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Reply To: | Library Access -- http://www.rit.edu/~easi |
Date: | Sun, 19 Apr 1998 18:19:47 -0400 |
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Improving Access to Science and Technology Centers for Visually
Impaired
Visitors Using Random Access Audio/Tours
Applicant: New York Hall of Science
Alan Friedman, Principal Investigator
ABSTRACT
The New York Hall of Science will conduct research to determine the
effectiveness of random-access audio technology as a means of
improving access to science-technology center exhibitions for
visually-impaired visitors. The project will use formative evaluation
techniques to create random access tours of two major exhibitions at
the New York Hall of Science: Sound Sensations and Seeing the Light.
The project will use a recently developed technology, the
random-access audio player, which offers the promise of improving the
effectiveness of learning for all visitors, including the
visually-impaired, at science-technology center interactive exhibits.
This project builds upon earlier work to develop and evaluate audio
tours for hands-on science museums.
The exhibitions selected for this project address the technology of
audio reproduction (Sound Sensations) and the physiology and
psychology of visual perception (Seeing the Light). The project goal
is to extend the benefits of these substantive informal science
experiences to visually impaired visitors. Seeing the Light,
originally created by the Exploratorium in San Francisco, is one of
the most widely replicated exhibitions in the world, making the
findings of the project directly relevant to many museums. The project
team will use control and experimental groups of visually impaired
visitors to evaluate the effectiveness of these tours in increasing
the impact of the exhibits for these individuals. The goal of the
currently funded project is to determine whether audio tours work for
any The initial findings from the earlier research were encouraging
indicating that audio tours are beneficial for audiences in hands-on
science museums. The new research will extend the prior work in two
ways: (1) It will enable the museum staff to develop and test an audio
tour which is designed to support the special requirements of
visually-impaired audiences. (2) It will enable the project team to
ascertain the degree to which an audio- tour can benefit from the
principles of universal design -- how the specific requirements of a
visually impaired audience might be incorporated in the design of an
audio tour for all audiences. Both general findings and tour
components from this research could be used later by over 250
science-technology centers in the United States. The project will
conclude with a report to the field on the production, use, cost, and
impact of this technology on the target audience.
Dr. Alan Friedman, Principal Investigator
New York Hall of Science
47-01 111th Street
Flushing Meadows
Corona Park, NY 11368
Tel: 718/699-0005
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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