# Understanding Visual Arts Experiences of Blind People

Franklin Mingzhe Li  Carnegie Mellon UniversityPittsburghPennsylvaniaUSA
<EMAIL_ADDRESS>,  Lotus Zhang  University of
WashingtonSeattleWashingtonUSA<EMAIL_ADDRESS>,  Maryam Bandukda  University
College LondonLondonUnited Kingdom<EMAIL_ADDRESS>,  Abigale Stangl
University of WashingtonSeattleWashingtonUSA<EMAIL_ADDRESS>,  Kristen
Shinohara  Rochester Institute of TechnologyRochesterNew YorkUSA
<EMAIL_ADDRESS>,  Leah Findlater  University of
WashingtonSeattleWashingtonUSA<EMAIL_ADDRESS>and  Patrick Carrington  Carnegie
Mellon UniversityPittsburghPennsylvaniaUSA<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
(2023)

###### Abstract.

Visual arts play an important role in cultural life and provide access to
social heritage and self-enrichment, but most visual arts are inaccessible to
blind people. Researchers have explored different ways to enhance blind
people’s access to visual arts (e.g., audio descriptions, tactile graphics).
However, how blind people adopt these methods remains unknown. We conducted
semi-structured interviews with 15 blind visual arts patrons to understand how
they engage with visual artwork and the factors that influence their adoption
of visual arts access methods. We further examined interview insights in a
follow-up survey (N=220). We present: 1) current practices and challenges of
accessing visual artwork in-person and online (e.g., Zoom tour), 2) motivation
and cognition of perceiving visual arts (e.g., imagination), and 3)
implications for designing visual arts access methods. Overall, our findings
provide a roadmap for technology-based support for blind people’s visual arts
experiences.

Visual arts, Blind people, Accessibility, Assistive technology, Mixed-methods
study

††journalyear: 2023††copyright: rightsretained††conference: Proceedings of the
2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems; April 23–28, 2023;
Hamburg, Germany††booktitle: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23), April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg,
Germany††doi: 10.1145/3544548.3580941††isbn: 978-1-4503-9421-5/23/04††ccs:
Human-centered computing Empirical studies in accessibility

##  1\. Introduction

Art allows the expression of important ideas, emotions and beliefs in a
multitude of forms, and profoundly influences human society. Experiencing art
can bring spiritual satisfaction and self-enrichment to individuals, including
people in the blind community (Axel and Levent, 2003; Hayhoe, 2013): “The
power of the arts can literally change a person’s life by helping him or her
develop skills such as leadership, teamwork, communication, self-discipline,
and creativity”, says the president and CEO of American Foundation for the
Blind (Axel and Levent, 2003). However, most art is consumed visually (e.g.,
photography, drawing, painting) and thus poses access barriers for over 2.2
billion population in the world who have vision impairments (Cavazos Quero et
al., 2021). Although art museums and galleries increasingly offer accessible
tours, these are still limited to a small number of venues and are far from
comparably enjoyable to what is offered to sighted visitors. In particular,
blind people still face challenges with attending and experiencing visual arts
exhibitions independently (Cavazos Quero et al., 2021).

Past HCI and accessibility research has explored technology-based approaches
to lower these access barriers, including museum navigation support (Ghiani et
al., 2008; Asakawa et al., 2019; Hayhoe, 2017), audio descriptions (Bernardi
et al., 2016), tactile graphics (Mukhiddinov and Kim, 2021), multimodal
feedback (Chase et al., 2020), and virtual art tours through smart devices
(Ahmetovic et al., 2021). Despite past innovative efforts, we still know
little about how people in the blind community adopt existing technology-based
supports, and what considerations they make when using these tools to access
visual arts. In particular, while contextual factors, such as social settings,
could significantly impact the experience of visual arts appreciation
(Shinohara and Wobbrock, 2011; Bieber and Rae, 2013), little is known about
how blind people adopt visual art access methods under different contexts. We
therefore explore blind patrons’ visual arts access preferences with
considerations of a range of contextual factors—including locations (e.g., art
museums, home), social settings (e.g., with peers, alone), personal art
appreciation goals and vision conditions—to inform the design of more
inclusive and effective technological supports for blind art patrons.

To explore these problem spaces, we conducted semi-structured interviews with
15 blind visual arts patrons and examined interview insights through a follow-
up survey study (N=220). We focus on the following research questions
throughout the studies:

  * •

RQ1: How do blind people currently access visual arts?

  * •

RQ2: What factors influence blind people’s adoption of visual arts access
methods, and why?

  * •

RQ3: What motivates and brings aesthetic enjoyment to blind people to enjoy
visual arts non-visually, and why?

  * •

RQ4: How should technology be developed to support blind people to have better
visual arts access?

From our interviews, we learned about participants’ existing adoption of
access methods for visual arts appreciation (e.g., visits to art venues,
participating in Zoom tours) (Section 4), their motivation for appreciating
visual arts, and how they obtain aesthetic enjoyment from visual arts (e.g.,
through constructing imaginary artwork based on past visual memories and non-
visual cues, through discussing artworks with sighted peers) (Section 5). We
further extracted eight main design considerations for visual arts access
technologies that participants deemed important, including: 1) matching patron
comprehension goals with non-visual modes of communication, 2) improving
coordination across modalities, 3) balancing between flexibility and
consistency, 4) enhancing objective interpretation, 5) establishing shared art
vocabulary and grammar, 6) describing visual arts based on individual memory,
7) maintaining synchronous feedback, and 8) destigmatizing accessible art
experiences (Section 6). From the survey, we quantified blind patrons’
motivations and sources of enjoyment for engaging with visual arts, as well as
their preferences for different visual arts access methods and over the eight
key design considerations uncovered from the interviews, with an exploration
of these preferences across different vision conditions (Section 7). Finally,
we discuss these findings in the context of existing research (e.g., remote
art access experiences, art appreciation in social settings and activism, and
multimodal approach towards different vision conditions) (Section 8). Overall,
we believe our findings and discussion points contribute opportunities to
support blind people to better leverage art-related assistive technologies for
independent and enjoyable experiences for visual arts appreciation.

##  2\. Related Work

In this section, we first define visual arts and discuss the significance of
visual art appreciation for blind people (Section 2.1). We then cover current
art museum accessibility approaches for blind people (Section 2.2). Finally,
we introduce technological innovations of different visual art access methods
in-depth (i.e., tactile tools, audio descriptions, interactive multimodal
presentations) (Section 2.3).

###  2.1. Visual Arts for Blind People

Visual arts is an umbrella term for a broad category of art, including fine
arts, contemporary arts, decorative arts, and crafts (Cork, [n.d.]). These
artworks heavily rely on visual perceptions to encode their meaning, and many
assume that blind people do not and cannot enjoy visual arts (Axel and Levent,
2003). However, blind individuals’ interests and desires to visit museums and
enjoy visual arts are commonly observed and reported in literature
(Argyropoulos and Kanari, 2015; Buyurgan, 2009; Handa et al., 2010; Hayhoe,
2013; Axel and Levent, 2003). As commented in the resource guidebook for art,
creativity, and visual impairments: “Art Beyond Sight”—“Some have a lust for
shape and space and form, just as others are moved deeply by music, or nature”
(Axel and Levent, 2003), not every blind individual enjoys visual arts, yet
everyone ought to be able to access it. Past scholars who promoted art
education for blind people provided a set of benefits of engaging in visual
arts appreciation, including access to important cultural information,
aesthetic enjoyment, and also stimuli to personal development—such as critical
thinking skills honed through analyzing and interpreting artworks, cooperative
learning obtained from appreciating and creating art in groups, self-
awareness, and self-confidence (Axel and Levent, 2003). In particular, Eisner
(Axel and Levent, 2003) proposed that experiencing visual arts could bring
positive impact to blind people, by improving Braille reading skills, mobility
and map-reading skills, tactile exploration skills, development of texture
sensitivity, socialization skills, and improved integration into the local
community. However, the needs of blind people in visual arts have been long
neglected, with “policy makers and arts managers failing to understand the
nature of the need” and “educators overprotecting blind students” from being
overwhelmed (Axel and Levent, 2003). Our paper extends efforts to make visual
arts appreciation non-visually accessible, by inquiring about blind people’s
perceptions of the opportunities and limitations of emerging technologies for
non-visual engagement with visual arts.

###  2.2. Art Museum Accessibility for Blind People

Many blind people who are interested in visual arts visit art museums and
galleries, which in turn have gradually increased non-visual arts access with
ongoing effort from disability activists (Asakawa et al., 2019; Urbas et al.,
2018; Fogle-Hatch and Winiecki, [n.d.]). Being able to physically visit art
venues is important to many art patrons, as doing so provides social,
cultural, and emotional influences only made possible by being present in the
same space as the artwork and being a part of the interaction with other
visitors (Axel and Levent, 2003; Hayhoe, 2013). Recently, there has been
increasing legislative effort in the US and Europe toward equal access of art
(e.g., Americans with Disability Act (of Justice, 2009), Universal Declaration
of Human Rights (Article 27) (Assembly et al., 1948; Stamatopoulou-Robbins,
2007; Nations, [n.d.])), and art museums are gradually becoming more
accessible to blind people (Asakawa et al., 2019; Urbas et al., 2018; Fogle-
Hatch and Winiecki, [n.d.]). Still, accessibility standards are rarely
enforced in art museums and galleries, and merely meeting these standards does
not necessarily provide experiences for blind people that meet their
expectations (Kanter, 2019; Mesquita and Carneiro, 2016; Walters, 2009; Urbas
et al., 2018).

To visit an art museum or gallery, one common approach for blind visitors is
through specialized, guided tours, often with a docent or a sighted companion
who provides navigation support and describes the artwork (Asakawa et al.,
2019; Jansson et al., 2003; of Art, 2018). However, these tours often require
the blind patrons to show up on a specific day or need reservation ahead of
time (Veroniiiica, [n.d.]; of Art, [n.d.]; Cavazos Quero et al., 2021). Beyond
guided tours, pre-recorded audio descriptions of art pieces have become common
in museums and galleries (Ginley, 2013), albeit designed primarily for sighted
visitors (Asakawa et al., 2019). To further support blind patrons with more
direct experiences, some museums provide tactile options for blind visitors,
such as tactile replicas, graphs, or braille-based brochures and tags (Warhol,
[n.d.]; Abo, 2018; Anagnostakis et al., 2016; Urbas et al., 2018). In reality,
these art programs that provide touchable artwork and tailored descriptions
are rare among art museums (Cavazos Quero et al., 2021). To support blind
people navigating in the museum, prior research has explored location
tracking, audio notifications, and voice descriptions to inform blind visitors
about obstacles, wayfinding, and descriptions of visual art pieces (Asakawa et
al., 2019; Rector et al., 2017; Jain, 2014; Meliones and Sampson, 2018). In
this paper, we explore blind people’s overall experiences with visual arts
under different contexts and their preferences for appreciating visual arts.

###  2.3. Technological Support of Visual Art Access for Blind People

Below, we expand on new technological innovations to support non-visual
appreciation of visual arts, structured into three categories: tactile tools
(Section 2.3.1), audio descriptions (Section 2.3.2), and interactive
multimodal presentations (Section 2.3.3).

####  2.3.1. Tactile Tools

Touching is one of the main methods for blind people to access visual arts,
such as through tactile graphics—graphics made using raised lines and textures
to convey drawings and images (Cantoni et al., 2018; Holloway et al., 2019;
Cavazos Quero et al., 2021). Without prior training, blind people can capture
the sizes, shapes, and location of essential details through touching outlines
of objects, which is often faster than decoding descriptions of such details
(Kennedy, 1974; Axel and Levent, 2003). An experienced tactile graphic
consumer can identify patterns of shadow and light in artworks (Axel and
Levent, 2003), and the sense of touch can produce accurate and complete
characteristics of objects with training (Luo et al., 2017). However, tactile
graphics can be less effective in expressing visual information of complex
images (Baker et al., 2014). Therefore, tactile graphics are suitable for
simple graphs and diagrams with objects’ spatial relationship being important
(Cavazos Quero et al., 2021; BANA, [n.d.]). Still, there have been efforts
toward using tactile graphics for complex visual information, such as color
(Cho et al., 2021), comics (Dittmar, 2014; Fraser, 2021), and also visual
artwork (Hinton, 1991). However, producing tactile graphics that effectively
present complex visual information requires time and skill from professionals,
and thus is mostly unavailable, or low-quality (Mesquita and Carneiro, 2016;
Walters, 2009; Handa et al., 2010). Recently, there have been attempts to
auto-generate tactile graphics or 3D reproductions through AI algorithms
(Mukhiddinov and Kim, 2021; Neumüller et al., 2014; Cavazos Quero et al.,
2018; d’Art de Girona, 2016; Warhol, [n.d.]). Although the quality of such
products is still not always ensured, it has the potential to increase tactile
access to art in scale. Other challenges of tactile graphics include
inadequate educational resources for blind people to learn to consume tactile
arts properly (Stangl et al., 2019), the difficulty of maintaining tactile
arts (Mesquita and Carneiro, 2016), stigma and restrictions related to touch
(Candlin, 2004; Stangl et al., 2019; Kleege, 2018), and copyright infringement
related to reproducing visual media in tactile form (Holloway et al., 2019).

