Exhibit Design Relating to Low Vision and Blindness: Current Media Technology, Appropriate Application of Technology, Future Research Needs

Future Research Needs

A unified and widespread effort is needed to identify and elevate attention to an array of possible methods to integrate universal design into museum technology strategies across the continuum — collection digitization and management, resource discovery, exhibit and program designs and on-site and remote visitors’ interactions with collections, artifacts, events, and exhibits. Such an identification process must be a living repository of existing and emerging solutions to assure that the rapidly evolving world of mobile and digital technologies are included and exploited for the accessibility needs of cultural institutions.

Wider understanding and solution discovery in the mainstream exhibit design communities can result from demonstrations of collaborative design processes involving leading museum technologists, designers and expert consumers which jointly identify and explore technology-based accessibility and universal design approaches. Publication of the outcomes of such collaborations can foster a national dialog on how accessibility and universal design can be integrated into cultural institutions’ technology strategies and practices and can include feasibility and technical evaluations of selected approaches.

Research should identify and develop effective and practical technology-based methods to further equal access to exhibits, collections tours, live presentations, events, performances, and multimedia. One development focus should be on the creation of a software suite of authoring tools that cultural institutions can use to create industrystandard formatted files for timed text, audio, and video to create captions, descriptions or sign language files. Such software tools can enable museums to enhance the accessibility of static exhibits, guided audio or live tours, live performances, films, and live events by creating flexible, non-proprietary multi-lingual files which can be used with a wide range of mobile and fixed platforms and technologies. Such proposed software must be grounded in well-documented user needs and should build capacity within resource-constrained cultural institutions to cost-effectively address the needs of people with sensory disabilities at museums, galleries, visitor centers, historic sites, and science centers all over the country.

The efficacy and utility of creating a "Museum Accessibility Network" should be researched to determine whether a network of cultural institutions that create and use accessibility services could be employed to share audio, video and text files that enhance access (i.e., descriptions, captions, sign language) as well as further the use of such services for exhibits which tour the country. Efforts toward greater accessibility made by one cultural institution should not be duplicated by another if the initial work can be effectively utilized elsewhere. An investigation into whether costs for creation of access services can also be shared across such a network of institutions would also be a worthwhile way of addressing the limited resources of such institutions.