An independent visit to a museum can be quite a challenge for people with a visual impairment. That is why Museum De Lakenhal developed an audio tour especially for this target group, which tells you everything about the museum and its building. The tour can be followed independently at any time.
Museum building as a collection piece
The audio tour, entitled Looking with your fingers – the museum building, is about the largest and most important collection piece of Museum De Lakenhal: the museum building. It is a unique place, where Leiden cloth was inspected from 1640 onwards, and which now houses the Leiden city museum. The tour allows you to visit on your own with a sighted guide, at your own time and at your own pace. This makes an independent museum visit possible for everyone.
Feeling materials
The tour takes visitors past ten special places in the building. Users not only get the opportunity to hear the stories behind these locations: they are also allowed to touch the walls, furniture and stair railings. Where the collection is too fragile to touch, special tactile materials are available. Consider, for example, tactile drawings, a 3D print of the facade and a model on which the map of the museum is made tangible. These materials were developed in collaboration with the CBB and Visual First .
Free with the app
The tour can be followed for free for everyone via the Lakenhal app, which you can download on your own iOS or Android phone. In preparation for the launch of the tour, the interface of the existing app has been optimized so that people with visual impairments can properly use the app in combination with the accessibility settings on their phone. The tour was written for people with a visual impairment, but is just as interesting for sighted people to follow: it is enriching for everyone to experience a museum visit with all your senses.
Home for everyone
The tour is an important step in making the museum accessible to people with visual impairments. Museum De Lakenhal believes it is important to take these steps to make everyone feel at home in the museum, even people for whom a museum visit is not self-evident. ‘Accessibility starts with the realization that the limitations that people experience are not just their limitations,’ says Tanja Elstgeest, director of Museum De Lakenhal. ‘We see it as our responsibility to remove as many barriers as possible that could hinder people from their museum visit. In this way we want to ensure that as many people as possible can enjoy art.’
Very important
About 300,000 Dutch people live with a visual impairment. Of these, approximately 200,000 people are (severely) visually impaired and 50,000 are blind. The development of an audio tour like this is of great importance for this group, according to Joost van Gent, member of the focus group that helped develop the audio tour. ‘I have been able to see for 52 years, but I am now very visually impaired. This audio tour allowed me to really experience the museum and get a good idea of how the building has changed compared to the past. Very special!’
Accessibility at De Lakenhal museum
The audio tour is not the first step that Museum De Lakenhal is taking to improve the accessibility of the museum. The building is largely accessible to people with reduced mobility. Guided tours are also provided in Dutch Sign Language for the deaf and hard of hearing, and there are tours and workshops for people with dementia and their loved ones. More information can be found on the website of Museum De Lakenhal .
Collaboration partners and funds
The tour was developed in close collaboration with Mikxs , the Oren en Ogen Tekort Foundation and people with a visual impairment. The audio tour was created thanks to a generous contribution from the RAAK Incentive Prize , a close partnership between the Eye Association , the Accessibility/Bartiméus Foundation and Koninklijke Visio , and was made possible by joint funds in the eye field.