Smart captioning glasses implemented in the National Theatre have broken the barrier for deaf and HoH visitors in consuming live performance mediums and exhibitions. Inspired by these glasses, what if we can start using AR tech for on-screen live captioning.

💡 Other possibilities: Positioned too far back in the crowd to hear what the guide is saying? This tool can also help visitors in these scenarios to receive the relevant information.

Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Rooms offers a VR experience as suggested by Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in order to cater to visitors that were not able to access the actual space due to the installation space that’s not ADA compatible for visitors in wheelchairs, hence providing an alternative way for them to still experience the installation.

💡 Other possibilities: Have an elder parent visiting the museum too that can’t stand up for too long on their own? The VR option allows them to still be able to experience the piece from a more comfortable spot suitable to their needs. The VR space also offers a great way for kids and those under the spectrum that may have social interaction difficulties to have a calm, private space to experience the pieve.

The Great Animal Orchestra plays and visualizes the sounds of some of their recorded animals. While this creates a harmonious combination for non-disabled visitors, this provided visitors with auditory limitations something they can still experience collectively with others – from seeing the soothing sound waves under the blue-lit room during a whale’s sounds, or the high-jumping feel of the forest insects under the green-lit room, even if they cannot hear it themselves.

The Peterson Automobile Museum in collaboration with Microsoft used mixed reality and the hololens to allow visitors view their historic car exhibitions beyond the static means, enabling them to view it in dynamic action and facilitate easier learning of its science through visual aid.

💡 What if: this is developed further to adopt the use of holograms, ones that visitors are able to engage with – to assemble + disassemble, dissect parts, and many other for a more immersive self-paced learning and exploration experience to cater to each visitor’s own pace and unique needs.

The Art Gallery of NSW combines a mix of film music, sound art, and storytelling to enhance the artistic interpretation of their pieces, creating a seamless journey-like experience throughout the space and creating a distinct experience for each piece visitors encounter.

Monet sound painting at Multisensory Met would produce a specific sound when touched in different areas to offer a more unique experience for each individual.

💡 Other possibilities: For younger children, especially those with a tendency to fidget and want to touch different things this helps provide audio feedback to add another layer of stimulated sensory that is good for their development.

Combined with GPS-embedded technology that can locate your position in the space-based technology, storytelling & navigating implementated audio guides can help navigate visitors around the space, especially those visually impaired to have a more journey-like experience in navigating from piece to piece.

💡 Other possibilities: Not the best at reading 2D maps? This may help take away the frustration of trying to find your way around, especially for visitors with dyslexia that would face more of a challenge in reading 2-dimensional layouts.

The Smithsonian initiated ‘InSight’ tours where they have volunteer docents that helps deliver descriptions of the museum’s pieces through movement, descriptive scenarios and prompts that evokes imagination – prompting visitors if they can smell the cigarette and alcohol when trying to imagine William Johnson’s Café, and even using music and sound to provide an alternative pathway to understand art.

As part of the Met’s Multisensory initiative; the museum provided a Material Booklet with small amount of materials that are similar ones in the displayed sculpture piandaece.

💡 Other possibilities: This is not only great for visitors with visual impairments to connect and ‘visualize’ the piece with a more textured context, but also for children or those under the spectrum to stimulate their senses.

Some museums are utilizing the use of 3D printing technology to create replicas of their pieces, which can allow visitors to touch more fragile/older items without the fear of compromising it. This can be an opportunity for visually impaired visitors to be able to feel what, perhaps some of the world’s most famous pieces of art ‘looks’ like.

💡 Other possibilities: For those with limited mobility; in crutches or wheelchair bound, limited narrow exhibition spaces can cause discomfort when other people are crowding to see a particular piece. With 3D printers, multiple replicas can be easily passed around for other visitors to touch and explore themselves without needing to crowd on one focal point.

An aid tool for art access called Tooteko allows visually impaired visitors to explore the reproduction of an exhibition piece by touching different parts of the piece where they can hear different audio descriptions in each ‘hotspot’, allowing them to have a more tactile exploration combined with the benefits of a targeted audio guide.

💡 Other possibilities: For visitors that may have a different pace for comprehension, those who are listening to descriptions not in their first language, or just those that may be a bit more unfamiliar with the context and need more time to understand the provided information, this allows them to go at their own pace and not have them feel frustrated in the process.

The ‘Not Impossible’ group created a haptic suit that allows people to experience sound through 24 points of vibration systems each customizable in frequency, amplitude, and strength to create different movements, rhythm, and intensity variations

The Little Lon exhibits 1880s cottages through hearing voices and sounds recreating the environment, touching the objects, and smelling the fireplaces, laundry soaps, and even horse manure in 1880s Smellbourne.

Multisensory Met features a scratch-and-sniff painting that releases fragrances when activated by the visitor. For example, floral, salt water, and spicy-cocoa scents were embedded in Claude Monet’s Garden at Sainte-Adresse to make all the things in the painting mimic how they would smell in real life.

Tate Sensorium’s immersive exhibition offers a taste experience – amongst other senses in its exhibit, in the form of edible charcoal, sea salt, cacao nibs, and smokey lapsang souchong tea to accompany Francis Bacon’s Figure in a Landscape (1945) painting.

Sega and BBC Earth collaborated to launch Orbi-Earth, a multi-sensory museum where visitors can explore nature alongside real-looking 3D animals, while augmenting the environmental stimulants of their environments such as the cold temperatures and strong winds penguins faces in antartica.

The Mission Mars Exhibit offers the opportunity for you to touch what a rock from Mars feels like, or feel the difference gravity makes in a hands-on activity demonstrating how your weight would feel on Mars.

Disney’s Soarin’ ride engages your senses and figuratively, if not literally, sends you soarin'. It programs motion units to rise up and toward the stunningly illustrated screen to make riders feel they are gliding through the air.

What if you could step back in time and be invited to the year 1912 to have a dinner on board the night that the Titanic sank, experiencing and interacting with the sounds, conversations, and meals during that night – even feeling how cold the ice and water might be for those that tried to survive?

What if you can chat with Albert Einstein or other historical figure, just as seen in Night at The Museum? Or have dinner with Shakespare or DaVinci? Conversing with them while tasting and smelling palettes from their era?

What about using robots and animatronics to emulate animals or imaginary/extinct species so visitors can touch their skin/fur, smell them, and hear what they sound like, just as seen in Jurassic World?