####  2.3.2. Audio Descriptions

Audio description is another common way for blind people to learn more about
visual art pieces, often pre-recorded on either a personal device or a device
prepared by the venue (Ahmetovic et al., 2021; Axel and Levent, 2003; Mesquita
and Carneiro, 2016; De Coster and Mühleis, 2007; Haworth and Williams, 2012).
Audio descriptions are now available in many museums, but are often designed
for sighted visitors, and thus still present accessibility barriers for blind
visitors (Ahmetovic et al., 2021). Audio descriptions can usually provide
accurate spatial understanding and details of an artwork (Neumüller et al.,
2014; Cavazos Quero et al., 2021). Comparatively, “verbal imaging”—art
descriptions tailored and read by curators of the art venues for blind
people—are more compelling but very rarely found (Axel and Levent, 2003). One
way of improving understanding through audio descriptions is to provide
multiple levels of descriptions, ranging from general information, to fine-
grained details (Ahmetovic et al., 2021; Morris et al., 2018). The other way
of improving understanding through audio descriptions consults general image
description generation techniques (Ahmetovic et al., 2021). To better improve
the quality of auto-generated artwork description, past work has also
incorporated eye gaze and discussion data from sighted viewers to create rich
descriptions for image areas that people tend to pay attention to (Sibert and
Jacob, 2000; Reingold et al., 2003). Huh et al. (Huh et al., 2022) further
proposed using comments online to automatically generate image descriptions of
webtoons (i.e., digital comics) and allow blind readers to request information
in a question-and-answer format. Moreover, there are attempts to use sound
design to better present comics instead of only verbal descriptions (Sousanis,
[n.d.]). Given these technological explorations on audio descriptions, it
remains unknown how blind people adopt different audio description methods,
and what their associated perceptions and challenges are when using audio
descriptions for visual art access.

####  2.3.3. Interactive Multimodal Presentations

Because audio descriptions and tactile tools are limited in delivering visual
information, there have been increasing proposals to provide multimodal
presentations of visual arts for blind people, mostly combining audio
descriptions and tactile tools (Ahmetovic et al., 2021; Iranzo Bartolome et
al., 2019; Cavazos Quero et al., 2018). Such a multimodal approach also
benefits art interpretation, as the non-visual medium used for presenting
visual arts could often influence the message and intention expressed (Cavazos
Quero et al., 2021). Multimodal approaches to experiencing visual arts also
can influence the message and intent expressed in non-visually describing
artworks (Cavazos Quero et al., 2021). A range of system innovations further
added interactivity to these multimodal presentations to help blind people
understand visual arts through exploration (Cavazos Quero et al., 2021; Cho et
al., 2021; Anagnostakis et al., 2016; Leporini et al., 2020; Vaz et al., 2018;
Reichinger et al., 2016; Hinton, 1991). Such interactivity is argued to be
important, as “The goal of my art is to cause a reaction when someone sees it,
they (viewers) should think, they should react. That’s what experiencing art
is” (Cavazos Quero et al., 2021). For example, recent innovations allow users
to perform specific touch gestures on the artwork surface, lift up an item, or
press buttons to get localized descriptions or related audio elements as they
go (Cavazos Quero et al., 2021; Anagnostakis et al., 2016; Vaz et al., 2018;
Leporini et al., 2020; Reichinger et al., 2016; Hinton, 1991; Cho, 2021).
Last, a range of virtual, internet-based technologies allow remote visual
artwork appreciation for blind people. For example, Howell and Porter (Howell
and Porter, 2003) proposed to provide home-printed tactile presentations
together with online audio guides of artworks to blind people.

While prior research has explored various technological approaches to access
visual arts, it still remains unknown how these methods are adopted by people
in the blind community under different contexts, including their preferences
among different access technologies and design implications towards more
accessible and enjoyable art experiences. Building upon existing visual arts
accessing methods, this paper bridges these gaps.

##  3\. Semi-structured Interview

We first conducted semi-structured interviews with people who are legally or
totally blind to learn how they currently engage with visual arts, including
what methods they adopt to access visual arts, what challenges are encountered
in the process, and how they cognitively perceive visual arts. At the end of
the interview, we explored factors that influence their preferences for
existing technology-based access methods.

###  3.1. Participants

We recruited 15 blind participants (P1 - P15) (Table 1) through different
online platforms (e.g., Twitter), email lists (e.g., National Federation of
the Blind Tactile Art and Tactile Graphics Specialist Group), and newsletters
(e.g., Blind Posse Newsletter). To participate in our study, participants
needed to be 18 years or older, be legally or totally blind, have experience
with going to a specific venue for visual arts appreciation (e.g., museum, art
gallery), and be able to communicate in English. Among the 15 participants we
recruited, seven of them were female, and eight were male (Table 1). They had
an average age of 36.1 years old (SD = 20.9). Nine of them are legally blind,
and six are totally blind. Four of them are congenitally blind, and others
acquired blindness at different ages. The interview took around 75 to 90
minutes per participant. Participants were compensated with a $20 Amazon gift
card. The recruitment and study procedure was approved by the Institutional
Review Board (IRB).

Participant |  Gender |  Age |  Blindness |  Occupation |  Details
---|---|---|---|---|---
P1 |  Female |  27 |  Legally blind |  Tactile painting creator |  Congenitally blind, only has light perception.
P2 |  Female |  29 |  Totally blind |  Mental healthcare |  Acquired blindness around six and a half.
P3 |  Male |  25 |  Legally blind |  Student |  Acquired around 20.
P4 |  Female |  27 |  Legally blind |  Online worker |  Acquired since six years old.
P5 |  Male |  21 |  Legally blind |  Unemployed |  Acquired in high school.
P6 |  Female |  73 |  Totally blind |  Writer and editor |  Congenitally blind.
P7 |  Male |  74 |  Totally blind |  Retired physician |  Normal sight at 20, legally blind around 30, lost all vision around 50.
P8 |  Female |  20 |  Legally blind |  Student |  Acquired since six years old.
P9 |  Male |  80 |  Totally blind |  Rehabilitation counselor |  Congenitally blind, totally blind since 1978.
P10 |  Female |  28 |  Totally blind |  Unemployed |  Acquired at 13 or 14 years old.
P11 |  Male |  22 |  Legally blind |  Student |  Acquired at 10 years old.
P12 |  Male |  23 |  Legally blind |  Therapist |  Acquired at 17 years old.
P13 |  Male |  25 |  Legally blind |  Consultant |  Acquired six years ago, personal accident.
P14 |  Male |  30 |  Legally blind |  Computer engineer |  Acquired at 20 years old.
P15 |  Female |  38 |  Totally blind |  Massage Therapist |  Congenitally blind, totally blind at 29 years old

Table 1. Participants’ demographic information.

This is the table of our participants’ demographic information. There are six
columns and 15 rows (without headers). The headers are participant, gender,
age, blindness, occupation, and details.

###  3.2. Study Procedure

####  3.2.1. Demographic Background [5 Minutes]:

In our semi-structured interviews, we first asked about the demographic
background of our participants, which included age, gender, profession, and
descriptions of vision level.

####  3.2.2. Current Practices and Challenges of Visual Arts Appreciation [20
Minutes]:

We then asked our participants about their experiences with visual arts
appreciation, inquiring into where they usually visit to enjoy visual arts,
who they enjoy visual arts with, what methods they usually leverage to enjoy
visual arts and the challenges they experience when appreciating visual arts.
Beyond the overall experiences, we also asked about the practices they used to
engage with visual arts after they initially lost their vision (if
applicable), as compared to their latest experiences to identify any
challenges they experienced at different stages of their art appreciation
journeys.

####  3.2.3. Perceptions of Visual Arts Appreciation [15 Minutes]:

We further asked our participants about the goals the art patron has when
encountering visual creative works and the meaning of visual arts to them in
life. According to the description framework of visual content (Stangl et al.,
2021), we also asked about participants’ awareness and perceptions of details
for different elements of visual arts, such as subject (e.g., people,
environment, activity), form (e.g., shape, line, color), and content (e.g.,
history, emotion).

####  3.2.4. Preferences on Alternative Arts Accesses for Visual Arts [40
Minutes]:

Afterward, we asked participants to envision their preferred ways to consume
visual arts, and then introduced a range of existing methods for presenting
visual arts non-visually (i.e., tactile graphics, audio descriptions, a
combination of tactile and audio presentation, remote visual arts experiences
through smart devices, and companion of sighted peer & tour) based on prior
research and accessible blind art guidelines (e.g., (Bernardi et al., 2016;
Mukhiddinov and Kim, 2021; Chase et al., 2020; Ahmetovic et al., 2021)). For
each method, we asked participants questions such as whether they had
experiences with a certain method, how well the method provides information
about the art piece, how intuitive or not intuitive the method is, how well
the method provides aesthetic enjoyment, and any challenges associated with
the method, and how can the method be improved.

###  3.3. Data Analysis

The semi-structured interviews were conducted through Zoom (Inc., 2012), and
all interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. After the interviews, two
researchers independently performed open coding (Charmaz, 2006) on the
transcripts. They then met to discuss their codes and resolve any conflicts
(e.g., missing codes, disagreement on codes). After the two researchers
reached a consensus and consolidated the list of codes, they performed
affinity diagramming (Hartson and Pyla, 2012) using a Miro board (Khusid and
Shardin, 2011) to cluster the codes and identify emergent themes.

##  4\. Findings: Current Practices and Challenges of Visual Arts Appreciation
for Blind People

In this section, we present current practices and challenges of blind visual
arts patrons, including their in-person and remote art appreciation
experiences.

###  4.1. In-Person Experiences

The most common way for our participants to engage with visual arts is to
visit art galleries and museums in person (N=$14$). Participants commonly
expressed interest in paintings, drawings, and photography exhibited in
galleries and museums, and they primarily rely on four non-visual approaches
to access these artworks: descriptions from sighted peers or docents (N=$14$),
pre-recorded audio descriptions (N=$9$), tactile graphics (N=$6$), and
interactive smart device support (N=$2$).

Among these approaches, participants strongly preferred descriptions from
sighted peers or docents, as they could ask questions and get answers
immediately from a real person, as P7 commented:

> “…Having a person with me allows me to ask whatever questions about
> different art pieces that I have. I could then receive answers immediately…”

However, P10 and P14 commented on the learning curve for training sighted
people to properly explain visual arts to a blind person, as P10 explained:

> “…My cousin initially took me to the art gallery to cheer me up. I
> appreciate that, but the initial experience was terrible, I barely got
> anything from her explanation…I remember she just said that this painting
> has two trees and a farmer between the trees. It takes her two years to
> provide the details that I would like to know from paintings…such as the
> correct color shades, visual references of different objects, and
> interactions between objects…”

The second most adopted approach is pre-recorded audio descriptions provided
by art galleries or museums. One challenge our participants experienced with
existing audio description technologies is the additional effort involved,
such as the need to scan QR codes and stand exactly in front of the painting.
Existing audio descriptions are also mostly designed for sighted patrons, and
thus lack detailed descriptions needed for blind people to understand the
visual artwork. P7 commented:

> “…Many audio devices I got from art galleries are designed for sighted
> people. For example, the descriptions do not typically include any visual
> references, they mentioned several attributes, like houses and trees, but
> without including where they are, what colors they were painted…”

For tactile graphics, our participants experienced two main challenges. First,
tactile graphics are not available in many art galleries and museums. P6
talked about her limited experiences with tactile graphics in her 70 years of
art experiences:

> “…I have over 70 years experiences of art, I can say that I only had
> opportunities to try tactile art at the Chicago Art Museum (the Art
> Institute of Chicago). They are just not common…”

Second, some participants find it particularly time-consuming to access visual
arts through tactile graphics, as P12 explained:

> “…It usually takes 15 to 20 minutes to feel a tactile painting, sometimes,
> it is even longer depending on the details of the painting…”

Two participants also mentioned the use of smart device supports (e.g., visual
interpretation technologies such as Be My Eyes and Aira) to identify what is
in an artwork (e.g., subject matters, activities, shapes, colors). While these
tools are versed at explaining visual concepts to blind people, they often
lack expertise in visual arts. P15 explained:

> “…I found people of BeMyEyes generally have difficulties expressing artwork
> properly, such as color shades…”

Existing visual interpretation tools are also not specifically designed to
provide descriptions for artworks, and thus often miss important contextual
information in them, as P7 commented:

> “…I tried to use some object recognition or image description apps on my
> phone, it mostly tells me things like there are two people, one sword, and
> one horse. There is almost no contextual information of the painting, such
> as who is holding the sword, what are the interactions between the two
> people…”

Because of these aforementioned access challenges with in-person art
experiences, our participants mostly stick with the same gallery or museum if
they found it to be relatively accessible (as mentioned by six of our
participants). Repeated visits to the same venue not only help the staff get
familiarized with steps to make the experience accessible, but also bring
emotional value to our blind patrons. For example, P11 mentioned:

> “…I usually visit the same art gallery close to my place, the staff there
> know me pretty well and always reach out to me to ask if I need anything. I
> feel at home there…”

P3 further commented on how visiting the same venue helps consolidate
understanding of specific art pieces and reduces uneasy social tensions:

> “…Going to the same art gallery and enjoy(ing) old artwork can help me
> recall my past memory and enhance [my] understanding of specific art pieces.
> This makes me feel less discriminated and I could confirm my understanding
> with docents there…Just like you always get new feelings and inspirations
> every time you see Mona Lisa…”

In summary, our participants’ in-person art appreciation experiences leverage
many existing non-visual approaches for presenting visual arts, as introduced
in the related work (Section 2), but with peer- and docent-guided tours being
the most commonly adopted. We confirmed on the overall lack of accessibility
infrastructures (e.g., tactile graphics) documented in prior work (Cavazos
Quero et al., 2021) and uncovered a common workaround to this
problem—familiarizing with and visiting the same art venue over time. We also
presented a range of challenges that made their experiences less accessible or
made some of these approaches less commonly adopted. One overarching problem
is the quality of artwork descriptions, whether it missed descriptions of
elements important to artworks or lacked intuitive explanations of visual
concepts to blind people. This insight extends prior research on Remote
Sighted Assistance (RSA) regarding the need for domain knowledge of specific
tasks (Lee et al., 2020).

