Co-designing a Virtual Museum Application with a Haptic Interface Involving People with Vision Impairments and Blindness

The use of virtual reality technologies in the field of cultural heritage can play a central role in enhancing visitors’ experience and accessibility of artefacts and artworks. However, the Virtual Museum (VM), other than being captivating, should be inclusive, ensuring equal participation and learning opportunities for all people, including those with disabilities. Accordingly, the integration of visual stimuli with tactile information by means of haptic technology can provide an innovative medium to experience virtual museum contexts, enhancing the quality visitors experience, especially with reference to blind and visually impaired people, according to a universal design perspective. Though haptic devices could represent an asset for cultural heritage fruition and education, only a limited number of studies considered their application to enhance the VM visitors’ experience so far, while their suitability for blind or visually impaired people is far from being properly investigated. Therefore, this study aims at bridging this research gap, illustrating the methods and results of a co-design process of a VM application integrated with a haptic interface involving people with vision impairment or blindness. The developed application consists of a multi-modal system that integrates haptic feedback with audio and visual information, geared toward providing the most comprehensive and engaging experience possible also for users with vision impairment or blindness Results provide a first trajectory for the definition of design guidelines to develop accessible and usable VM applications for this target group, based on an inclusive perspective, offering useful insights for further research and future works on this topic.