MusA: artwork accessibility through augmented reality for people with low vision

People with disabilities rarely visit museums due to mobility issues in reaching and navigating museum buildings and difficulties in accessing artworks. This work addresses the latter problem, considering people with low vision. To this end, we present MusA, an inclusive mobile app aimed at providing interactive artwork descriptions to museum visitors in AR. This contribution describes the mobile app design process, consisting in two iterations with end-users. The evaluation, conducted with participants with low vision, shows that AR is an effective support for accessing visual artworks. MusA is more engaging than traditional audio guides and it is also highly usable. It provides useful functionalities and it raises interest of low vision people in visiting museums.

[1]  Oliver Bimber,et al.  PhoneGuide: museum guidance supported by on-device object recognition on mobile phones , 2005, MUM '05.

[2]  Dhruv Jain.  Pilot evaluation of a path-guided indoor navigation system for visually impaired in a public museum , 2014, ASSETS.

[3]  Anastasios Nikolas Angelopoulos,et al.  Enhanced Depth Navigation Through Augmented Reality Depth Mapping in Patients with Low Vision , 2019, Scientific Reports.

[4]  Michel Denis,et al.  NAVIG: augmented reality guidance system for the visually impaired , 2012, Virtual Reality.

[5]  Barbara Leporini,et al.  A Multimodal Mobile Museum Guide for All , 2007 .

[6]  Simon Hayhoe,et al.  Expanding Our Vision of Museum Education and Perception: An Analysis of Three Case Studies of Independent Blind Arts Learners , 2013 .

[7]  Vassilios Argyropoulos,et al.  Re-imagining the museum through “touch”: Reflections of individuals with visual disability on their experience of museum-visiting in Greece , 2015 .

[8]  Antonio Frisoli,et al.  A new option for the visually impaired to experience 3D art at museums: manual exploration of virtual copies , 2003 .

[9]  F. Vargas-Martin,et al.  Augmented-View for Restricted Visual Field: Multiple Device Implementations , 2002, Optometry and vision science : official publication of the American Academy of Optometry.

[10]  Barbara Leporini,et al.  Vibrotactile feedback as an orientation aid for blind users of mobile guides , 2008, Mobile HCI.

[11]  Yuhang Zhao,et al.  Understanding Low Vision People's Visual Perception on Commercial Augmented Reality Glasses , 2017, CHI.

[12]  Diana Walters.  Approaches in museums towards disability in the United Kingdom and the United States , 2009 .

[13]  José Manuel Ferrández,et al.  FPGA implementation of an augmented reality application for visually impaired people , 2005, International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications, 2005..

[14]  Adriano Baratè,et al.  WatchOut: Obstacle Sonification for People with Visual Impairment or Blindness , 2019, ASSETS.

[15]  Stephan Huber,et al.  Gartenfreund: Exploring the Botanical Garden with an Inclusive App , 2019, MuC.

[16]  Krzysztof Krejtz,et al.  Smartphone app as a museum guide. Testing the Open Art application with blind, deaf, and sighted users , 2017 .

[17]  Dragan Ahmetovic,et al.  Remote Usage Data Collection and Analysis for Mobile Accessibility Applications , 2021, 2021 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops and other Affiliated Events (PerCom Workshops).

[18]  Koorosh Naghshineh,et al.  Creating Accessible Science Museums With User-Activated Environmental Audio Beacons (Ping!) , 2005, Assistive technology : the official journal of RESNA.

[19]  Barbara Leporini,et al.  Supporting orientation for blind people using museum guides , 2008, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[20]  Daisuke Sato,et al.  ReCog: Supporting Blind People in Recognizing Personal Objects , 2020, CHI.

[21]  Talking Blind: Disability, Access, and the Discursive Turn , 2013 .

[22]  Shiri Azenkot,et al.  The Effectiveness of Visual and Audio Wayfinding Guidance on Smartglasses for People with Low Vision , 2020, CHI.

[23]  Barry Ginley.  Museums: A Whole New World for Visually Impaired People , 2013 .

[24]  Philip T. Kortum,et al.  Determining what individual SUS scores mean: adding an adjective rating scale , 2009 .

[25]  Xing-Dong Yang,et al.  An augmented reality sign-reading assistant for users with reduced vision , 2019, PloS one.

[26]  Hitoshi Dairoku,et al.  Investigation of priority needs in terms of museum service accessibility for visually impaired visitors , 2010 .

[27]  Spyros Vosinakis,et al.  Accessible museum collections for the visually impaired: combining tactile exploration, audio descriptions and mobile gestures , 2016, MobileHCI Adjunct.

[28]  João Guerreiro,et al.  The Present and Future of Museum Accessibility for People with Visual Impairments , 2018, ASSETS.

[29]  Demetrios G. Sampson,et al.  Blind MuseumTourer: A System for Self-Guided Tours in Museums and Blind Indoor Navigation , 2018 .

[30]  J. B. Brooke,et al.  SUS: A 'Quick and Dirty' Usability Scale , 1996 .

[31]  João Guerreiro,et al.  An Independent and Interactive Museum Experience for Blind People , 2019, W4A.

[32]  Nahyun Kwon,et al.  Touch Screen Exploration of Visual Artwork for Blind People , 2021, WWW.

[33]  Dragan Ahmetovic,et al.  Developing Accessible Mobile Applications with Cross-Platform Development Frameworks , 2020, ASSETS.