###  4.2. Remote Experiences

Beyond going to art galleries and museums, remote art tours have become
increasingly available and popular during COVID-19, and three participants
mentioned that they had experiences going to Zoom art tours (P7, P14, P15).
They highlighted the benefit of remote tours as a convenient opportunity for
blind people to understand visual arts with professional docents, especially
during the pandemic. For example, P7 shared his experiences:

> “…I had several experiences with Zoom tours for blind people to enjoy art. I
> want to say that it has the benefit of accommodating over 300 people at a
> time, and the docents are usually more professional than normal…because
> there are usually limited docents that are trained on how to describe visual
> arts to blind people…”

However, participants also mentioned the limitations of remote art tours as
the lack of engagement and communication, and do not feel as immersive as in-
person tours. P15 commented:

> “…there are clear differences compared with in-person experiences. You
> definitely feel more close to the art if you actually stand in front of it.
> And you cannot really do much besides listening to the docent from the
> remote tour…”

Some participants choose to leverage a combination of remote and in-person
access to engage with visual arts, so they can utilize the advantages of both.
In particular, P3, P4, and P13 mentioned the benefit of searching specific
visual arts pieces online to learn more details about them (e.g., history,
artists’ background) after visiting an art gallery or museum, as P3 explained:

> “…There is often limited time at art galleries, and the audio descriptions
> are not often comprehensive enough. I often memorize the visual arts name
> and come back home and search for it online…”

The increase in remote opportunities for blind people to access visual arts
brings attention to the accessibility, engagement, and interactivity of these
methods. Our findings provide insights into what blind people enjoy about
current remote visual arts accesses (e.g., access to more contextual
information, ability to look up and learn more about the art, flexibility in
the amount of time), and what challenges they face with them (e.g., less
immersive than in-person experiences).

##  5\. Findings: Perception of Visual Arts Appreciation

We now detail how our blind participants perceive visual arts, including their
motivations for engaging with visual arts and how they cognitively perceive
and encode the meaning and aesthetics of different artworks.

###  5.1. Motivation for Engaging with Visual Arts

Our participants have a diverse set of reasons for engaging with visual
artworks, including: 1) cultural learning, 2) encouragement, 3) activism, 4)
social interactions, 5) relaxation and enjoyments, and 6) nostalgic reasons.

First, four participants mentioned that appreciating visual arts brings
opportunities for cultural learning, as in communicating different
individuals’ stories to society (P5, P8, P12, P15). These participants are
more interested in the background stories and meaning behind visual artworks.
P5 explained:

> “…The goal for me to enjoy art is to understand the story and cultural
> background of different art pieces from different periods. Paintings and
> pictures are very language independent that you do not need to understand
> the language that the artists speak to appreciate their paintings…”

We also found that seven participants consider enjoying visual arts as a way
of encouragement and inspiration, especially after their vision loss. P14
mentioned:

> “…My friend brought me to an art gallery right after my vision loss, at that
> time, I was so depressed that do not even want to step out of my place.
> Going to the art gallery and getting descriptions from my friend, and
> discussing different art pieces definitely helped me relieve my stress and
> discomfort…”

In particular, three participants perceive visual arts for activism purposes,
such as showing sighted people that blind people can also enjoy visual arts at
art galleries. P15 highlighted on this:

> “…I really like to go to art galleries with my glasses and cane on, this
> identifies that I am a blind person and shows to other sighted people that
> blind people can also appreciate arts. This would increase the awareness of
> the importance of art accessibility…”

Moreover, four participants consider going to art galleries as part of social
activities where they could communicate and discuss visual arts with their
peers (P3, P4, P11, P14). P3 commented:

> “…Enjoy art can help me with social interaction with other blind people,
> that is why it is important to understand the detail…We often visit
> different art galleries together as a social event…”

We also found that three participants appreciate visual arts for relaxation
and enjoyment (P7, P11, P15), as P7 commented:

> “…Exploring art is simple to me, I feel relaxed and connected to the
> environment while I am in art galleries. It is very similar to watching a
> movie or playing a game…”

Figure 1. P9 is touching the tactile art piece that was made by an artist to
recall his wife who had passed away.

This figure shows a figure that a person is touching the tactile art piece
with two hands. There are two faces in the tactile art piece, the left face is
a man’s face, and the right face is a carving face of a woman.

Finally, three participants also engaged with visual arts to recall past
memories of people, objects, and events, for nostalgic reasons. For example,
P9 spends significant time with a specific piece of visual art in memory of
his wife, who had passed away (Figure 1):

> “…This tactile art was made by an artist to help me recall my wife, who
> already passed away many years ago. Every time I touched it, I could feel
> her face and expression, and remember our past memory together…”

While prior work has listed a range of potential benefits for blind people to
non-visually engage with visual arts, we directly consulted blind art patrons’
personal perspectives about what aspects of visual arts attract them. Our
findings suggest a degree of variance across individuals but point to a set of
recurring motivators, many unique to blind people (e.g., activism, nostalgia,
and inspiration after losing sight). These motivators serve as contexts for
understanding participants’ experiences and preferences with different modes
of non-visual visual arts presentations.

###  5.2. Cognition of Perceiving Visual Arts

Here, we present what makes visual arts appreciation aesthetically enjoyable
to our participants. First, six participants expressed that they enjoy visual
arts through imaginations based on existing visual knowledge and discussing
their imaginations with sighted peers (P3, P4, P7, P10, P12, P14). P3
explained:

> “…I used to have vision when I was young, and I currently enjoy art by
> imagining from the information I know, such as people, activity, and the
> environment. I then think about what type of color they might use, or the
> facial expressions, I imagine everything that I am not told. The magic part
> is confirming my imagination with sighted friends or family members. And it
> is totally fine if I am wrong, I still like my imagination on how this
> artwork should be…”

We found that most participants who experience aesthetic enjoyment through
imagination are also people who acquired blindness later on, whereas
participants who are congenitally blind have difficulties imagining visual
concepts, such as understanding visual references and dimensions. For these
participants, the enjoyment instead comes from tactile feeling of the artwork
and surrounding environment. P1 commented:

> “…I enjoy touching visual paintings to feel the texture of the painting and
> even the gallery or museum building to get the atmosphere of the
> environment. This brings more connections between me and the artwork…”

Furthermore, some participants also mentioned that enjoyment brought by visual
arts is different when accessed through imagination versus tactile renderings.
P9 explained:

> “…A tactile version of a drawing or painting does not mean the same thing as
> the original artwork, it is a reproduction with different meanings and
> feelings…”

In sum, our analysis of blind participants’ perception of visual arts draws
attention to their personal experience (e.g., visual memory), motivation, as
well as the presentation mode of visual arts. All these factors influence how
aesthetic and artistic visual arts experiences are for blind people.

##  6\. Findings: Design Considerations for Visual Arts Access Methods

In this section, we describe design considerations that influence blind
participants’ preferences for and adoption of existing visual arts access
methods—including peer-guided tours, smart device based access, tactile
graphics, audio description, and multimodal presentations. In total, we
identified eight design considerations: 1) match comprehension goals with the
mode and materials for non-visual access, 2) improve coordination across
modalities, 3) balance between flexibility and consistency, 4) enhance
objective interpretation, 5) establish shared art vocabulary and grammar, 6)
describe visual arts based on individual memory, 7) maintain synchronous
feedback, and 8) destigmatize art experiences in social settings.

###  6.1. Match Modality Choice with Comprehension Goals

Through our interviews, we learned that the effectiveness of a specific non-
visual access method depends on what comprehension goals (i.e., aim to
understand different levels of content, such as subject, form, and context
(Stangl et al., 2021)) a blind patron has toward a visual artwork. In general,
participants prefer different access methods to obtain different information.
For instance, audio descriptions or guided tours are deemed better suited for
providing a high-level description of the content (P6, P7, P12, P13), whereas
tactile graphics are preferred when participants want direct access to low-
level visual references and scenery (P1, P3, P5, P13). P3 explained:

> “…Tactile graphics is hard to tell the big picture of the paintings, but
> audio could do that easily. However, tactile graphics allows me to feel more
> details with visual references, such as where things are and some background
> information as well…”

In turn, participants commonly want tactile access to information about the
subject (e.g., people, background environment) and form (e.g., shape, line) of
a visual art piece, but descriptions (e.g., recorded, from peers or docents)
for content (e.g., history of the artist, time period of the work). P4
commented on this:

> “…It is more intuitive to explore the subject and shape of the painting
> through tactile graphics…I also agree that audio can convey rich content
> which is supposed to be used to introduce information regarding the history
> and background of the paintings…”

Our findings echo past knowledge on the expressive strengths and weaknesses of
different modalities (Stangl et al., 2019; Ahmetovic et al., 2021; Morris et
al., 2018), but uncover how these properties apply to non-visual visual
artwork presentations. Because visual artworks often involve more complex and
varied types of information compared to other general visual media, adapting
the non-visual presentation modality to users’ comprehension goals is even
more important.

###  6.2. Improve Coordination across Modalities

As each access method has its own strengths and weaknesses (as detailed in the
previous section 6.1), many participants would like to combine multiple access
methods to enrich their art appreciation experiences. All the while, having
multiple modalities that convey the same content at a time may lead to
distraction and confusion. P15 explained:

> “…It is hard to focus on multiple modalities at the same time, unless they
> serve for different purposes, such as one for guidance and one for specific
> content. It can distract me if they talk about the same thing…”

Therefore, having different modalities serve specific functions for which they
are suitable and coordinating between these modalities could greatly improve
blind patrons’ experiences. How to arrange different modalities (e.g., when to
play audio descriptions and show tactile representations) should consult the
capability and preference of specific users. For example, some blind people
are more adept at perceiving tactile signals and may be more comfortable with
listening to audio descriptions at the same time as exploring tactile
graphics, as P5 explained:

> “…I like having more combinations of methods to explore arts. But I want to
> say that people who got their blindness at different times have different
> familiarity with different methods, those who got blind since birth can
> easily adapt to the tactile approaches, and people like me who did not have
> many experiences in tactile would like to use audio more. It has to be
> flexible for us to choose my favorite mappings…”

###  6.3. Balance between Flexibility and Consistency

Besides having distinctive experiences with different visual arts access
modalities (Section 6.2), our participants also mentioned a range of other
individualized preferences, such as the pace (e.g., fast, slow) and setting
(e.g., specific museum location, in-group versus on their own) of visual arts
appreciation activities. They commonly expressed the need for more free and
flexible access to visual artworks, based on their personal situations. For
example, P6 commented on the lack of flexibility in guided tours:

> “…Guided tours for a group of blind people usually follow the same pace
> depending on the docent, it would be hard for me to further dive into
> certain artwork in detail if I want to…”

While participants desire changes in visual arts accesses to tailor to their
own needs, a number of them (P3, P4, P13) also shared concerns about having
too many changes to keep their experience consistent. In general, our
participants value consistency and simplicity in accessibility support, as P4
commented:

> “…It is so common that different galleries have their own ways of obtaining
> information about arts in a slightly more accessible way to claim as fully
> accessible, which also creates another layer of barrier for us to adopt
> their ways while exploring arts in different art galleries, such as some
> require we search on their websites, some use QR code, and some have pre-
> recorded audio descriptions through headsets…”

As too many varied modes for accessing visual arts can be daunting, we learned
the importance of balancing between adding options for flexibility and
limiting options for consistency.

###  6.4. Enhance Objective Interpretation

Participants commonly reflected that visual descriptions provided by friends,
family, and docents include subjective opinions, making it difficult for them
to have individual interpretations of the artwork. This challenge especially
interferes with people who consider imagination as a way to enjoy the visual
art piece (as described in Section 5). Instead, they shared the preference for
more objective and factual descriptions of the visual arts content, style, and
subjects. P2 voiced out this preference:

> “…I prefer to get a perception of the artwork from my own experiences, I do
> not want to hear personal comments from people, just like this or that
> painting is so pretty and meaningful, all I need is what color they used,
> the contours of the lines, and what kinds of objects present in the
> painting…”

This preference for fact-based information also applies to services provided
by smart devices and remote access methods (as described in Section 4). P3
explained:

> “…I used to search the detailed content for better understanding of visual
> arts by searching online through my iPhone, but people usually posted their
> own feelings and thoughts online regarding certain artwork, this would ruin
> my whole experiences of arts and destroy my imagination of arts. And there
> is no such way for me to actually filter it, so I stopped doing that…”

One workaround many participants mentioned for improving the objectivity of
non-visual visual art access is tactile graphics, despite it being more time-
consuming and less accessible for some people (as described in Section 4).
This finding confirms the importance of tactile media availability and
education (as suggested in previous work such as (Stangl et al., 2019; Dursin,
2012)), but also emphasizes the possibility of making non-tactile approaches
more objective.

###  6.5. Establish Shared Art Vocabulary and Grammar

Another challenge our participants highlighted is the lack of commonly
understood art vocabularies and expressions across blind people. This
challenge is observed for audio descriptions, guided tours, and tactile
graphics.

