, over half of PVI surveyed in Fogle-Hatch and Winiecki’s Assessing Attitudes of Blind Adults About Museums reported that museum staff and volunteers did not seem comfortable interacting with them.⁴ Many also cited further barriers to accessing museums that ranged from difficulties navigating the space to frustrating experiences with the visual nature of many major exhibits at almost all museums.⁵ In the face of such unmet needs, it is incumbent upon any museum that desires to “give equitable access to everyone across the continuum of human ability and experience” (per the AAM’s definition of accessibility) to recognize and resolve the barriers to entry they present to PVI.⁶

Before going any further, it should be noted that my review of museum technology and its intersections with accessibility efforts for the visually impaired will by no means be exhaustive. As a sighted individual, such an endeavor would be both irresponsible and unnecessary, given the current state of literature on this topic. For excellent examples of firsthand accounts of blind or visually impaired museum experts, see Braham’s The Inclusive Museum, Kudlick’s The Local Museum, So Near and Yet So Far, or Kleege’s More than Meets the Eye: What Blindness Brings to Art.⁷ The perspective of the blind and viually impaired is comprehensive, constant, and impossible to replicate by sighted individuals. No attempt will be made here to do so. It is my hope, rather, that a review of the current uses of technology to make the museum a welcoming, intuitive space for the visually impaired can spur institutions who have not made such efforts into action – for, as this work will demonstrate, such efforts are essential in fulfilling the promise of museums everywhere.

Navigating and Wayfinding

Before PVI can interact with an exhibit, listen to the latest advances in audio description technology and methodology, or take part in new experiences afforded by haptics and tactile feedback-focused research, they must navigate their way through the museum environment. This issue is illustrated concisely in Handa et al.’s 2010 Investigation of Priority Needs In Terms of Museum Service Accessibility for Visually Impaired Visitors: “even if objects are available for touching, there is no way to know where the objects are”.⁸ Essentially, it does not matter if the presentation of an exhibit’s content empowers the visually impaired if they cannot find that content independently in the first place. To overcome this most basic of barriers to entry, a number of innovative technological solutions can be employed. A relatively low-tech option may involve using tactile markers set into the ground in combination with textured materials on the walls (like embossed leather, for instance) that both guide the experience of PVI and invite the use of touch to navigate rather than sight, as practiced in the Quai Branly Museum.⁹ The Quai Branly Museum is also amongst a growing contingent of museums that offer a 3D model of the museum itself that can help PVI orient themselves and guide their experiences throughout the museum, as well as a “tactile exploration guide” that can be printed out on raised paper prior to a visitor entering the museum.¹⁰

More technologically-intensive solutions have been implemented in multiple locations in Greece, where visitors can utilize the Blind MuseumTourer app to assist in navigating the Tactual Museum of the Lighthouse for the Blind of Greece, the National Archeological Museum and the Acropolis Museum.¹¹ While using the app, a series of low-power Bluetooth sensors placed around points of interest are used in combination with a phone’s preexisting suite of sensors to provide directions uniquely tailored to the individual stride length of the visitor.¹² With their position triangulated by sensors and the length of their stride accounted for, the accuracy of directions provided (“take 14 steps forward and 3 to the left”, e.g.) and the integration of audio recordings explaining points of interest allow users of Blind MuseumTourer to engage in a truly self-guided experience. Similarly, Athens’ Museum of Cycladic Art uses sensors and their own app to provide guided thematic tours that direct PVI towards tactile elements of their exhibitions designed to be handled.¹³ Pilot studies at New Delhi’s National Science Center have combined similar smartphone-based technology with a small wearable device that vibrates in certain situations to provide visitors with the ability to pick and choose the elements in an exhibit that appeal most to them.¹⁴ The interface of such systems with the crowd-sensing Bluetooth devices focused on in Germak and Khan’s Interaction Design Application for Museum Spaces may further increase their utility by enabling technologists to integrate real-time positions of other members of the public in the navigation instructions given to PVI.¹⁵

Through application of these innovative solutions, museums can augment their existing efforts towards making the layout of their space more intelligible. Large-print, braille labels, and well-trained docents equipped to handle the request and needs of PVI will always be an essential part of the puzzle of wayfinding. As the list of new technological solutions grows ever-longer, however, museums everywhere must ask themselves if the bare minimum of navigation assistance is too low of a standard to hold themselves to.

