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Adapting Artworks for People who Are Blind or Visually Impaired Using Raised Printing

Everyone has the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community (United Nations, 2012). In Europe and around the globe, many efforts have been made in order to include people with visual impairments and blindness into the cultural life (Braille Authority, 2012; Brvar, 2010; European Blind Union, 2011; Kennedy, 2003; Kurze, 1996; Salzhauer Axel & Sobol Levent, 2003; Wright, 2009). The objects and artifacts exhibited in museums for people with visual impairments are available either by direct touch of the original or its 3-D reproduction. Paintings, on the other hand, require a different approach--usually a tactile adaptation is created. This paper describes the process used to create a tactile adaptation of the painting Portrait of Empress Elisabeth of Habsburg, which hangs in the Celje Regional Museum in Slovenia as a part of the Cultural and Art Historical Collection. It was painted between 1873 and 1875 by the Austrian artist Georg Martin Ignaz Raab. The Empress Elisabeth, also known as Sissi (1837-1898), was famous especially in the Habsburg monarchy for her extreme beauty and unconventional style of life. Her life inspired many movies that ensured her legacy for generations to come. There are many techniques used in tactile adaptation. Two are used very often, namely the microcapsule technique (Braille Authority, 2012) and the thermovacuum technique (Rener, 1992). To create a tactile adaptation in this study, a new technique with an inkjet printer, the Roland UV LEC-330, was tested (Roland, 2012). The printer uses a special varnish that can be cured by ultraviolet (UV) light to generate raised relief surfaces printed layer by layer. This cannot be used for numerous copies, though, as the printing procedure is very time consuming. The printer adjustment and mistake correction are simple because the technique is digital. Apart from these technical aspects, we also explored ways of conveying the content of the actual image as best we could (Salzhauer Axel & Sobol Levent, 2003). The painting was carefully transformed into a tactile adaptation with the help of a museum expert; thus, during the adaptation, all historically important data were preserved. The process unfolded in three stages that are described below. In each stage, in addition to the technical use of the printer, subjects who are blind or visually impaired were interviewed to tell us whether the information at that point in the adaptation was easily perceived tactilely or not. Their comments were taken into consideration in the following stage. The final, third adaptation now hangs alongside the painting in the museum, where it is available for museumgoers who are blind or visually impaired. METHODS Subjects The subjects who participated in this study were found with the help of the Slovenian Association of People with Visual Impairments and Blindness and the Institute for Youth with Visual Impairments and Blindness of Slovenia. Our aim was to exhibit the tactile adaptation in a museum. Our main criterion was, therefore, that subjects be interested in art and the exploration of art. The average age was 35 years. All subjects agreed that tactile adaptation is useful and a likeable medium that helps improve their understanding of the visual world. Not all subjects were involved in all three stages of the adaptation. In Table 1, their involvement and some demographical data are presented. Three stages of adaptation The painting's dimensions are 79 x 63.3 centimeters (roughly 31 x 25 inches) (see Figure 1). The tactile adaptations, due to size restrictions connected to the sense of touch, were smaller--only 36 x 29 centimeters (approximately 14 x 11 inches) in size (Brvar, 2010). The three tactile adaptations were printed in a similar way, with only minor differences. Table 2 shows printer settings and printing conditions. The appropriate museum expert was consulted throughout the procedure; however, the historically relevant features were determined beforehand. …