For description-based methods (e.g., audio descriptions, guided tours), our
participants complained about the difficulties for sighted people to describe
form information of visual arts (e.g., shape, line, color) in ways they would
understand. Describers also do not share a standard for describing visual arts
in accessible languages (e.g., vocabulary, grammar, visual references). P15
explained:

> “…I found sighted people always have difficulties explaining color and shape
> information in detail, which includes the shade of the color, contour of the
> objects…”

Furthermore, some participants are also concerned about multi-linguistic and
multi-cultural backgrounds affecting their understanding of art vocabulary
(P1, P6, P10, P15). For example, P1 shared:

> “…As a blind person from the global south, I often struggle with how
> different cultural backgrounds affect how we perceive arts. The painting
> style is different from other types of visual arts as well, this may need a
> different way to describe it as well…”

For tactile-based methods, all of our participants encountered barriers with
identifying and learning certain expressions in tactile-rendered visual art,
highlighting the importance of having common tactile lexicons for arts. P13
commented:

> “…Tactile vocabulary is even less formalized than audio descriptions. This
> is not surprising at all, as you know, there are not many tactile paintings
> available for blind people to explore. People create all kinds of tactile
> versions of paintings, but there is no such standard or guidelines that we
> should follow…”

P14 further emphasized the importance of training sessions for people who just
lost vision to unify the tactile vocabulary of arts:

> “…It is so important to teach people who just lost their vision how to
> understand and appreciate visual arts through tactile graphics, it is
> definitely more direct for blind people. It is not like reading Braille, it
> is a formalized process of understanding and appreciating arts with location
> references…”

This finding is reflective of prior work on descriptions and tactile
presentations of visual information (Stangl et al., 2019; Potluri et al.,
2021), which combined with art literature (e.g., (Kleege, 2016)) could provide
further guidance on how to standardize accessible vocabularies for blind
visual arts patrons.

###  6.6. Describe Visual Arts Based on Individual Memory

Past experience with visual arts is another consideration that our
participants often mentioned. Besides the preference for familiar art venues
(as described in Section 4), participants also want their art descriptions to
incorporate what they have learned about visual arts in the past, including
visual concepts and artwork information. For example, P7 and P12 want the
system to provide explanations and links to the visual arts that they know
already, as P7 explained:

> “…Every time I see a new painting, it would be useful for the description to
> refer to certain colors or artistic styles that I have experienced before.
> This would reduce the time and effort of the descriptions…”

Moreover, how much and what details to include in the description should also
adjust to blind art patrons’ memory. For example, it would be beneficial to
insert a reminder for blind patrons to quickly know which art pieces they have
encountered previously. P6 commented on this issue:

> “…I like to go to the same art gallery to recall my past memory and
> emphasize my understanding of my favorite paintings. I usually have to ask
> the surroundings about the painting’s name to identify specific artwork. It
> would be great if I have a system that can tell me when did I interact with
> this painting and what information did I get last time…”

Taking past memory into consideration can be particularly beneficial for blind
patrons who are in the process of learning visual arts concepts and have
difficulties quickly scanning artwork to assess whether they have seen them.

###  6.7. Maintain Synchronous Feedback

From the interviews, we identified two types of feedback deemed essential by
blind patrons (N=$13$) in our study—(1) answers to questions they have about
an artwork and (2) comments and discussions of peer patrons (whether sighted
or not) about the artwork. Currently, opportunities to clarify details and ask
for further details are generally lacking for most access methods (e.g., audio
descriptions, and guided tours). For example, P14 explained:

> “…It is hard to verify the audio descriptions by us who are blind, and we
> cannot ask further questions for audio descriptions if we do not fully
> understand the content…”

Similarly, P5 experienced difficulty asking questions during guided tours with
docents too:

> “…It can be stressful for me to ask questions to docents and sighted peers
> when I am in a group of people…”

Comparatively, listening to other patrons’ discussions of artworks is
relatively more accessible at art galleries or museums. Many participants
expressed their desire to learn about others’ interpretation of an artwork,
after obtaining an objective understanding of the piece, as P4 commented on
this:

> “…After sort of getting to know the artwork and the message behind it, I
> love to discuss and verify my thoughts with other people, this sometimes can
> help me add more detailed understandings of the painting…”

As our interviews point to the importance of communication during visual arts
experiences, systems for supporting blind patrons should make efforts to
improve and encourage social feedback.

###  6.8. Destigmatize Art Experiences in Social Settings

While participants highlighted the importance of social communication and
feedback for blind visual arts patrons, they also noted that there is social
tension when they enjoy visual arts with sighted people. P11 commented:

> “…I do not feel comfortable to keep asking questions during a guided tour
> with a group of people, it is just too stressful to me to actually enjoy
> arts…”

Even if they do not engage in social interactions, blind patrons experience
stigma with the way they access visual arts (e.g., touching). Our participants
commonly expressed the importance for blind people to present in front of
sighted patrons and use tactile methods to explore visual arts, to remove the
stigma of touch. P6 explained:

> “…I like to use tactile graphics in front of other sighted folks, I can show
> them that blind people can also understand and appreciate visual arts
> through touch. This would reduce the stigma associated with touch and
> promote the availability of tactile graphics for visual arts…”

Overall, with the eight design considerations proposed by our participants,
our findings further extend prior research on non-visual access to visual
information (e.g., (Stangl et al., 2019; Kleege, 2016)), with a focus on blind
patrons’ unique experiences with visual arts. With insights on what access
methods blind patrons currently adopt, their motivations, challenges, as well
as considerations for better non-visual visual arts experiences, we would like
to examine how our findings apply broadly to other general blind patrons,
including blind people with different backgrounds and vision statuses (e.g.,
people who are congenitally blind versus who acquired blindness in later
life).

##  7\. Visual Arts Access Preferences Survey

Given blind patrons have various demographic backgrounds and vision statuses,
we examined how our findings apply broadly to other general blind patrons. We
conducted a follow-up survey to examine our interview findings with a larger
group of blind people who have experiences in visual arts (Anthony et al.,
2013; Komkaite et al., 2019; Li et al., 2022b).

###  7.1. Method

####  7.1.1. Survey Recruitment

We recruited survey respondents through the NFB (i.e., National Federation of
the Blind) mailing list. To participate in our survey study, the participant
needed to be 1) 18 years or older, 2) legally or totally blind, 3) have
experiences in visual arts appreciation, and 4) be able to communicate in
English. The survey was hosted through Google Forms (Google, [n.d.]). The
survey took about 10 minutes per respondent, and survey respondents who
completed the survey were entered into a draw for a $20 Amazon gift card (1 in
every 30). The recruitment and study procedure was approved by the
Institutional Review Board (IRB).

####  7.1.2. Survey Questions

In the survey, we first asked participants screening questions to check
whether they meet the previously mentioned recruitment criteria. We then asked
for demographic information (e.g., age, gender, details of vision level, onset
age of blindness). Next, we asked participants to select up to three preferred
methods to access visual arts (according to Section 4), motivations for
engaging in visual arts experience, and sources of aesthetic enjoyment during
such experience (according to Section 5). Finally, we asked participants to
select up to three design considerations that they consider the most important
for making their visual arts experiences better (according to Section 6). For
clarification and ease of understanding, we added examples and explanations of
our design considerations in the survey (such as “have a clear art description
standard discussed and agreed with describers, such as what vocabularies to
use” instead of “establish shared art vocabulary and grammar”). To potentially
reduce biases, we randomized all answers for all questions. We also added an
item for survey questions called “none of these options” and allowed people to
enter their own answers under “other” in text if they have any.

####  7.1.3. Data and Analysis

Two researchers manually sorted through all 423 responses and the ones that
fall under the following categories: 1) incomplete survey (N=$4$), 2)
duplicate or malicious entries (e.g., a series of entries with the same age,
gender, onset of blindness within a few seconds) (N=$178$), 3) response
failing to follow the instruction (e.g., respondents select over three answers
for questions we have “Please choose up to three answers”) (N=$21$). Our data
cleaning resulted in 220 valid entries (i.e., 52.0% of original entries).

Because the goal of this survey is to examine visual arts experiences and
preferences learned from our interview with a wider population, our analysis
focuses on a descriptive summary of trends across the 220 blind art patrons
who answered our survey. For each of the four areas of focus: motivation,
preferred access methods, sources of enjoyment, and design consideration
prioritization, we first summarize the popularity of answer choices among
respondents and then compare them across two demographic factors: vision level
and the onset of blindness to understand how our findings vary across these
factors through inferential statistical tests. Choosing these two factors was
determined by our findings from the semi-structured interview (Section 3),
such as participants with different blindness onset have different preferences
for visual art access methods (Section 6). Due to the multiple-response nature
of our questions, we treat each answer choice of a question as a binary
variable (i.e., if a respondent selected this choice, the value is yes,
otherwise no.) and perform chi-squared tests (Pearson, 1900) to examine the
association between the selection of this choice and the two demographic
factors of interest (i.e., vision level and the onset of blindness). For
testing associations with the onset of blindness, we construct a 2x2
contingency table (Onset of Blindness (Congenital, Acquired) x Choice
Selection (yes, no)), whereas for testing associations with vision level, we
construct a 2x3 contingency table (Vision Level (Totally blind, Some light
perception, Legally blind) x Choice Selection (yes, no)). We use a Bonferroni
correction (Bonferroni, 1936) to reduce the chance of a Type I error when
performing multiple tests (Armstrong, 2014).

Figure 2. Survey respondents’ choices of access methods to visual arts
appreciation across the onset of blindness (left) and vision level (right).

Two bar charts, the left chart shows the preferred access method vs. onset of
blindness (congenital, acquired). The y-axis has five different categories
(Tactile access at art venues, sighted assistance at art venues, smart device
assistance at art venues, recorded audio at art venues, and access visual arts
online) and the x-axis has different percentage rates. The right chart shows
the preferred access method vs. vision level (totally blind, some light
perception, legally blind). The y-axis has five different categories (Tactile
access at art venues, sighted assistance at art venues, smart device
assistance at art venues, recorded audio at art venues, and access visual arts
online) and the x-axis has different percentage rates.

###  7.2. Results

####  7.2.1. Survey Respondents Demographic Information

All 220 respondents self-reported to be at least legally blind—86 as “legally
blind”, 90 as “some light perception”, and 44 as “totally blind (no light
perception).” 42 of the survey respondents are congenitally blind (acquired
blindness since birth). For the remaining 178 participants, the average onset
of blindness was $18.96$ years old ($SD=12.04$). 114 respondents self-
identified as male, 102 as female, and 2 preferred not to report gender. The
average age of respondents is 34.6 years old (SD = 12.4). All 220 respondents
stated having experience engaging with visual arts.

####  7.2.2. Preferred Methods

In terms of different methods to access visual arts, we found visiting an art
venue with tactile access ($N=144$) and sighted help ($N=141$) are still the
most preferred access methods to visual arts by the majority of respondents
(Table 3), closely followed by assistance from smart devices at the venue (N =
128). Only half of the respondents found pre-recorded audio descriptions a
compelling method to access visual arts at an art venue ($N=104$), although it
is commonly used in practice. Remote visual arts appreciation is still only
accepted by a smaller group of blind visual art patrons ($N=54$ out of 220
respondents) (Appendix A, Table 3).

With further analysis of access method preferences across different onsets of
blindness (as reported in Table 2), we found a significant association
($\alpha=.01$ with Bonferroni correction) between the onset of blindness and
the willingness to access visual arts at an art venue through tactile methods
($\chi^{2}(1,N=220)=10.56,p<.01$). We further dive into different age ranges
of blindness onset and we found that our survey respondents with earlier
blindness onset tend to prefer to use tactile access more than later blindness
onset (Appendix C, Figure 5). And the percentage of the preference for tactile
access becomes similar for people who acquire blindness after 20 years old
(Appendix C, Figure 5).

Preferred Methods | Vision Level | Onset of Blindness
---|---|---
$\chi^{2}$ | p | $\chi^{2}$ | p
Recorded audio at art venues | 3.77 | 0.152 | 0.65 | 0.419
Tactile access at art venues | 5.84 | 0.054 | 10.56 | 0.001
Sighted assistance at art venues | 0.07 | 0.968 | 2.68 | 0.101
Smart device assistance at art venues | 0.71 | 0.702 | 4.26 | 0.039
Access visual arts online | 8.5 | 0.014 | 7.37 | 0.007
Table 2. Summary of statistical results from N=220 survey respondents’
preferred access methods across the onset of blindness and vision level.
Statistical significant results are in bold font ($\alpha=0.01$ with
Bonferroni correction).

As shown in Figure 2, the majority of congenitally blind respondents (88.1%)
prefer having tactile access at art venues, whereas only 60.1% of respondents
who acquired blindness later in life share this preference. We also found a
significant association between the onset of blindness and willingness to
access visual arts online ($\chi^{2}(1,N=220)=7.37,p<.01$). We then explore
different age ranges of blindness onset and we found our respondents with
earlier onset of blindness tend to access visual art online less than those
who acquired blindness later (Appendix C, Figure 5). As shown in Figure 2, a
much higher percentage of respondents who acquired blindness later on (28.7%)
are willing to access visual art compared to those who are congenitally blind
(9.5%). We found no significant association between the onset of blindness and
preferences over sighted assistance, recorded audio, and smart device
assistance (Table 2).

For analysis of access method preference across vision levels, although we did
not find any statistically significant association, we observed interesting
trends among our respondents—as shown in Figure 2, 30.2% of legally blind
respondents prefer accessing visual arts online, almost double the percentage
of totally blind respondents who chose this access method. As Bonferroni
correction is a rather conservative approach, future research could further
examine this trend, as it could potentially point to limitations in the
current design of online visual art access methods that disproportionately
influence totally blind art patrons.

Together, these results provide additional evidence to our interview findings
that people who acquired blindness at different ages might have different
preferences toward accessing methods, especially toward tactile graphics and
models as well as remote visual arts activities.

