Beginning again
This is the official start of the internship at the Polk County History Center for the Fall Semester. This will be a continuation of sorts for me as I was an intern there in the Summer, however the focus will change. Last internship was focused on me making an app for the center, which I did in a basic form. I will continue that work for them to the point that it will be available to the public, however this internship will have a different focus.
My goal for this internship is to help them with ways they can assist the visually impaired. When I spoke to the original supervisor last spring about doing this internship, she told me that a woman had called and wanted to know if they had some way for her, as a visually impaired person, to enjoy the museum. The museum follows ADA protocol of course, but that doesn’t mean that visually impaired people shouldn’t be catered to beyond what is merely compliance.
Two major ideas came to me, although they take money in various forms, which are using 3d printing and scanning to make some objects available for touch and haptic feedback gloves. The 3d printing route is easier and cheaper but requires space to hold the replicas and these 3d printed replicas can break. The haptic feedback gloves are expensive at about $5,000 for each of them. They require a pack to put on and VR goggles to operate.
The gloves would be the best option as they allow the museum to scan every object they have, if they so wanted, and make that available to the public. The benefit in this is that every crack or chip or scratch is there on the 3d model in the VR headset and can be felt by the gloves. For the visually impaired, the VR component isn’t relevant as they would just focus on the object they can feel in their hands. Only the weight of the object wouldn’t be transferred, which is also a problem with 3d printing.
Going after some grant money and maybe some private donations would be the route to go for getting these and they have use beyond just assisting the visually impaired. School fieldtrips could use these so children could handle objects they see behind the glass. Having the ability to hold objects in a museum is a luxury many museums can’t consider because of the obvious reasons, so being a museum that has that ability can help it stand out.
There are other small ways to improve the experience for the visually impaired which we will discuss next week such as 3d maps of the building, but these are the big ideas.
