Composing smart museum exhibit specifications for the visually impaired

Abstract Haptic prohibition is one of the most common limitations when interacting with museum artefacts. This restriction aims quite logically at preventing damages while safeguarding the integrity of the cultural reserve, which is primarily characterised by its uniqueness. Nevertheless, in cases where museum visitors are visually impaired, the inability to touch the artefacts makes the whole experience incomplete as the haptic perception of an artefact’s morphology is the primary substitute of sight. In this paper, we work towards a low-cost haptic ban removal by an initial establishment of a range of requirement specifications focused on the concept of a smart exhibit which is defined as a physical object that replicates the morphological features of an actual artefact while belonging in an ICT infrastructure that exploits features common in Internet of Things devices. We present a set of high level specifications and functionalities that could be offered by a smart exhibit and objectively justify them through a process of gaining feedback from individuals with and without visual impairments. More specifically, we performed an interview-based questionnaire which in combination with a custom-built haptic performance assessment object composed a sustainable environment to collect user requirements and preferences. The questionnaire itemises user portraying in relation to museum visit experiences and accessibility tools, smart exhibit interaction and recorded narrations preferences, cultural heritage haptic exploration experiences and 3D printing derivatives. On the other hand, the haptic assessment object contributes on evaluating the suitability of reference design elements, when producing low-cost (fused filament fabrication) tactile-enabled artefacts and maps. We present the various results and indicators that contribute in composing a set of requirements specifications and good practices that will enable their exploitation in the Epigraphic Museum (Athens,Greece) by following three implementation approaches. The paper contributes in presenting aspects of designing systems that exploit the proposed smart exhibit concept to provide haptic access to cultural heritage thesaurus.