Workshop for Museum and Aquarium Staff Members to Learn How Sensory-Impaired Visitors Feel via Experiences

Abstract

Even these days, visually impaired and deaf and hard of hearing people might encounter difficulties when they visit cultural facilities like museums or aquariums. Improving translation infrastructure or introducing a new IT system would be effective to solve this problem; however, this is hard for local facilities that do not have much budget. In the light of this background, our team thought that a workshop program for staff members of these facilities is basic but is a practical solution. Then, we tried to conduct a workshop collaborating with Ibaraki prefecture, Japan. The workshop mainly focused on the experiences of how these impaired people feel when they receive explanations in cultural facilities. Participants touched tactile material while wearing an eye-mask, listened to a lecture with earphones that produce multi-talker noise, etc. After the workshop, they were required to answer several questionnaires and make comments. The results show that the participants were satisfied with the workshop program, felt they needed more time to acquire information, and would like to recommend the learning experience to their colleagues. The extra comments show that they were motivated to acquire more knowledge about impaired people and practical ways to treat and support sensory-impaired visitors.