Making art accessible to visually impaired museum visitors

Abstract

This is the reporting of the master graduation assignment of Hester de Bliek, Design for Interaction, Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft. The main goal of the assignment was to make visual art accessible to people with a visual impairment. This assignment arose from the PhD research of W.S. Elkhuizen about 3D printing and Fine Art Reproduction, in association with the Rijksmuseum, who are looking for ways to make the museum more accessible.

This report is constructed in three phases: Analysis of the user and the context, Ideation from the design brief towards the concept and Demonstration, where the concept is detailed and tested.

Analysis
The first part of the analysis covers the basic characteristics of the usergroup. Besides, the museum context is explored in order to understand why people visit museums in general, what is important for such visits and which experiences take place.
Then, the relation between the visually impaired visitor and the museum is researched through literature and in practice. Accessibility of art for visually impaired is covered based on the five different senses, from which audio and touch seem most relevant.
This lead to the design goal of making the image, story and expression of paintings intuitively accessible for both blind and ill sighted visitors during an independent museum visit.
The scope is defined, just as the requirements that the final concept should meet and the intended interactions in the interaction vision of unpackaging gifts.

Ideation
From this design goal, the ideation process is started, with help from several visitor scenarios. By doing a creative session with visually impaired and individual brainstorm sessions with multiple input sources, ideas are generated.
These ideas are evaluated and downsized in number, then assessed through PMI (Plus Minus Interesting) and clustered to create a morphological chart. By taking ideas from the different layers in this chart and merging them together, three concepts arose: ‘Take your Technique’, ‘Exploration Table’ and ‘Splitting the Art’. These are worked out into a design sketches and storyboards.

The three concepts are assessed by two experts from the field of visually impaired and two experts of the Rijksmuseum. This resulted into valuable feedback with strong and weak points per concept. On the basis of this feedback, the three concepts are revised and a fourth concept, ‘Portable Exploration Table‘ is created. All of them are assessed through a Harris profile based on the requirements and through the Interaction Vision. Eventually, a decision was made and the ‘Portable Exploration Table‘ was chosen which contains a relief of the artwork, an audio guide and several layers with specific information.
This concept is iterated upon to find the best way to guide someone through an artwork without human interference. Eventually this is done with use of vibration.

Demonstration
This last chapter explains the final concept in detail. Generally, the concept exists out of two main aspects: a basic relief to understand form and composition and layers on top of this to clarify other aspects of the work like materiality or lighting. The worked out prototype focusses on the first part.

The prototype guides people through the artwork in an independent way. It exists out of a relief of the artwork from which several parts can vibrate in order to guide and give feedback. It is accompanied auditory by narration. The vibration mechanism is explored both theoretically and practically through research and prototyping simultaneously. The relief is created through a heightmap. Last, the (background of) the guidelines for the accompanying story are outlined and the story is created . In between the story, complementary sounds are added, like bread and milk.

The prototype was tested by six participants with a visual impairment within the Rijksmuseum. The overall feedback was positive, participants expressed their with to extend this concept to other artwork as well. The possibility of touching is desired although the relief can be strengthened. The vibration was received well and it’s intended use understood. The narration was clear for most participants. It could use a rewind option. The intermediate sounds were received positive as well, for they added to the atmosphere. Scent was mentioned here as well.

In conclusion, the design goal was met fairly well, which is explained thoroughly, and the concept definitely has potential. The recommendations outline further detailing and testing upon the current prototype and the possibility of adding layers on top of the relief. Also the placement and accessibility within museums should be considered well.