Enhanced Audio Description

While traditional audio tours are certainly helpful, the opportunities presented by “enhanced” or “enriched” audio description – which focuses not merely on the translation of visual content into an audio format but the creation of a unique auditory landscape – can enhance the experience of PVI and sighted individuals alike.¹⁶ Indeed, when museums devote focus to exploring what their audio tours can offer, the results are often surprising. “Enriched” audio descriptions are not strictly defined, but usually are recognized as audio descriptions that incorporate “semantic or factual details as well as highlights of a piece, which help the listener create a story about that piece” as well as “a rich range of multisensory imagery and metaphor”.¹⁷ The shift to an audio-focused method of information intake “can enhance later memorability of an experience, for both blind and sighted people”.¹⁸ Enriched audio experiences that incorporate narration and soundscapes have been noted to positively correlate with the amount of time that guests spend taking in the information presented to them.¹⁹

In her PhD thesis on audio descriptions in museums, Rachel Hutchinson expounds not only the potential benefits of enriched audio in the museum but also the wide range of theory and practice that dictates how audio descriptions are currently used.²⁰ Audio description, as traditionally defined and used in the museum field, is an attempt at the “translation of visual information… [seemingly] designed above all else to address the category of ‘object experiences’ – enabling visitors to ‘see’ rare or valuable objects”.²¹ Most museum professionals would probably argue, however, that merely seeing an object constitutes only a small part of the experience of visiting a museum. When attempting to emulate the cognitive, introspective, and social experiences that make up the rest of the museum experience, those working with audio descriptions must contend with the complexity of translation ethics.²² Where, for instance, should a museum draw the line between explaining the history of a work of art and interpreting that art for the visitor? At what point does so-called “enriched” audio description become a cultural text unto itself? Should those working on audio descriptions be wary of making statements about non-visual aspects of the art, or encouraged to use language that evokes a multisensory experience? Though the answers to these questions will vary from museum to museum (surveys show that European describers are more open to creating descriptions that “explore meaning” and “create emotional experiences”) they underscore the truth of the vast opportunities provided by smartphones and other technologies when it comes to audio description: it can only ever be as impactful as an institution allows it to be.²³

Features From Qatar, a 2015 Mathaf exhibit of an original 1973 painting by Jassim Zaini, is a prime example of how responding to these ethical questions can provide novel solutions that make the most of current technology. After a long period of analyzing the work itself, carefully editing the script of the audio description, and creating a soundscape that would accompany the audio guide (composed of music and audio cues that evoked the location and ambience of the painting), the exhibit went live.²⁴ PVI could access the enriched audio as a .mp4 file through any device they had on hand.²⁵ The response—overwhelmingly positive, but with a wealth of constructive critiques—led project lead Joselia Neves to conclude that “there is an enormous potential for Enriched Descriptive Guides as a specific museum text type that can contribute to visitor engagement”.²⁶

In taking these measures towards inclusive and accessible design for PVI, museum workers engage in a far more involved process of meaning-making. Though the ethical questions that enriched description poses are daunting, the ease of access that such efforts enable are important steps in developing a museum that is open to all.

Haptics and Tactile Response

Some of the most exciting work being done in the museum field to cater to the needs of PVI involves the use of haptics, or technology that makes use of one’s sense of touch, in transforming visual information into a more accessible format. Haptic technology can take many forms: it can be used to enhance color recognition, create tactile-focused versions of paintings and other printed art, provide facsimiles of 3D art that are available for visually impaired visitors to touch and handle, develop wholly virtual recreations of famous works of art (accessible through specialized machinery that mimics the 3D rendering of the piece in VR), and more. The uses of tactile sensation in the museum setting presented below are just a sampling of what the technologies that drive them have to offer.

Investigations of the uses of such technologies can be difficult to grasp: some instances of haptic feedback systems within the museum are positioned as novel, while other efforts at making visual information tactile are well-established. Take, for instance, the case of the Louvre’s Tactile Gallery: since its inception in 1995, the Tactile Gallery has provided visually impaired visitors to the world’s most-visited museum with reproductions of famous works that they can touch and feel (fig 4).²⁷ On the other hand, an interactive computer-based exhibition at the Mm Gerdau Museum Of Mines And Metal that merges tactile exploration with intelligent audio descriptions matching the objects being touched (if, for instance, the visitor picks up two of the five objects on display, the exhibitor machine will begin to explain the similarities and differences between those objects) was recently tested to great effect.²⁸ Neither of these uses of technology are particularly resource-intensive nor radically different from what museums around the world already offer visitors on a day-to-day basis (especially with the advent of low-cost 3D printing technology), but each can fundamentally alter and greatly enhance the experience of PVI in the museum setting.

