Inclusivity: A study of Hong Kong museum environments

How can Hong Kong museums enhance the experiences of their visually impaired visitors? Visually impaired people (VIP) face major challenges in visually oriented environments such as museums. With this in mind we conducted in-depth field observations and interviews at the eleven major museums in Hong Kong. We also conducted two phases of pilot studies and interviews to investigate the effectiveness of a touch-activated sound system that could be adopted in such museums. This system integrates exhibit information into tactile diagrams that are easily accessible by VIP. The study's aim was to gather information that would help to support VIP in their understanding of two-dimensional exhibits and in constructing mental images of those exhibits. The design goal was to create a prototype using the cross-modality interaction approach (a combination of tactile diagrams and audio descriptions) that would provide multisensory feedback to VIP and enable them to 'see' the exhibits. The results of conceptual tactile paper prototype testing indicate that the cross-modality interaction approach has great potential for helping VIP to construct clearer mental images. Key findings and recommendations are presented here, as are the characteristics of interactivity of VIP that will be used in future to develop a haptic-audio interaction design museum platform.