A toolkit for interactive exhibitions for the partially sighted and blind

Exhibitions in museums, art galleries and other cultural centres are generally designed for normally sighted visitors and are therefore not easily accessible for partially sighted or blind persons. To make exhibitions more suitable for the visually impaired, interactive installations should be offered which take the special human factors requirements of the visually impaired into consideration and enable them to examine exhibits without assistance. To keep installation costs low, it is desirable to have a single system that can be used for different exhibitions. \n \nThe project described here aimed to address and solve these problems, firstly through the design of various interactivity scenarios, which take into account the capabilities and disabilities of visually impaired people, and secondly through the development of a flexible and reusable installation kit for providing the interactivities. The functionality of the tool-kit prototype was proven by successfully testing an exemplary installation for a photographer who was looking for new ways of presenting his documentary photographs about blindness to partially sighted and sighted audiences. The installation kit has the advantage of being made up of commercially available components and therefore low-cost; it can be used for any kind of interactive installation and is beneficial for visually impaired as well as normally sighted people.