A Comparison of Audio-Tactile Exploration Methods to Discover the Tapestry of the Apocalypse

Artwork accessibility is a major issue for blind and partially blind museum visitors. To that extent, tactile graphic techniques and supports have been developed to allow haptic exploration of bi-dimensional artworks which is not always available in museums. This study aims to compare different technologies with a focus on the Tapestry of the Apocalypse, located in the Castle of Angers, France. To evaluate their impact on the museum visitors' experience, we seek to establish the benefits and drawbacks and look for further improvements. Several tactile supports have been used in this experiment: a tactile book with embossed paper, a swell paper representation, a 3D printed puzzle, and a haptic device, named F2T (Force-Feedback Tablet). Blind, partially blind, and sighted participants were tasked to explore these supports accompanied by audio descriptions. Participants were presented with several Likert scale and open-ended questions to rate their general feeling. Overall, all the conditions received good ratings from the participants. However, more nuanced comments were gathered on each condition. New ways to improve the technologies have been proposed through users' feedback.