Tactile Media In Museum Exhibits Increases Accessibility For Everyone

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Papers in Celebration of Bruce B. Huckell, Part 2" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Objects that are exhibited at museums are usually presented visually, behind glass, or roped off. This practice excludes visitors who are Blind, and it deprives sighted visitors of the benefits of learning through touch. Current research demonstrates the advantages of tactile exploration. For example, (Sweetman et al. 2020), found that sighted museum visitors could recall more details about the objects that they had handled when compared with those that they had only seen behind glass. This paper makes the case for producing tactile media, 2.5-dimensional raised line drawings and 3-dimensional models, which can be explored by touch and by sight. This ensures that both blind and sighted visitors can experience the rich content on exhibit in museums. I will present two case studies of exhibits that use tactile media to explain archaeological topics. The first case study is a prototype traveling exhibit of 3D-printed replica projectile points from the Maryland Archaeological and Conservation Laboratory. The second case study is the Founding Fossils exhibit at the Peale Museum In Baltimore that reproduces fossils collected by early American leaders in a 3D-printed format making them accessible to everyone regardless of their visual acuity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Papers in Celebration of Bruce B. Huckell, Part 2

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52385