Understanding Curators' Practices and Challenge of Making Exhibitions More Accessible for People with Visual Impairments
Huang, Yuru, Zhang, Jingling, Jin, Xiaofu, Fan, Mingming · 2023 · Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS) · doi:10.1145/3597638.3608384
Summary
This paper examines exhibition accessibility from the perspective of curators — a stakeholder group that plays a critical role in making museums and galleries accessible but has been largely overlooked in accessibility research. Through semi-structured interviews with 22 experienced curators (9 museum curators, 13 art curators, 5 of whom were also practicing artists) in China, the researchers investigated curatorial practices and challenges related to incorporating assistive technologies for blind and low vision (BLV) visitors. The study used a technology probe methodology: researchers curated 15 assistive technologies from published HCI and accessibility papers (covering navigation, artwork interpretation, and visitor experience) and presented them to curators to elicit attitudes and perceptions. All curators had received professional training in curatorial studies and accessibility (through NISE and/or Smithsonian guidelines), and 17 had experience working with visitors with various disabilities. The study is situated in the context of 2.2 billion BLV people worldwide who face challenges accessing exhibitions that are primarily visual — including difficulty accessing exhibition information, navigating venues, and appreciating artworks.
Key findings
The study identified four critical themes of challenges curators face. First, attracting BLV visitors is difficult: curators struggle to connect with disability communities, and a vicious cycle emerges where low BLV attendance leads to reduced accessibility investment, which further discourages BLV visitors. Second, assistive technology usage presents challenges in two areas — navigation and artwork interpretation. For navigation, curators noted that most current services rely on volunteers (temporary, discontinuous, costly to train), and that existing navigation technologies fail in crowded exhibition environments, lack connectivity between navigation and interpretation systems, and don't accommodate individual visitor preferences and routes. For artwork interpretation, curators employed multi-sensory practices across tactile (3D-printed replicas, touchable sculptures, Braille labels), auditory (triggered audio guides, surround sound installations), and combined approaches (taste, smell, temperature alongside touch and sound). However, curators expressed three key concerns: whether cross-sensory translation truly preserves the meaning of visual artworks, the tension between making artworks touchable and preserving them, and the appropriate degree of sensory transformation. Third, the lack of clear industry standards for assistive technology in exhibitions and insufficient policy support — including absent regulatory enforcement, inadequate funding, and lack of training — significantly hinders progress. Fourth, curators face challenging trade-offs between BLV and sighted visitors in terms of space allocation, budget, and exhibition design, compounded by their own limited knowledge of assistive technologies.
Relevance
This study makes a valuable contribution by shifting the lens from end-user experience to the institutional gatekeepers who determine whether accessibility technologies actually get deployed in cultural spaces. The identification of a vicious circle — where low BLV attendance reduces curator motivation to invest in accessibility, which in turn discourages BLV attendance — is particularly important for understanding why museum accessibility progress has been slow despite a growing body of assistive technology research. For accessibility technology developers, the findings offer a reality check: many research prototypes fail in crowded real-world exhibition environments, lack integration between navigation and interpretation functions, and require technical knowledge that curators do not possess. The study's recommendations are actionable: adopt participatory design approaches that involve BLV visitors in exhibition planning, use virtual reality for pre-visit familiarization, develop user-friendly tools that let curators customize assistive technologies without deep technical knowledge, build communication platforms for sharing curatorial accessibility knowledge, and establish multi-party collaboration models connecting curators with BLV organizations, assistive technology developers, artists, heritage researchers, and institutional management. The research is based in China, providing a valuable non-Western perspective on museum accessibility that highlights how regional policy differences affect curatorial practice.
Tags: museum accessibility · blind and low vision · curators · assistive technology · exhibition design · tactile · multi-sensory · indoor navigation · probe study
Standards referenced: NISE Universal Design Guidelines · Smithsonian Guidelines