Toward inclusivity: Virtual reality museums for the visually impaired

Abstract

The access to virtual reality museums mostly relies on the visual sense, making it difficult if not impossible for visually impaired people to partake in the experience. We present a between-subjects study exploring if narrations and spatialized 'reference' audio combined with haptic feedback can be a sufficient replacement for the traditional use of vision in a virtual reality art museum. Our pilot study compares two implementations: A standard 'sighted' version that provides visual artifacts along with related acoustic narratives, a 'visually impaired' version with modified narratives and enhanced audio and haptics that was tested by visually impaired participants, as well as 'blindfolded' sighted individuals. Auditory and haptic feedback in the latter version were used to steer visitors towards specific virtual objects. Although the experiences of the visually impaired were obviously not statistically equivalent to the nonimpaired group, results show that our method enabled them to experience the virtual reality museum adequately and find objects faster due to the additional auditory and haptic feedback.

The Role of Audio in Immersive Storytelling: a Systematic Review in Cultural Heritage

“…Soundscape User model detected by user position and orientation in space [121] User position and/or head orientation [56] Interaction with the virtual environment and AI techniques [165] Virtual Environment and Story User interaction with tangible interface [86,158,160] Interaction with voice [86,160] Directions User position and/or head orientation [79,128,132,135,136] Storyline Interaction with HMD headset controller [108,109,116,128,159,164,185] AI content generation [108,109] Interaction with a tangible device [61] Content created by users User interaction with tangible interface [152] Collaborative experience [161,171] especially in tourist or educational experiences, sound effects are used to create soundscapes and personalized content. In Ec(h)o [61], audio soundscape and content are based on user preferences selected by choosing the orientation of a physical cube.…”