Virtual Reality to Foster Social Integration by Allowing Wheelchair Users to Tour Complex Archaeological Sites Realistically

Emiliano Pérez,María José Merchán,Santiago Salamanca,Pilar Merchán

doi:10.3390/rs12030419

Abstract

People with disabilities encounter numerous barriers when dealing with the simplest and most usual things in their daily lives. This is even more remarkable when they are faced with archaeological heritage buildings or environments. People with reduced mobility come too often upon architectural barriers that stop them from enjoying their visits to sites and monuments. This paper introduces a virtual reality (VR) experience developed to provide people in wheelchairs with the most realistic sensations while virtually touring some archaeological sites. To this end, the remote sensing of the site enables the production of a realistic 3D model leading to the creation of a virtual world that the user will explore. This VR application has been developed to traverse one of the most important monumental buildings in Spanish Protohistory, the site of Cancho Roano (Zalamea de la Serena, Spain).

Highlights

Improving the social participation of disabled people is still a considerable challenge in our society, despite the efforts in this regard over the past few decades [1]
We have developed a virtual reality (VR) application designed to visit the pre-Roman site of Cancho Roano (Zalamea de la Serena, Spain) on a wheelchair
This work presents a VR application developed to allow people in wheelchairs to visit the archaeological site of Cancho Roano (Zalamea de la Serena, Badajoz), one of the most important monumental buildings in Spanish Protohistory

Summary

Introduction

Improving the social participation of disabled people is still a considerable challenge in our society, despite the efforts in this regard over the past few decades [1]. Cultural heritage is currently perceived as a perfect tool to promote social integration. This is the reason why all initiatives that help to improve and promote cultural heritage experiences while providing disciplines such as Computer Science or Humanities with new research tools have been encouraged [4]. With the idea of achieving the effective integration of those not yet fully integrated socio-cultural groups that are, we have directed our attention toward people with disabilities and their difficulties to visit cultural heritage monuments and sites. Visually impaired people and wheelchair users too often encounter architectural barriers that hinder them from enjoying this type of activities, when it is not altogether impossible for them to even access the sites

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion