Inclusive Multimodal Discovery of Cultural Heritage: Listen and Touch

Museums around the world present their collections mainly to visual perception without the possibility of hearing or touching paintings, sculptures and artworks (Size, fragility). It has now become a priority to promote inclusive approaches to issues related to accessibility. Audio and tactile perceptions are often complementary. The figurative elements of the paintings are difficult to describe with words but can be presented tactilely. Other elements cannot be perceived via touch, for example colors, light, some links between elements; but these elements and the feelings they arouse can be evoked via audio-description. We present our tests of objective and sensorial audio description. Then we propose tactile exploration with the use of Force Feedback Tablet (F2T) to discover the general shape of some elements in a painting and complete the perception with an inclusive audio-description.