Please Touch the Art: Experiences in Developing for the Visually Impaired

Museums hold collections of objects. Interventions, such as audio descriptions, objects, and maps, make these accessible to the visitors with visual impairments but 2-dimensional objects, such as maps, photographs and paintings, can still present challenges. An inter-disciplinary project works to improve access to visual art works via audio and touch interfaces. The outputs include an improved understanding of the how to improve access to the art collections for the audience and a re-usable technology to deliver audio in a non-linear fashion to the audience within a gallery. We discuss the project’s development strand. The steps taken, such as participatory and experimental approaches, are considered with the issues that arose whilst working on the software, such as improving the communication how touch is used to perceive the world and the difficulties this posed. We pose ongoing research questions for non-visual interaction.