Figure 3. Survey respondents’ choices of the source of enjoyment for visual
arts appreciation across the onset of blindness (left) and vision level
(right).

Two bar charts, the left chart shows the sources of enjoyment vs. onset of
blindness (congenital, acquired). The y-axis has five different categories
(touching, learning related stories, imagination, conversation with peers, and
physically co-present with art pieces) and the x-axis has different percentage
rates. The right chart shows the sources of enjoyment vs. vision level
(totally blind, some light perception, totally blind). The y-axis has five
different categories (touching, learning related stories, imagination,
conversation with peers, and physically co-present with art pieces) and the
x-axis has different percentage rates.

####  7.2.3. Source of Enjoyment

From our survey, the majority of survey respondents feel the most aesthetic
enjoyment during visual arts appreciation when they get to learn stories
behind the art pieces ($N=149$) and when feeling the art piece through touch
($N=149$) ((Appendix A, Table 3)). This result emphasizes the importance of
prioritizing both a tactile presentation of visual details and rich stories
about the art piece. Meanwhile, almost half of survey respondents also
confirmed the joy from imagining the visuals ($N=99$), conversing with peer
art patrons ($N=93$), and physically co-presenting with the artwork ($N=83$)
(Appendix A, Table 3)).

In analyzing blind art patrons’ source of enjoyment across vision levels and
the onset of blindness through a set of chi-squared tests with Bonferroni
correction, we found no significant associations. Results of the full set of
tests can be found in Appendix B (Table 4).

A potential area for further exploration is the influence of vision conditions
on enjoyment with touching. As shown in Figure 3, a much higher percentage of
congenitally blind respondents (83.3%) in our survey considered touching as a
primary source of enjoyment compared to those who acquired blindness (64.0%),
which echos our interview findings (Section 5). Further, there was also a
higher proportion of respondents with less usable vision (75.0% for totally
blind respondents and 75.6% for those who only have some light perception) who
consider touching as their source of enjoyment compared to those with more
usable vision (55.8% for legally blind respondents).

Figure 4. Preferences of design considerations to improve the experiences of
appreciating visual arts between two groups: onset of blindness and vision
level. DC1 = Have the option to access the art piece through multiple
modalities (such as tactile and audio) at the same time, DC2 = Have visual
details delivered through tactile and background information delivered through
audio, DC3 = Have a clear art description standard discussed and agreed with
describers-such as what vocabularies to use, DC4 = Have flexibility over the
pace & location & time of art appreciation experience, DC5 = Have a social
setting where you feel more comfortable and less stigmatized to enjoy visual
art, DC6 = Have the ability to filter out subjective interpretations in the
art description-such as those from sighted peers or docents, DC7 = Have art
descriptions adapted to your experience and knowledge-such as skipping
information that you already knew, DC8 = Have the ability to acquire answers
from someone you trust whenever you have a question.

Two bar charts, the left chart shows the prioritized design considerations vs.
onset of blindness (congenital, acquired). The y-axis has eight different
categories (DC1 - DC8) and the x-axis has different percentage rates. The
right chart shows the prioritized design considerations vs. vision level
(totally blind, some light perception, totally blind). The y-axis has eight
different categories (DC1 - DC8) and the x-axis has different percentage
rates.

####  7.2.4. Motivation

Our survey results suggest that four motivations for engaging in visual arts
experience that we learned from interviews also seem to be common across 220
survey respondents, including learning cultural knowledge and story ($N=143$),
relaxation and enjoyment ($N=116$), social interaction and involvement
($N=112$), as well as encouragement and inspiration ($N=109$) (full results
shown in Appendix A). While not as common, a quarter of respondents ($N=53$)
also access visual arts for nostalgic reasons, and 39 for achieving activism-
related goals.

Our chi-squared tests with Bonferroni correction suggest no significant
association between motivation to engage in visual arts appreciation and
visual conditions. Results of the full set of tests can be found in Appendix B
(Table 4).

####  7.2.5. Design Considerations

All design considerations we learned from the interview received endorsement
from at least one fourth of the respondents, as shown in Appendix A (Table 3).
In particular, the most popular consideration is to have the option of
accessing art pieces through multiple modalities at the same time ($N=97$). 91
respondents further indicated that visual details should be delivered through
tactile, and background information should be delivered through audio.
Moreover, 77 respondents chose that having a clear standard of vocabularies
for art descriptions agreed between the describer and receiver is important
for improving their art appreciation experience, while the flexibility over
art appreciation pace, location and time are also important to many
respondents ($N=77$) (Appendix A, Table 3).

In analyzing associations between the perceived importance of design
considerations and vision conditions, our chi-squared tests with Bonferroni
correction suggest no significant results. Results of the full set of tests
can be found in Appendix B (Table 4). However, a potential future area of
exploration is any social and psychological challenges brought by acquiring
blindness later in life, as we observed that overall more survey respondents
who acquired blindness (33.7%) treated social stigmatization as a priority
among all design considerations we listed, compared to those who are
congenitally blind (19.05%) (as shown in Figure 4).

##  8\. Discussion

In this section, we discuss the summary of our interview and survey studies,
implications for context-based visual art experiences, and focused
technological opportunities. We first discuss how our interview findings and
survey results connect with past literature and corresponding design
implications for future customization of access support for blind patrons
(Section 8.1). We then discuss in-depth future design directions relevant to
visual art experiences under different contexts (e.g., Social Settings and
Activism (Section 8.2), Universal Design for Visual Art Ecosystem (Section
8.3), and Remote Art Access Experiences Support (Section 8.4)). Finally, we
discuss technological opportunities to enhance visual art access methods for
blind patrons (Audio Description Design beyond Accuracy (Section 8.5),
Context-based Automatic Image Recognition (Section 8.6), and Multimodal
Approach towards Different Vision Conditions (Section 8.7)).

###  8.1. Summary of Design Implications for Blind Art Appreciation

Through 15 in-depth interviews and a large-scale survey, we learned about
blind people’s diverse interests and experiences with visual arts. The survey
results confirmed a set of common practices, challenges, motivations, as well
as considerations of blind visual arts patrons that we learned from the
interviews (Section 7.2). While visiting art venues with tactile graphics or
with sighted peers are the most popular access methods for blind patrons, we
see promises in technology-based support to transform these methods,
especially through better coordinated multimodal experiences and personalized
design. In particular, both the interviews and survey suggest that personal
factors, including vision level, the onset of blindness, motivation,
comprehension goals, past experiences with visual arts, and non-visual
presentation modalities all contribute to individuals’ unique needs for
personalized visual arts access solutions, which should not box-in anyone with
a vision impairment as one-size-fits-all. Our findings echo with existing
research that identified people who acquired blindness at different stages of
life as having various “blind” perceptions toward spatial and temporal
information (Landgraf and Osterheider, 2013). Therefore, we suggest future
research on visual arts accessibility to consider co-design, participatory
design, and longitudinal involvement with blind people at different stages
(e.g., different vision level, different years of visual experiences), that
supports learning, technology adoption, and social factors in their life
(Chick et al., 2017; Azenkot et al., 2016).

We also learned a detailed set of challenges and considerations with numerous
aspects of non-visual visual arts appreciation, centering on access
modalities, visual concept comprehension, interpretation freedom, convenience,
and social tensions. These considerations call to past work on multimodality
(e.g., (Candlin, 2003; Li et al., 2022a; Kress, 2009)), non-visual
presentations of visual information (e.g., (Li et al., 2021b; Siu et al.,
2022)), and social considerations of assistive technologies (e.g., (Shinohara
and Wobbrock, 2011; Li et al., 2021a; Li et al., 2022c)), but specifically
provide guidance for visual arts presentations. In particular, these findings
provide novel insights on what blind patrons want to learn about specific
elements of visual arts (e.g., form, shape, or content), which of them should
be presented in what modalities (e.g., haptics, audio, level of interactivity)
(Section 6.1), persisting challenges with these modalities, and what types of
social and interpretation goals are involved (Section 4). Overall, we advocate
for future research to incorporate considerations identified in our study when
designing for blind people’s access to visual arts. Below, we further suggest
possible research directions.

###  8.2. Art Appreciation in Social Settings and Activism

As suggested in our findings, visual arts appreciation can be a social
activity for blind people (e.g., discussing paintings in detail with their
friends, attending visual arts venue tours, and activism). Future access
methods should go beyond just providing information about virtual arts and
take social interactions into consideration, as suggested for general
accessibility support (Shinohara and Wobbrock, 2011). Beyond building
applications and social infrastructures that connect blind patrons with peers
or docents with expertise, future research could also consider opportunities
and challenges for utilizing Human-Robot Interaction to mitigate the stress of
people who feel anxious about social interactions (e.g., (Tsui et al., 2015)).

As some of our participants prefer going to art galleries with their blind
peers, another future research area is to explore dynamics and collaboration
techniques (Bonani et al., 2018; Mendes et al., 2020) for blind patron groups,
and investigate associated design opportunities. Furthermore, we also learned
that our participants perceive visual arts for activism purposes (Section
5.1). According to the prior definition, “art activism” has shown the ability
of art to function as the medium for social activism (Reed, 2019). Despite the
legal right to activism and protection against discrimination under the
Rehabilitation Act (Section 504) (of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, [n.d.]),
in-person activism poses additional barriers for people with disabilities as
found by Li et al. (Li et al., 2018). In addition to the institutional
barriers against activism, people with disabilities have to navigate
additional physical and environmental accessibility challenges to effectively
collectivize and protest against (disability) injustice. Thus, more should be
explored for blind activists in art museums and galleries (Romeo et al.,
2018a), such as leveraging mobile AR applications to support blind activists’
interactions with the space and reduce physical barriers with other people
(Herskovitz et al., 2020).

###  8.3. Universal Design for Visual Arts Ecosystem

Accessibility of visual arts involves not only engaging with the art piece
itself, but also navigating to and within art venues, locating art pieces,
manipulating related technologies (e.g., QR code, website search, audio
headsets) (Alghamdi et al., 2013; Sato et al., 2017; Romeo et al., 2022a),
interacting with others, and so on. Exploring and learning all these modules
while figuring out what a visual art piece is about non-visually can be
daunting. Our participants expressed concerns over inconsistent, new
accessibility attempts across different art venues (Section 6.3), which was
one reason they preferred revisiting the same gallery for appreciating visual
arts (Section 4). We therefore suggest future research on this topic to
consider the whole ecosystem of visual arts appreciation experiences with a
Universal Design lens (Iwarsson and Ståhl, 2003; Persson et al., 2015). For
example, more effort should be put into providing standardized, intuitive
control and accessibility support to reduce the effort of switching between
devices, adjusting access methods or languages, and learning unfamiliar
processes.

###  8.4. Remote Art Access Experiences Support

From our interviews, we learned many acknowledged benefits of online art tours
(e.g., allows large group attendance, more flexibility, less social tension)
(Section 4). However, there are also critical limitations with existing remote
tour tools, mainly the lacked sense of engagement of remote blind attendees
and communication barriers with peers and docents. During COVID-19, increasing
research has explored how to support blind people with online conferencing
tools (Ellis et al., 2021; Leporini et al., 2021) and associated tasks (e.g.,
raising/unraising hands, using the chat, checking microphone and camera
status) ((Leporini et al., 2021)). We suggest future research on accessible
remote visual arts engagement to consult guidance from this work, and further
develop support for social interactions of blind patrons for them to feel
immersed remotely. For example, future research could explore external
hardware pieces that can adaptively and automatically provide tactile
experiences, such as Force Feedback Tablet (F2T) (Pissaloux et al., 2022; Gay
et al., 2018) and Graphical Braille Display (Gyoshev et al., 2018)), which
could potentially be adopted for remote experiences for blind people.
Moreover, future remote art accessing tools could also include features for
customizing non-visual presentations based on blind users’ comprehension
goals, preferred art vocabularies, visual experiences, and so on (as suggested
in Section 6). Finally, future tools should provide enhancement to visual arts
experiences with opportunities through online content (Batanero-Ochaíta et
al., 2021) or previous experiences (Li et al., 2019).

###  8.5. Audio Description Design beyond Accuracy

Our findings uncover a set of criteria for audio description design beyond
clarity and accuracy. One important criterion is to encourage an artistic
experience of visual arts descriptions, by providing information that supports
blind patrons’ visual imaginations. For example, the descriptions should use
references and metaphors familiar and aesthetic to blind patrons in explaining
visual concepts. We also found that blind patrons enjoy interactive
opportunities while listening to audio descriptions. We propose audio
description interfaces to support users with more agency and control, such as
by allowing them to select specific pieces of information to listen to, save
progress, and control speed as well as the level of details to match personal
exploration paces. Importantly, blind patrons should be able to toggle between
objective descriptions and subjective opinions. With these potentially complex
interaction steps, there remain opportunities to involve automatic speech
recognition (Azenkot and Lee, 2013) to make blind users’ control less
interrupting to their art experiences. Beyond using speech input, this also
brings opportunities for researchers to leverage motion tracking to support
blind people by leveraging different gestures to interact with audio
interfaces more naturally and easily in a museum context (Dim and Ren, 2014;
Li et al., 2017; Sun et al., 2021b; Sun et al., 2021a).

###  8.6. Context-based Automatic Image Recognition

Despite previous efforts in generating automatic image captions for visual
artworks (e.g., (Ahmetovic et al., 2021; Morris et al., 2018)), our
participants still commonly experience frustrations using computer vision
tools to acquire information about visual arts—often, visual details and
contexts essential to these artworks are missing (Section 4). We believe
further advancement is needed to consider what information of a visual art
piece blind patrons actually care about, for which our findings provide
hints—they are generally interested in the content, subject, and form of an
artwork, but this interest varies with personal goals, experiences, knowledge,
and cultures (Section 6). How to allow blind patrons to customize what
information is included in visual arts captions based on personal contexts
(e.g., provide several alternative versions of such captions, provide
information based on questions) still remains an open question.