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Though it may seem to be on the cutting edge of technological advancement, haptic displays that replicate the feeling of touching an object (achieved through force feedback on the hands and vibratory stimuli) has been in development since the turn of the 21st century.²⁹ Jansson et. al.’s development of a system that mimics the feeling of touching a sculpture for the E.U.’s PURE-FORM project in 2001 was the precursor of modern advances in museum haptic technology that are radically changing what experiences are open to PVI.³⁰ The National Museum of Transylvanian History has used a relatively simple haptic device—the Geomagic Touch System, which consists of a stylus on a mechanical arm that can provide force feedback (fig 5)—to provide visitors with an intuitive yet novel experience in which they can “touch” a range of 3D-scanned artifacts from the museum’s collection.³¹

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Cost is rightfully a concern whenever the adoption of new technologies is attempted by museums. Fortunately, the distance between what a museum can spare and the costs of implementing haptic technologies may be substantially smaller than some would imagine. Prototype devices custom-built for educators have been produced for less than $300.³² The aforementioned Geomagic Touch, if purchased with the associated Sculpt software that allows museum workers to design and scan the objects in their collections, can cost anywhere from $900 to $3300 (depending on the condition of the device).³³ More advanced systems, like the Museo Archeologico Nazionale delle Marche’s haptic application that uses an Omega-6 machine produced by haptic-tech company Force Dimension, trade a higher price for a higher level of detail in the digital reproduction of artifacts.³⁴ The Museo Archeologico’s system was found to greatly influence the level of visitor engagement with the museum’s collection and the overall visitor experience and showcases how efforts at PVI accessibility can often result in a more enriching experience for all.³⁵ At the Prague National Gallery, the exhibition Touching Masterpieces showcased some of the most advanced haptic technologies currently available and outfitted visitors with a set of haptic gloves that could reproduce the feeling of touching the Venus de Milo and other pieces in real space.³⁶

Perhaps the most exciting implications of the use of haptic technology comes from studies like Park et. al.’s Telerobotic Haptic Exploration in Art Galleries and Museums for Individuals with Visual Impairments, in which PVI can remotely explore a museum’s collection through haptics.³⁷ The act of making a museum’s collection available virtually is nothing new, but the upload of 3D renders of a museum’s objects can allow PVI to bring the experience of touching that collection into the comfort of their own homes. This is by no means a replacement for the full experience of visiting a museum space, but can serve as a means to virtually explore the collections of a museum in the same manner that sighted individuals have been able to for decades.

Conclusion

What the vast differences between the many effective methodologies above imply is sure to be familiar to many museum professionals: the solutions that work for one institution may not be applicable to another, and the unique nature of a particular museum’s collection should drive the efforts in implementing accessible technologies. While for some the more technology-heavy solutions (like Touching Masterpieces) may be within their institutional reach, others may only be able to lay down simple tactile tape for wayfinding or provide brief audio descriptions. Yet another well-worn precept of museum work comes in to play here: museum workers should not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Any effort to provide an inclusive experience for PVI, no matter how inadequate it may seem when ranked against industry-leading solutions at major institutions, has the potential to completely change the museum experience for a subset of guests that have for too long been left without adequate attention.

The needs of the visually impaired pale in comparison to the number of solutions that empathetic museum professionals can design into their exhibits and institutions that can make our industry accessible to them. Technology and careful planning provide us with near-limitless potential when it comes to making wayfinding easier, audio descriptions more effective, and art, quite literally, within our visitors’ grasp. These efforts need not all be wheel-redesigning, boundary-breaking technological marvels. The single unifying factor between each of the successful iterations of PVI-inclusive museum technology detailed above was not the budget of the team or the novelty of the gadgets used –– far from it. The most PVI-accessible implementations of technology are those that represent the truth that true accessibility is not an item on a checklist, but rather that it is an evolving process that demands inclusion of visually impaired perspectives throughout.

Technological advances will continue to provide potential engagement opportunities for PVI. Until their input and feedback is recognized by the museums that claim to represent them, however, no true progress can be made. Including PVI perspectives throughout the design process of any new exhibit –– through meaningful and empathetic dialogue, to start –– is the only way to provide accessibility that is anything more than performative. Conducting “outreach” misses the point -– visually impaired visitors do not need to be reached out to. They are already in attendance and they have been expressing their dissatisfaction with our museums for as long as we have existed. Once those perspectives have been incorporated into a design process, the usage of technology to address their concerns can begin. Put simply, technology can be an excellent tool, but not while museums remain willfully blind to the needs of the visually impaired.

