Cultural heritage locations provide sites of learning, social interaction, cultural discourse, and also play an important role in the enhancement of well-being. In recent years, museums and galleries have addressed the need to make their collections and galleries accessible to blind and partially blind visitors by providing specialist audio description or touch tours. Audio description is widely used across film, television and theatre, but use in the heritage sector is limited. Where available, tours are provided as part of niche access provisions, run infrequently and require advance booking. In addition, audio description is traditionally created by the sighted for the blind and partially blind. This contributes to the marginalisation of blind and partially blind (BPB) people and means that spontaneous museum visits can be difficult, or impossible. Research has shown that audio descriptive techniques can enhance museum experiences in sighted people, and can provide opportunities for museum visits to be more inclusive.
This session presents two interdisciplinary projects, both of which have at their centre Hannah Thompson’s concept of ‘Blindness Gain’ (the opposite of ‘Sight Loss’). This rests on three pillars: the idea that blind and partially blind people experience the world in a multi-sensory way that can promote creativity and stimulate imagination; a belief that non-visual living is an art, and the theory that accessibility approaches developed by and for blind people can benefit the sighted. The research teams consist of academics and practitioners from Translation Studies, Psychology, Critical Disability Studies, and Museum Studies. The first project was based at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, and the second at the Watts Gallery in Surrey and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington. The overall purpose of both projects is to test the hypothesis that audio descriptive techniques can improve the museum and heritage experience for all visitors.