###  8.7. Multimodal Approach towards Different Vision Conditions

In our research, we uncovered the diversity of perceptions, practices, and
challenges from our participants with different blindness onset and
progression. Visual arts access for blind people would require more of a
personalized approach to meet blind patrons’ preferences and needs that differ
across vision level, past visual memory, as well as other co-existing health
conditions. To encourage and prepare blind people with necessary knowledge and
resources for visual arts experiences (e.g., art vocabulary and grammar in
both audio and tactile forms), we suggest future research to build multimodal
learning tools (e.g., (Coughlan et al., 2022)) (Section 6.5). Providing arts
education in different modalities would reduce the effort of learning and
provide more immersive experiences for blind people with different visual
conditions. Existing art museums and galleries rarely provide art experiences
for blind patrons in a non-visual modality, let alone a set of modalities
(e.g., tactile graphics and audio descriptions (Romeo et al., 2018b; Cantoni
et al., 2018))). These art venues should explore ways to provide different
modalities, and more research is needed to explore various approaches to
create low-cost multimodal systems (Duy Dao et al., 2022) with blind patrons
(Reichinger et al., 2018a) in art museums. For example, Dao et al. (Duy Dao et
al., 2022) explored semi-automatic contour “gist” creations for museum
painting tactile exploration to reduce the labor cost and high effort. Beyond
leveraging multimodal approaches to enhance the richness of information for
visual arts, future research should also explore gesture sets for different
modalities (Romeo et al., 2022b; Reichinger et al., 2018b, 2016) in a
customizable fashion to enable accessible interactive visual art accessing
experiences.

##  9\. Limitation and Future work

In our work, we chose to focus on exploring visual arts appreciation of blind
people only (i.e., who are legally blind or totally blind). People with other
low vision conditions (e.g., blurred vision, loss of peripheral vision,
central vision loss (AOA, [n.d.])) may have different practices, perceptions,
challenges, and preferences of visual arts appreciation. We recommend future
research to critically consider how our findings may apply to a wider range of
people with low vision. We also call for more work to explore how people with
low vision engage with visual arts differently from what we have learned. Our
initial identification of key challenges and practices of blind patrons was
limited to 15 interviews. On a topic as subjective and complex as artistic
experiences, there could be more individual differences within the blind
community, which we attempted to count through the survey, but may still be
missed due to the nature of the survey methodology. We encourage future work
to not treat insights from our study as definitive but continuously explore
diverse perspectives. Moreover, we chose to leverage interview and survey to
explore blind people’s experiences, perceptions, and preferences of visual art
access. Future research could also conduct contextual inquiries to understand
specific practices or challenges in-depth (e.g., (Kianpisheh et al., 2019)).
Last, to prioritize the accessibility of our survey, we chose to use a
platform that provides less control over respondents’ behavior, and thus could
not provide warnings when they answered a question not as directed (e.g.,
chose more than three answers to certain questions). We hope to see more
accessibility advancements in professional survey tools to strengthen
exploratory accessibility studies as the one in this paper.

##  10\. Conclusion

In this paper, we describe the findings of an interview study involving 15
blind visual arts patrons and a follow-up survey study (N=220) to understand
their current and potential future use of technology for art appreciation
experiences. We highlight the importance of aesthetic enjoyment in non-visual
visual arts presentations and provide insights on why and how blind patrons
experience the sense of appreciation from visual arts (e.g., imagination,
tactile senses). We provide eight design considerations for future research
and development efforts to consult in advancing visual arts accessing methods
for the blind. Our work extends existing research on non-visual presentations
of visual information and accessibility for blind people, by contributing
design insight specifically related to visual arts. In turn, we propose a list
of future research directions (e.g., remote art experiences support,
multimodal approach towards different vision conditions) to support blind
people with more independent and interdependent access to visual arts,
leveraging multiple modalities, machine learning, and personalization
technologies.

###### Acknowledgements.

This project is supported by CMU HCII, UW CREATE, and the NSF/CRA CIFellows
program.