Notes

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1. “Low Vision and Legal Blindness Terms and Descriptions,” The American Foundation for the Blind, n.d., https://www.afb.org/blindness-and-low-vision/eye-conditions/low-vision-and-legal-blindness-terms-and-descriptions. ↩︎

2. “Vision Impairment and Blindness,” n.d., https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/blindness-and-visual-impairment. ↩︎

3. “Data Stories,” Wilkening Consulting, n.d., http://www.wilkeningconsulting.com/data-stories.html. ↩︎

4. “Assessing Attitudes of Blind Adults about Museums – MW20 | Online,” n.d., https://mw20.museweb.net/paper/assessing-attitudes-of-blind-adults-about-museums/. ↩︎

5. “Assessing Attitudes of Blind Adults about Museums – MW20 | Online.” ↩︎

6. “Diversity, Equity, Accessibility and Inclusion,” American Alliance of Museums, n.d., https://www.aam-us.org/programs/diversity-equity-accessibility-and-inclusion/. ↩︎

7. Braham, “The Inclusive Museum,” Prime Access Consulting, October 1, 2018, https://www.pac.bz/blog/the-inclusive-museum/; Catherine Kudlick, “The Local History Museum, So Near and Yet So Far,” The Public Historian 27, no. 2 (2005): 75–81, https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2005.27.2.75; Georgina Kleege, More than Meets the Eye: What Blindness Brings to Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190604356.001.0001. ↩︎

8. Kozue Handa, Hitoshi Dairoku, and Yoshiko Toriyama, “Investigation of Priority Needs in Terms of Museum Service Accessibility for Visually Impaired Visitors,” British Journal of Visual Impairment 28, no. 3 (September 1, 2010): 221–34, https://doi.org/10.1177/0264619610374680. ↩︎

9. Kailin Wang, “Tactile Navigation System For People with Visual Impairments In Museum,” in 2020 International Conference on Innovation Design and Digital Technology (ICIDDT), 2020, 410–14, https://doi.org/10.1109/ICIDDT52279.2020.00082. ↩︎

10. “Visual impairments,” n.d., https://www.quaibranly.fr/en/menu-accessibilite/visual-impairments/. ↩︎

11. Apostolos Meliones and Demetrios Sampson, “Blind MuseumTourer: A System for Self-Guided Tours in Museums and Blind Indoor Navigation,” Technologies 6, no. 1 (March 2018): 4, https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies6010004. ↩︎

12. Meliones and Sampson. ↩︎

13. Roberto Vaz, Diamantino Freitas, and António Coelho, Perspectives of Visually Impaired Visitors on Museums: Towards an Integrative and Multisensory Framework to Enhance the Museum Experience, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1145/3439231.3439272. ↩︎

14. Dhruv Jain, “Pilot Evaluation of a Path-Guided Indoor Navigation System for Visually Impaired in a Public Museum,” in Proceedings of the 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility, ASSETS ’14 (New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2014), 273–74, https://doi.org/10.1145/2661334.2661405. ↩︎

15. Claudio Germak and Sara Khan, “Interaction Design Applications for Museum Spaces. New Exhibit Paths Driven by a Bluetooth Sensor’s System,” The Design Journal 20, no. sup1 (July 28, 2017): S3914–24, https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2017.1352893. ↩︎

16. Santoshi Halder and Lori Czop Assaf, “Enriched Audio Description: Working Towards an Inclusive Museum Experience,” in Inclusion, Disability and Culture: An Ethnographic Perspective Traversing Abilities and Challenges (Cham, SWITZERLAND: Springer International Publishing AG, 2017), http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gwu/detail.action?docID=4856901; Gretchen Henrich, Felice Q. Cleveland, and Emily Wolverton, “Case Studies from Three Museums in Art Beyond Sight’s Multi-Site Museum Accessibility Study,” Museums & Social Issues 9, no. 2 (October 1, 2014): 124–43, https://doi.org/10.1179/1559689314Z.00000000023; Beaux Fen Guarini, “Beyond Braille on Toilet Doors: Museum Curators and Audiences with Vision Impairment,” M/C Journal 18, no. 4 (August 7, 2015), https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1002. ↩︎

