Design and evaluation of smart-exhibit systems that enrich cultural heritage experiences for the visually impaired

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Haptic contact is usually prohibited when exploring cultural heritage content. This inevitably results in an incomplete experience for the visually impaired as tactile exploration is the dominant substitute of sight. In this paper, we focus on Information and Communication Technologies utilisation to enable cultural heritage content to become more accessible to visually impaired both physically as well as intellectually and thus help foster social inclusion. We have developed three prototype systems that are based on the smart exhibit concept. This involves features that are common in Internet of Things devices such as single board computers, microcontrollers, RFIDs and proximity sensors. We combine these features in a cost-effective manner to produce haptic accessible replicas through 3D digitisation and printing that are further enriched with on-demand modular narrations. More specifically, we present aptos.Exhibit: a multi-user smart exhibition system, aptos.Map: a stand-alone interactive tactile map and aptos.myExhibit: a 3D printed miniatures and narration-based system to enable cultural reserve exploration at users’ own space and time. We describe in detail the functionality of each prototype and discuss on their implementation properties. The cultural content presented through the three prototypes derived from previous 3D digitisation projects of religious monuments located in Northern Greece. Evaluation sessions were organised with 25 visually impaired users who experienced all three systems and provided feedback. The participants opinions and suggestions were collected by using questionnaires and interviews. We present in detail the reported feedback related to the prototypes general assessment, usability, robustness and the overall offered experience of accessing the encapsulated cultural and historical content. We drive our conclusions from their responses in relation to content, interaction and experience. We further discuss on our findings related to enabling visually impaired to interactively access cultural content by fusing technologies such as Internet of Things, 3D digitisation, printing and on-demand narration.