Museum, audio description and tactile resources for visually impaired people: accessibility of Room Aldemir Martins at Art Museum (MAUC/ UFC)

Abstract

This study aims to make accessible the paintings of Aldemir Martins, at Art Museum of Federal University of Ceará (MAUC) to blind and visually impaired people, focusing on the work of art Galo (1977). The research situates audio description (AD) as a form of Accessible Audiovisual Translation (AAVT) and tactile artwork as a translation of visual image into tactile language (DE COSTER; MÜHLEIS, 2007; HOLLAND, 2009). Our work is based on the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to provide an understanding of the piece of art (O’TOOLE, 2011). The theoretical and methodological frameworks of action research were used to create the AD and tactile artwork, harmonically (BARBIER, 2007). Computer-aided technologies for automatic or semi-automatic translation of paintings into tactile language were used (CARFAGNI et al., 2012). The first procedure was analyzing the paintings using the aforementioned theoretical background and writing the audio descriptions. The second procedure was submitting the AD to the group of participants, including blind audio description consultants, to ensure that the tactile pieces of art were made in harmony with the AD. The third step was submitting both resources to a reception test. As a result, it was possible to establish preliminary criteria for AD and tactile artwork. The results also show that one completes the other regarding accessibility.