17. Halder and Assaf, “Enriched Audio Description: Working Towards an Inclusive Museum Experience.” ↩︎

18. Alison F. Eardley and Linda Pring, “Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future: A Role for Nonvisual Imagery in the Everyday Cognition of Blind and Sighted People,” Memory 14, no. 8 (November 1, 2006): 925–36, https://doi.org/10.1080/09658210600859582. ↩︎

19. Eardley and Pring. ↩︎

20. R. Hutchinson, “Museums for All: Towards Engaging, Memorable Museum Experiences through Inclusive Audio Description” (doctoral, University of Westminster, 2019), https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/item/v01vw/museums-for-all-towards-engaging-memorable-museum-experiences-through-inclusive-audio-description. ↩︎

21. Hutchinson. ↩︎

22. Hutchinson. ↩︎

23. Rachel S. Hutchinson and Alison F. Eardley, “The Accessible Museum: Towards an Understanding of International Audio Description Practices in Museums,” Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness 114, no. 6 (November 1, 2020): 475–87, https://doi.org/10.1177/0145482X20971958. ↩︎

24. “Cultus _9_Volume_2_2016.Pdf,” accessed October 31, 2021, http://www.cultusjournal.com/files/Archives/Cultus9_2016_2/cultus%20_9_Volume_2_2016.pdf. ↩︎

25. “Cultus _9_Volume_2_2016.Pdf.” ↩︎

26. “Cultus _9_Volume_2_2016.Pdf.” ↩︎

27. Natacha Rios The Associated Press, “Please Touch: Louvre Opens Room for Blind and Visually Impaired,” Arizona Daily Star, n.d., https://tucson.com/entertainment/please-touch-louvre-opens-room-for-blind-and-visually-impaired/article_d3c73526-023a-5107-bed9-1b58abfa9352.html. ↩︎

28. Roberto Vaz, Paula Odete Fernandes, and Ana Cecília Rocha Veiga, “Designing an Interactive Exhibitor for Assisting Blind and Visually Impaired Visitors in Tactile Exploration of Original Museum Pieces,” Procedia Computer Science, CENTERIS 2018 - International Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems / ProjMAN 2018 - International Conference on Project MANagement / HCist 2018 - International Conference on Health and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies, CENTERIS/ProjMAN/HCist 2018, 138 (January 1, 2018): 561–70, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2018.10.076. ↩︎

29. Gunnar Jansson, Massimo Bergamasco, and Antonio Frisoli, “A New Option for the Visually Impaired to Experience 3D Art at Museums: Manual Exploration of Virtual Copies,” Visual Impairment Research 5, no. 1 (April 2003): 1, https://doi.org/10.1076/vimr.5.1.1.15973. ↩︎

30. Chung Hyuk Park, Eun-Seok Ryu, and Ayanna M. Howard, “Telerobotic Haptic Exploration in Art Galleries and Museums for Individuals with Visual Impairments,” IEEE Transactions on Haptics 8, no. 3 (July 2015): 327–38, https://doi.org/10.1109/TOH.2015.2460253. ↩︎

31. Radu Comes, “HAPTIC DEVICES AND TACTILE EXPERIENCES IN MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS,” JOURNAL OF ANCIENT HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY 3 (December 30, 2016), https://doi.org/10.14795/j.v3i4.205. ↩︎

32. Ahmad Javaid, Hammad Munawar, and Mohammad Armughan Mohyuddin, “A Low Cost 1-DoF Encounter Type Haptic Device for Use in Education,” 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Industry (ICRAI), 2019, https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRAI47710.2019.8967395. ↩︎

33. “Touch,” 3D Systems, June 9, 2016, https://www.3dsystems.com/haptics-devices/touch. ↩︎

34. Silvia Ceccacci et al., “The Role of Haptic Feedback and Gamification in Virtual Museum Systems,” Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage 14, no. 3 (July 1, 2021): 38:1-38:14, https://doi.org/10.1145/3453074. ↩︎

35. Ceccacci et al. ↩︎

36. Veronica Riavis, “Discovering Architectural Artistic Heritage Through the Experience of Tactile Representation: State of the Art and New Development,” DISEGNARECON 12, no. 23 (December 31, 2019): 10-10.9. ↩︎

37. Park, Ryu, and Howard, “Telerobotic Haptic Exploration in Art Galleries and Museums for Individuals with Visual Impairments.” ↩︎