Toward inclusivity: Virtual reality museums for the visually impaired

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 non-impaired 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.