## References

  * (1)
  * Abo (2018) 2018\.  About Us - APH — The American Printing House for the Blind.  https://www.aph.org/about/.  (Accessed on 08/17/2022).
  * Ahmetovic et al. (2021) Dragan Ahmetovic, Nahyun Kwon, Uran Oh, Cristian Bernareggi, and Sergio Mascetti. 2021.  Touch screen exploration of visual artwork for blind people. In _Proceedings of the Web Conference 2021_. 2781–2791.
  * Alghamdi et al. (2013) Saleh Alghamdi, Ron Van Schyndel, and Ahmed Alahmadi. 2013\.  Indoor navigational aid using active RFID and QR-code for sighted and blind people. In _2013 IEEE Eighth International Conference on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing_. IEEE, 18–22.
  * Anagnostakis et al. (2016) Giorgos Anagnostakis, Michalis Antoniou, Elena Kardamitsi, Thodoris Sachinidis, Panayiotis Koutsabasis, Modestos Stavrakis, Spyros Vosinakis, and Dimitris Zissis. 2016\.  Accessible museum collections for the visually impaired: combining tactile exploration, audio descriptions and mobile gestures. In _Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services Adjunct_. 1021–1025.
  * Anthony et al. (2013) Lisa Anthony, YooJin Kim, and Leah Findlater. 2013.  Analyzing user-generated youtube videos to understand touchscreen use by people with motor impairments. In _Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems_. 1223–1232.
  * AOA ([n.d.]) AOA. [n.d.].  Low Vision and Vision Rehabilitation — AOA.  https://www.aoa.org/healthy-eyes/caring-for-your-eyes/low-vision-and-vision-rehab?sso=y.  (Accessed on 09/14/2022).
  * Argyropoulos and Kanari (2015) Vassilios S Argyropoulos and Charikleia Kanari. 2015.  Re-imagining the museum through “touch”: reflections of individuals with visual disability on their experience of museum-visiting in Greece.  _Alter_ 9, 2 (2015), 130–143.
  * Armstrong (2014) Richard A Armstrong. 2014\.  When to use the B onferroni correction.  _Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics_ 34, 5 (2014), 502–508.
  * Asakawa et al. (2019) Saki Asakawa, João Guerreiro, Daisuke Sato, Hironobu Takagi, Dragan Ahmetovic, Desi Gonzalez, Kris M Kitani, and Chieko Asakawa. 2019\.  An independent and interactive museum experience for blind people. In _Proceedings of the 16th International Web for All Conference_. 1–9.
  * Assembly et al. (1948) UN General Assembly et al. 1948\.  Universal declaration of human rights.  _UN General Assembly_ 302, 2 (1948), 14–25.
  * Axel and Levent (2003) Elisabeth Salzhauer Axel and Nina Sobol Levent. 2003.  Art beyond sight: A resource guide to art, creativity, and visual impairment.  (2003), 20–26, 39–42, 62–69, 229–237.
  * Azenkot et al. (2016) Shiri Azenkot, Catherine Feng, and Maya Cakmak. 2016.  Enabling building service robots to guide blind people a participatory design approach. In _2016 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)_. IEEE, 3–10.
  * Azenkot and Lee (2013) Shiri Azenkot and Nicole B Lee. 2013.  Exploring the use of speech input by blind people on mobile devices. In _Proceedings of the 15th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on computers and accessibility_. 1–8.
  * Baker et al. (2014) Catherine M Baker, Lauren R Milne, Jeffrey Scofield, Cynthia L Bennett, and Richard E Ladner. 2014.  Tactile graphics with a voice: using QR codes to access text in tactile graphics. In _Proceedings of the 16th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers & accessibility_. 75–82.
  * BANA ([n.d.]) BANA. [n.d.].  Guidelines and Standards for Tactile Graphics.  https://www.brailleauthority.org/tg/web-manual/index.html.  (Accessed on 08/17/2022).
  * Batanero-Ochaíta et al. (2021) Concepción Batanero-Ochaíta, Luis De-Marcos, Luis Felipe Rivera, Jaana Holvikivi, José Ramón Hilera, and Salvador Otón Tortosa. 2021\.  Improving Accessibility in Online Education: Comparative Analysis of Attitudes of Blind and Deaf Students Toward an Adapted Learning Platform.  _IEEE Access_ 9 (2021), 99968–99982.
  * Bernardi et al. (2016) Raffaella Bernardi, Ruket Cakici, Desmond Elliott, Aykut Erdem, Erkut Erdem, Nazli Ikizler-Cinbis, Frank Keller, Adrian Muscat, and Barbara Plank. 2016.  Automatic description generation from images: A survey of models, datasets, and evaluation measures.  _Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research_ 55 (2016), 409–442.
  * Bieber and Rae (2013) Ruth Bieber and John Rae. 2013.  From the Mind’s Eye: Museum and Art Gallery Appreciation for the Blind–Canadian Perspectives.  _Disability Studies Quarterly_ 33, 3 (2013).
  * Bonani et al. (2018) Mayara Bonani, Raquel Oliveira, Filipa Correia, André Rodrigues, Tiago Guerreiro, and Ana Paiva. 2018.  What my eyes can’t see, a robot can show me: Exploring the collaboration between blind people and robots. In _Proceedings of the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility_. 15–27.
  * Bonferroni (1936) Carlo Bonferroni. 1936\.  Teoria statistica delle classi e calcolo delle probabilita.  _Pubblicazioni del R Istituto Superiore di Scienze Economiche e Commericiali di Firenze_ 8 (1936), 3–62.
  * Buyurgan (2009) Serap Buyurgan. 2009\.  The Expectations of the Visually Impaired University Students from Museums.  _Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice_ 9, 3 (2009), 1191–1204.
  * Candlin (2003) Fiona Candlin. 2003\.  Blindness, art and exclusion in museums and galleries.  _International Journal of Art & Design Education_ 22, 1 (2003), 100–110.
  * Candlin (2004) Fiona Candlin. 2004\.  Don’t touch! Hands off! Art, blindness and the conservation of expertise.  _Body & Society_ 10, 1 (2004), 71–90.
  * Cantoni et al. (2018) Virginio Cantoni, Luca Lombardi, Alessandra Setti, Stanislav Gyoshev, Dimitar Karastoyanov, and Nikolay Stoimenov. 2018.  Art masterpieces accessibility for blind and visually impaired people. In _International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs_. Springer, 267–274.
  * Cavazos Quero et al. (2021) Luis Cavazos Quero, Jorge Iranzo Bartolomé, and Jundong Cho. 2021\.  Accessible visual artworks for blind and visually impaired people: comparing a multimodal approach with tactile graphics.  _Electronics_ 10, 3 (2021), 297.
  * Cavazos Quero et al. (2018) Luis Cavazos Quero, Jorge Iranzo Bartolomé, Seonggu Lee, En Han, Sunhee Kim, and Jundong Cho. 2018\.  An interactive multimodal guide to improve art accessibility for blind people. In _Proceedings of the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility_. 346–348.
  * Charmaz (2006) Kathy Charmaz. 2006\.  _Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis_.  sage.
  * Chase et al. (2020) Elyse DZ Chase, Alexa Fay Siu, Abena Boadi-Agyemang, Gene SH Kim, Eric J Gonzalez, and Sean Follmer. 2020\.  PantoGuide: A Haptic and Audio Guidance System To Support Tactile Graphics Exploration. In _The 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility_. 1–4.
  * Chick et al. (2017) Anne Chick et al. 2017\.  Co-creating an accessible, multisensory exhibition with the National Centre for Craft & Design and blind and partially sighted participants.  (2017).
  * Cho (2021) Jun Dong Cho. 2021\.  A study of multi-sensory experience and color recognition in visual arts appreciation of people with visual impairment.  _Electronics_ 10, 4 (2021), 470.
  * Cho et al. (2021) Jun Dong Cho, Luis Cavazos Quero, Jorge Iranzo Bartolome, Do Won Lee, Uran Oh, and Inae Lee. 2021\.  Tactile colour pictogram to improve artwork appreciation of people with visual impairments.  _Color Research & Application_ 46, 1 (2021), 103–116.
  * Cork ([n.d.]) Visual Arts Cork. [n.d.].  Visual Art: Definition, History, Classification.  http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/definitions/visual-art.htm.  (Accessed on 08/16/2022).
  * Coughlan et al. (2022) James M Coughlan, Brandon Biggs, and Huiying Shen. 2022\.  Non-visual Access to an Interactive 3D Map. In _International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs_. Springer, 253–260.
  * De Coster and Mühleis (2007) Karin De Coster and Volkmar Mühleis. 2007.  Intersensorial translation: visual art made up by words.  In _Media for all_. Brill, 189–200.
  * Dim and Ren (2014) Nem Khan Dim and Xiangshi Ren. 2014.  Designing motion gesture interfaces in mobile phones for blind people.  _Journal of Computer Science and technology_ 29, 5 (2014), 812–824.
  * Dittmar (2014) Jakob Dittmar. 2014\.  Comics for the blind and for the seeing.  _International Journal of Comic Art_ 16, 1 (2014), 458–476.
  * Dursin (2012) Arzu Gurdal Dursin. 2012\.  Information design and education for visually impaired and blind people.  _Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences_ 46 (2012), 5568–5572.
  * Duy Dao et al. (2022) Son Duy Dao, Ngoc-Tan Truong, Edwige Pissaloux, Katerine Romeo, and Lilia Djoussouf. 2022\.  Semi-automatic Contour “Gist” Creation for Museum Painting Tactile Exploration. In _International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs_. Springer, 270–277.
  * d’Art de Girona (2016) Museu d’Art de Girona. 2016\.  Touching the Prado - Exhibition - Museo Nacional del Prado.  https://www.museodelprado.es/en/whats-on/exhibition/touching-the-prado/0d94a9bf-07d7-491a-866a-37976169f929.  (Accessed on 08/17/2022).
  * Ellis et al. (2021) Katie Ellis, Mike Kent, Kathryn Locke, Leanne McRae, Duc Dau, and Gwyneth Peaty. 2021\.  Smartphones, Disability and the Australian Experience of the COVID-19 Pandemic for People who are Blind and with Low Vision.  _Disability Studies Quarterly_ 41, 3 (2021).
  * Fogle-Hatch and Winiecki ([n.d.]) Cheryl Fogle-Hatch and Don Winiecki. [n.d.].  In Their Own Words: Adults Who Are Blind Describe Museums – MuseumSenses.  https://museumsenses.org/in-their-own-words-adults-who-are-blind-describe-museums/.  (Accessed on 08/16/2022).
  * Fraser (2021) Benjamin Fraser. 2021\.  Tactile comics, disability studies and the mind’s eye: on “A Boat Tour”(2017) in Venice with Max.  _Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics_ 12, 5 (2021), 737–749.
  * Gay et al. (2018) Simon Gay, Marc-Aurèle Rivière, and Edwige Pissaloux. 2018\.  Towards haptic surface devices with force feedback for visually impaired people. In _International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs_. Springer, 258–266.
  * Ghiani et al. (2008) Giuseppe Ghiani, Barbara Leporini, and Fabio Paternò. 2008\.  Supporting orientation for blind people using museum guides.  In _CHI’08 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems_. 3417–3422.
  * Ginley (2013) Barry Ginley. 2013\.  Museums: A whole new world for visually impaired people.  _Disability Studies Quarterly_ 33, 3 (2013).
  * Google ([n.d.]) Google. [n.d.].  Google Forms: Online Form Creator — Google Workspace.  https://www.google.com/forms/about/.  (Accessed on 08/24/2022).
  * Gyoshev et al. (2018) Stanislav Gyoshev, Dimitar Karastoyanov, Nikolay Stoimenov, Virginio Cantoni, Luca Lombardi, and Alessandra Setti. 2018.  Exploiting a graphical Braille display for art masterpieces. In _International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs_. Springer, 237–245.
  * Handa et al. (2010) Kozue Handa, Hitoshi Dairoku, and Yoshiko Toriyama. 2010\.  Investigation of priority needs in terms of museum service accessibility for visually impaired visitors.  _British journal of visual impairment_ 28, 3 (2010), 221–234.
  * Hartson and Pyla (2012) Rex Hartson and Pardha S Pyla. 2012.  The UX Book: Process and guidelines for ensuring a quality user experience.  (2012), 129–160.
  * Haworth and Williams (2012) Annette Haworth and Peter Williams. 2012.  Using QR codes to aid accessibility in a museum.  _Journal of Assistive Technologies_ 6, 4 (2012), 285–291.
  * Hayhoe (2013) Simon Hayhoe. 2013\.  Expanding our vision of museum education and perception: An analysis of three case studies of independent blind arts learners.  _Harvard Educational Review_ 83, 1 (2013), 67–86.
  * Hayhoe (2017) Simon Hayhoe. 2017\.  Blind visitor experiences at art museums.  (2017), 106–127.
  * Herskovitz et al. (2020) Jaylin Herskovitz, Jason Wu, Samuel White, Amy Pavel, Gabriel Reyes, Anhong Guo, and Jeffrey P Bigham. 2020.  Making mobile augmented reality applications accessible. In _The 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility_. 1–14.
  * Hinton (1991) RAL Hinton. 1991\.  Use of tactile pictures to communicate the work of visual artists to blind people.  _Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness_ 85, 4 (1991), 174–175.
  * Holloway et al. (2019) Leona Holloway, Kim Marriott, Matthew Butler, and Alan Borning. 2019.  Making sense of art: Access for gallery visitors with vision impairments. In _Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems_. 1–12.
  * Howell and Porter (2003) Caro Howell and Dan Porter. 2003.  Re-Assessing Practice: Visual Art, Visually Impaired People and the Web.  (2003).
  * Huh et al. (2022) Mina Huh, YunJung Lee, Dasom Choi, Haesoo Kim, Uran Oh, and Juho Kim. 2022\.  Cocomix: Utilizing Comments to Improve Non-Visual Webtoon Accessibility. In _CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems_. 1–18.
  * Inc. (2012) Zoom Video Communications Inc. 2012\.  Video Conferencing, Cloud Phone, Webinars, Chat, Virtual Events — Zoom.  https://zoom.us/.  (Accessed on 07/20/2021).
  * Iranzo Bartolome et al. (2019) Jorge Iranzo Bartolome, Luis Cavazos Quero, Sunhee Kim, Myung-Yong Um, and Jundong Cho. 2019\.  Exploring art with a voice controlled multimodal guide for blind people. In _Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction_. 383–390.
  * Iwarsson and Ståhl (2003) Susanne Iwarsson and Agneta Ståhl. 2003.  Accessibility, usability and universal design—positioning and definition of concepts describing person-environment relationships.  _Disability and rehabilitation_ 25, 2 (2003), 57–66.
  * Jain (2014) Dhruv Jain. 2014\.  Pilot evaluation of a path-guided indoor navigation system for visually impaired in a public museum. In _Proceedings of the 16th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers & accessibility_. 273–274.
  * Jansson et al. (2003) Gunnar Jansson, Massimo Bergamasco, and Antonio Frisoli. 2003\.  A new option for the visually impaired to experience 3D art at museums: manual exploration of virtual copies.  _Visual Impairment Research_ 5, 1 (2003), 1–12.
  * Kanter (2019) Arlene S Kanter. 2019\.  Let’s try again: Why the United States should ratify the united nations convention on the rights of people with disabilities.  _Touro L. Rev._ 35 (2019), 301.
  * Kennedy (1974) John M Kennedy. 1974\.  _A psychology of picture perception_.  Jossey-Bass Publishers.
  * Khusid and Shardin (2011) Andrey Khusid and Oleg Shardin. 2011.  An Online Visual Collaboration Platform for Teamwork — Miro.  https://miro.com/.  (Accessed on 06/02/2021).
  * Kianpisheh et al. (2019) Mohammad Kianpisheh, Franklin Mingzhe Li, and Khai N Truong. 2019.  Face recognition assistant for people with visual impairments.  _Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies_ 3, 3 (2019), 1–24.
  * Kleege (2016) Georgina Kleege. 2016\.  Audio description described: Current standards, future innovations, larger implications.  _Representations_ 135, 1 (2016), 89–101.
  * Kleege (2018) Georgina Kleege. 2018\.  More than Meets the Eye: What Blindness Brings to Art.  (2018), 60–72.  https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190604356.001.0001
  * Komkaite et al. (2019) Aida Komkaite, Liga Lavrinovica, Maria Vraka, and Mikael B Skov. 2019.  Underneath the Skin: An Analysis of YouTube Videos to Understand Insertable Device Interaction. In _Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems_. 1–12.
  * Kress (2009) Gunther Kress. 2009\.  Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication.  (2009), 1–17.
  * Landgraf and Osterheider (2013) Steffen Landgraf and Michael Osterheider. 2013.  “To see or not to see: that is the question.” The “Protection-Against-Schizophrenia”(PaSZ) model: evidence from congenital blindness and visuo-cognitive aberrations.  _Frontiers in psychology_ 4 (2013), 352.
  * Lee et al. (2020) Sooyeon Lee, Madison Reddie, Chun-Hua Tsai, Jordan Beck, Mary Beth Rosson, and John M Carroll. 2020\.  The emerging professional practice of remote sighted assistance for people with visual impairments. In _Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems_. 1–12.
  * Leporini et al. (2021) Barbara Leporini, Marina Buzzi, and Marion Hersh. 2021\.  Distance meetings during the covid-19 pandemic: are video conferencing tools accessible for blind people?. In _Proceedings of the 18th International Web for All Conference_. 1–10.
  * Leporini et al. (2020) Barbara Leporini, Valentina Rossetti, Francesco Furfari, Susanna Pelagatti, and Andrea Quarta. 2020\.  Design guidelines for an interactive 3D model as a supporting tool for exploring a cultural site by visually impaired and sighted people.  _ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)_ 13, 3 (2020), 1–39.
  * Li et al. (2019) Franklin Mingzhe Li, Di Laura Chen, Mingming Fan, and Khai N Truong. 2019.  FMT: A wearable camera-based object tracking memory aid for older adults.  _Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies_ 3, 3 (2019), 1–25.
  * Li et al. (2021a) Franklin Mingzhe Li, Di Laura Chen, Mingming Fan, and Khai N Truong. 2021a.  “I Choose Assistive Devices That Save My Face” A Study on Perceptions of Accessibility and Assistive Technology Use Conducted in China. In _Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems_. 1–14.
  * Li et al. (2021b) Franklin Mingzhe Li, Jamie Dorst, Peter Cederberg, and Patrick Carrington. 2021b.  Non-Visual Cooking: Exploring Practices and Challenges of Meal Preparation by People with Visual Impairments. In _The 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility_. 1–11.
  * Li et al. (2022a) Franklin Mingzhe Li, Michael Xieyang Liu, Yang Zhang, and Patrick Carrington. 2022a.  Freedom to Choose: Understanding Input Modality Preferences of People with Upper-body Motor Impairments for Activities of Daily Living. In _Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility_. 1–16.
  * Li et al. (2022b) Franklin Mingzhe Li, Cheng Lu, Zhicong Lu, Patrick Carrington, and Khai N Truong. 2022b.  An Exploration of Captioning Practices and Challenges of Individual Content Creators on YouTube for People with Hearing Impairments.  _Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction_ 6, CSCW1 (2022), 1–26.
  * Li et al. (2022c) Franklin Mingzhe Li, Franchesca Spektor, Meng Xia, Mina Huh, Peter Cederberg, Yuqi Gong, Kristen Shinohara, and Patrick Carrington. 2022c.  “It Feels Like Taking a Gamble”: Exploring Perceptions, Practices, and Challenges of Using Makeup and Cosmetics for People with Visual Impairments. In _CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems_. 1–15.
  * Li et al. (2018) Hanlin Li, Disha Bora, Sagar Salvi, and Erin Brady. 2018\.  Slacktivists or activists? Identity work in the virtual disability march. In _Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems_. 1–13.
  * Li et al. (2017) Mingzhe Li, Mingming Fan, and Khai N Truong. 2017.  BrailleSketch: A gesture-based text input method for people with visual impairments. In _Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility_. 12–21.
  * Luo et al. (2017) Shan Luo, Joao Bimbo, Ravinder Dahiya, and Hongbin Liu. 2017\.  Robotic tactile perception of object properties: A review.  _Mechatronics_ 48 (2017), 54–67.
  * Meliones and Sampson (2018) Apostolos Meliones and Demetrios Sampson. 2018.  Blind MuseumTourer: A system for self-guided tours in museums and blind indoor navigation.  _Technologies_ 6, 1 (2018), 4.
  * Mendes et al. (2020) Daniel Mendes, Sofia Reis, João Guerreiro, and Hugo Nicolau. 2020.  Collaborative tabletops for blind people: The effect of auditory design on workspace awareness.  _Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction_ 4, ISS (2020), 1–19.
  * Mesquita and Carneiro (2016) Susana Mesquita and Maria João Carneiro. 2016.  Accessibility of European museums to visitors with visual impairments.  _Disability & society_ 31, 3 (2016), 373–388.
  * Morris et al. (2018) Meredith Ringel Morris, Jazette Johnson, Cynthia L Bennett, and Edward Cutrell. 2018.  Rich representations of visual content for screen reader users. In _Proceedings of the 2018 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems_. 1–11.
  * Mukhiddinov and Kim (2021) Mukhriddin Mukhiddinov and Soon-Young Kim. 2021.  A Systematic Literature Review on the Automatic Creation of Tactile Graphics for the Blind and Visually Impaired.  _Processes_ 9, 10 (2021), 1726.
  * Nations ([n.d.]) United Nations. [n.d.].  Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) — United Nations Enable.  https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities.html.  (Accessed on 08/16/2022).
  * Neumüller et al. (2014) Moritz Neumüller, Andreas Reichinger, Florian Rist, and Christian Kern. 2014.  3D printing for cultural heritage: Preservation, accessibility, research and education.  In _3D research challenges in cultural heritage_. Springer, 119–134.
  * of Art ([n.d.]) Carnegie Museum of Art. [n.d.].  Programs for Visitors with Accessibility Needs – Carnegie Museum of Art.  https://cmoa.org/programs/accessibility/.  (Accessed on 11/19/2022).
  * of Art (2018) The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2018\.  For Visitors Who Are Blind or Partially Sighted — The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  https://www.metmuseum.org/events/programs/access/visitors-who-are-blind-or-partially-sighted.  (Accessed on 08/17/2022).
  * of Justice (2009) U.S. Department of Justice. 2009\.  Expanding Your Market: Maintaining Accessibility in Museums.  https://www.ada.gov/business/museum_access.htm.  (Accessed on 08/16/2022).
  * of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 ([n.d.]) Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973\. [n.d.].  29 U.S.C.” Code of Federal Regulations, title 28 (2002):516-544.
  * Pearson (1900) Karl Pearson. 1900\.  X. On the criterion that a given system of deviations from the probable in the case of a correlated system of variables is such that it can be reasonably supposed to have arisen from random sampling.  _The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science_ 50, 302 (1900), 157–175.
  * Persson et al. (2015) Hans Persson, Henrik Åhman, Alexander Arvei Yngling, and Jan Gulliksen. 2015.  Universal design, inclusive design, accessible design, design for all: different concepts—one goal? On the concept of accessibility—historical, methodological and philosophical aspects.  _Universal Access in the Information Society_ 14, 4 (2015), 505–526.
  * Pissaloux et al. (2022) Edwige Pissaloux, Lilia Djoussouf, Katerine Romeo, Ramiro Velazquez, Simon Gay, Ngoc-Tan Truong, and Son Dao. 2022.  A new approach to assist Virtual Image accessibility for Visually Impaired People. In _9th International Conference on human computer interaction. HCI 2022_.
  * Potluri et al. (2021) Venkatesh Potluri, Tadashi E Grindeland, Jon E Froehlich, and Jennifer Mankoff. 2021.  Examining visual semantic understanding in blind and low-vision technology users. In _Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems_. 1–14.
  * Rector et al. (2017) Kyle Rector, Keith Salmon, Dan Thornton, Neel Joshi, and Meredith Ringel Morris. 2017.  Eyes-free art: Exploring proxemic audio interfaces for blind and low vision art engagement.  _Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies_ 1, 3 (2017), 1–21.
  * Reed (2019) Thomas Vernon Reed. 2019\.  _The art of protest: Culture and activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the present_.  U of Minnesota Press.
  * Reichinger et al. (2018a) Andreas Reichinger, Helena Garcia Carrizosa, and Cornelia Travnicek. 2018a.  Designing an interactive tactile relief of the meissen table fountain. In _International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs_. Springer, 209–216.
  * Reichinger et al. (2018b) Andreas Reichinger, Helena Garcia Carrizosa, Joanna Wood, Svenja Schröder, Christian Löw, Laura Rosalia Luidolt, Maria Schimkowitsch, Anton Fuhrmann, Stefan Maierhofer, and Werner Purgathofer. 2018b.  Pictures in your mind: using interactive gesture-controlled reliefs to explore art.  _ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)_ 11, 1 (2018), 1–39.
  * Reichinger et al. (2016) Andreas Reichinger, Anton Fuhrmann, Stefan Maierhofer, and Werner Purgathofer. 2016.  Gesture-based interactive audio guide on tactile reliefs. In _Proceedings of the 18th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility_. 91–100.
  * Reingold et al. (2003) Eyal M Reingold, Lester C Loschky, George W McConkie, and David M Stampe. 2003.  Gaze-contingent multiresolutional displays: An integrative review.  _Human factors_ 45, 2 (2003), 307–328.
  * Romeo et al. (2018b) Katerine Romeo, Marion Chottin, Pierre Ancet, Christèle Lecomte, and Edwige Pissaloux. 2018b.  Simplification of painting images for tactile perception by visually impaired persons. In _International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs_. Springer, 250–257.
  * Romeo et al. (2018a) Katerine Romeo, Marion Chottin, Pierre Ancet, and Edwige Pissaloux. 2018a.  Access to artworks and its mediation by and for visually impaired persons. In _International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs_. Springer, 233–236.
  * Romeo et al. (2022a) Katerine Romeo, Edwige Pissaloux, Simon L Gay, Ngoc-Tan Truong, and Lilia Djoussouf. 2022a.  The MAPS: Toward a Novel Mobility Assistance System for Visually Impaired People.  _Sensors_ 22, 9 (2022), 3316.
  * Romeo et al. (2022b) Katerine Romeo, Hannah Thompson, and Marion Chottin. 2022b.  Inclusive Multimodal Discovery of Cultural Heritage: Listen and Touch. In _International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs_. Springer, 278–285.
  * Sato et al. (2017) Daisuke Sato, Uran Oh, Kakuya Naito, Hironobu Takagi, Kris Kitani, and Chieko Asakawa. 2017\.  Navcog3: An evaluation of a smartphone-based blind indoor navigation assistant with semantic features in a large-scale environment. In _Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility_. 270–279.
  * Shinohara and Wobbrock (2011) Kristen Shinohara and Jacob O Wobbrock. 2011.  In the shadow of misperception: assistive technology use and social interactions. In _Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems_. 705–714.
  * Sibert and Jacob (2000) Linda E Sibert and Robert JK Jacob. 2000.  Evaluation of eye gaze interaction. In _Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems_. 281–288.
  * Siu et al. (2022) Alexa Siu, Gene SH Kim, Sile O’Modhrain, and Sean Follmer. 2022\.  Supporting Accessible Data Visualization Through Audio Data Narratives. In _CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems_. 1–19.
  * Sousanis ([n.d.]) Nick Sousanis. [n.d.].  Blind Accessible Comics – Spin Weave and Cut.  https://spinweaveandcut.com/blind-accessible-comics/.  (Accessed on 08/18/2022).
  * Stamatopoulou-Robbins (2007) Elissavet Stamatopoulou-Robbins. 2007\.  Cultural rights in international law: Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and beyond.  (2007).
  * Stangl et al. (2019) Abigale Stangl, Ann Cunningham, Lou Ann Blake, and Tom Yeh. 2019.  Defining problems of practices to advance inclusive tactile media consumption and production. In _The 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility_. 329–341.
  * Stangl et al. (2021) Abigale Stangl, Nitin Verma, Kenneth R Fleischmann, Meredith Ringel Morris, and Danna Gurari. 2021.  Going Beyond One-Size-Fits-All Image Descriptions to Satisfy the Information Wants of People Who are Blind or Have Low Vision. In _The 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility_. 1–15.
  * Sun et al. (2021a) Wei Sun, Franklin Mingzhe Li, Congshu Huang, Zhenyu Lei, Benjamin Steeper, Songyun Tao, Feng Tian, and Cheng Zhang. 2021a.  ThumbTrak: Recognizing Micro-finger Poses Using a Ring with Proximity Sensing. In _Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction_. 1–9.
  * Sun et al. (2021b) Wei Sun, Franklin Mingzhe Li, Benjamin Steeper, Songlin Xu, Feng Tian, and Cheng Zhang. 2021b.  Teethtap: Recognizing discrete teeth gestures using motion and acoustic sensing on an earpiece. In _26th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces_. 161–169.
  * Tsui et al. (2015) Katherine M Tsui, James M Dalphond, Daniel J Brooks, Mikhail S Medvedev, Eric McCann, Jordan Allspaw, David Kontak, and Holly A Yanco. 2015\.  Accessible human-robot interaction for telepresence robots: A case study.  _Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics_ 6, 1 (2015).
  * Urbas et al. (2018) Rasa Urbas, Ana Kuscer, Mexhid Ferati, and Stankovic Elesini Urska. 2018.  Accessibility of Slovenia’s Museums for Blind and Visually Impaired. In _Ninth International Symposium on Graphic Engineering and Design (GRID2018)_. University of Novi Sad, 489–494.
  * Vaz et al. (2018) Roberto Vaz, Paula Odete Fernandes, and Ana Cecília Rocha Veiga. 2018\.  Designing an interactive exhibitor for assisting blind and visually impaired visitors in tactile exploration of original museum pieces.  _Procedia computer science_ 138 (2018), 561–570.
  * Veroniiiica ([n.d.]) Veroniiiica. [n.d.].  How Do People with Low Vision . . . Go To Museums? - Perkins School for the Blind.  https://www.perkins.org/resource/how-do-people-low-vision-go-museums/.  (Accessed on 11/19/2022).
  * Walters (2009) Diana Walters. 2009\.  Approaches in museums towards disability in the United Kingdom and the United States.  _Museum management and curatorship_ 24, 1 (2009), 29–46.
  * Warhol ([n.d.]) Andy Warhol. [n.d.].  Accessibility – The Andy Warhol Museum.  https://www.warhol.org/accessibility-accommodations/.  (Accessed on 08/17/2022).

