Inclusive Visions: The Museum Experience of Young Blind and Partially Sighted Visitors

Abstract

Inclusive Visions explores the embodied experience, situated interactions and identities of young blind and partially sighted visitors in the museum space. It investigates how they make meaning and form identities by physically encountering objects, resources and the environment with their companions and other visitors. The visit experience of blind and partially sighted participants is detailed at three London museums: the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Wallace Collection and the Museum of London. Using qualitative audio, fieldnotes, and video-based research methods, it provides a deep insight into how meaning-making and identity are formed in perceptual experiences through bodily states and shared situated action. How different characteristics of the embodied practice of blind and partially sighted visitors emerge, and how meaning-making and identity formation are enabled, is put in a holistic context.