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PlayShell: a low-cost, fun audio experience for heritage centres

Published: 16 September 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Various barriers prevent blind and visually impaired people accessing the rich multisensory experiences available at heritage centres. These barriers include large bodies of text and items in glass cases, which are difficult to see. Feedback from the blind community reflects poorly upon the inflexibility of guided tours. Technology-based accessibility tools are often laden with visually heavy interfaces or require storage space or power at each exhibit.
This paper presents a low-cost digital audio guide that can be combined with existing 2D and 3D systems, as well as 3D printed reliefs and replicas. The technology aims to work in a variety of environments, allowing curators to retrofit it into centres with limited space. The handheld system provides pre-recorded audio to visitors as they explore the centre. Sound is triggered via 'tap' onto Near-Field Communication (NFC) tags, which are placed by the curator or artist. Content is updated via a central system, which replicates to each device. A storytelling process can be created through the addition of motion gestures (e.g. shake), enhancing the experience for all visitors.

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Cited By

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  • (2023)Loci Stories: Exploring Design for Polyvocality Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3563657.3596114(15-30)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2023
  • (2022)Supporting People with Visual Impairments in Cultural Heritage: Survey and Future Research DirectionsInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2022.209893040:9(2195-2210)Online publication date: 22-Jul-2022

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cover image ACM Other conferences
AM '20: Proceedings of the 15th International Audio Mostly Conference
September 2020
281 pages
ISBN:9781450375634
DOI:10.1145/3411109
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 16 September 2020

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Author Tags

  1. IoT
  2. NFC
  3. audio tour
  4. blind
  5. cultural heritage
  6. visually impaired

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  • Short-paper

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AM'20
AM'20: Audio Mostly 2020
September 15 - 17, 2020
Graz, Austria

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AM '20 Paper Acceptance Rate 29 of 47 submissions, 62%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 177 of 275 submissions, 64%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2023)Loci Stories: Exploring Design for Polyvocality Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3563657.3596114(15-30)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2023
  • (2022)Supporting People with Visual Impairments in Cultural Heritage: Survey and Future Research DirectionsInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2022.209893040:9(2195-2210)Online publication date: 22-Jul-2022

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