##  Appendix A Survey Response Summary

| Total | Vision Level | Onset of Blindness
---|---|---|---
TB | LP | LB | C | A
220 (100.0%) | 44 (20.0%) | 90 (40.9%) | 86 (39.1%) | 42 (19.1%) | 178 (80.9%)
Preferred Methods |
Tactile access at art venues | 144 (65.5%) | 31 (70.5%) | 65 (72.2%) | 48 (55.8%) | 37 (88.1%) | 107 (60.1%)
Sighted assistance at art venues | 141 (64.1%) | 28 (63.6%) | 57 (63.3%) | 56 (65.1%) | 32 (76.2%) | 109 (61.2%)
Smart device assistance at art venues | 128 (58.2%) | 25 (56.8%) | 50 (55.6%) | 53 (61.6%) | 18 (42.9%) | 110 (61.8%)
Recorded audio at art venues | 104 (47.3%) | 25 (56.8%) | 36 (40.0%) | 43 (50.0%) | 17 (40.5%) | 87 (48.9%)
Access visual arts online | 54 (24.6%) | 7 (15.9%) | 21 (23.3%) | 26 (30.2%) | 3 (9.5%) | 51 (28.7%)
Source of Enjoyment |
Touching | 149 (67.7%) | 33 (75.0%) | 68 (75.6%) | 48 (55.8%) | 35 (83.3%) | 114 (64.0%)
Learning related stories | 149 (67.7%) | 34 (77.3%) | 59 (65.6%) | 56 (65.1%) | 27 (64.3%) | 122 (68.5%)
Imagination | 99 (45.0%) | 20 (45.5%) | 36 (40.0%) | 43 (50.0%) | 17 (40.5%) | 82 (46.1%)
Conversation with peers | 93 (42.3%) | 15 (34.1%) | 37 (41.1%) | 41(47.7%) | 18 (42.9%) | 75 (42.1%)
Physically co-present with art pieces | 83 (37.7%) | 11 (25.0%) | 32 (35.6%) | 40 (46.5%) | 12 (28.6%) | 71 (39.9%)
Motivation |  |  |  |  |  |
Learning | 143 (65.0%) | 30 (68.2%) | 62 (68.9%) | 51 (59.3%) | 34 (81.0%) | 109 (61.2%)
Encouragement | 109 (49.6%) | 14 (31.8%) | 49 (54.4%) | 46 (53.5%) | 18 (42.9%) | 91(51.1%)
Activism | 39 (17.7%) | 7 (15.9%) | 15 (16.7%) | 17 (19.8%) | 7 (16.7%) | 32 (18.0%)
Social | 112 (50.9%) | 23 (52.3%) | 40 (44.4%) | 49 (57.0%) | 26 (61.9%) | 86 (48.3%)
Relaxation | 116 (52.7%) | 25 (56.8%) | 51 (56.7%) | 40 (46.5%) | 22 (52.4%) | 94 (52.8%)
Nostalgic | 53 (24.1%) | 11 (25.0%) | 14 (15.6%) | 28 (32.6%) | 5 (11.9%) | 48 (27.0%)
Design Considerations |  |  |  |  |  |
DC1 | 97 (44.1%) | 19 (43.2%) | 37 (41.1%) | 41 (47.7%) | 23 (54.8%) | 74 (41.6%)
DC2 | 91 (41.4%) | 19 (43.2%) | 41 (45.6%) | 31 (36.0%) | 21 (50.0%) | 70 (39.3%)
DC3 | 77 (35.0%) | 23 (52.3%) | 28 (31.1%) | 26 (30.2%) | 18 (42.9%) | 59 (33.1%)
DC4 | 77 (35.0%) | 17 (38.6%) | 28 (31.1%) | 32 (37.2%) | 17 (40.5%) | 60 (33.7%)
DC5 | 68 (30.9%) | 12 (27.3%) | 31 (34.4%) | 25 (29.1%) | 8 (19.0%) | 60 (33.7%)
DC6 | 65 (29.5%) | 11 (25.0%) | 29 (32.2%) | 25 (29.1%) | 9 (21.4%) | 56 (31.5%)
DC7 | 63 (28.6%) | 12 (27.3%) | 20 (22.2%) | 31 (36.0%) | 12 (28.6%) | 51 (28.7%)
DC8 | 57 (25.9%) | 10 (22.7%) | 26 (28.9%) | 21 (24.4%) | 11 (26.2%) | 46 (25.8%)
Table 3. Counts and percentages of survey respondents’ choices of access
methods, sources of enjoyment during visual arts appreciation, motivation, and
design considerations across two demographic factors: vision level and onset
of blindness. TB = Totally blind, LP = Some light perception, LB = Legally
blind, C = Congenitally blind, A = Acquired blindness later. DC1 = Have the
option to access the art piece through multiple modalities (such as tactile
and audio) at the same time, DC2 = Have visual details delivered through
tactile and background information delivered through audio, DC3 = Have a clear
art description standard discussed and agreed with describers-such as what
vocabularies to use, DC4 = Have flexibility over the pace & location & time of
art appreciation experience, DC5 = Have a social setting where you feel more
comfortable and less stigmatized to enjoy visual art, DC6 = Have the ability
to filter out subjective interpretation in the art description-such as those
from sighted peers or docents, DC7 = Have art descriptions adapted to your
experience and knowledge-such as skipping information that you already knew,
DC8 = Have the ability to acquire answers from someone you trust whenever you
have a question.

##  Appendix B Statistical Test Results

| Vision Level | Onset of Blindness
---|---|---
$\chi^{2}$ | p | $\chi^{2}$ | p
Preferred Methods |  |  |  |
Recorded audio at art venues | 3.77 | 0.152 | 0.65 | 0.419
Tactile access at art venues | 5.84 | 0.054 | 10.56 | 0.001
Sighted assistance at art venues | 0.07 | 0.968 | 2.68 | 0.101
Smart device assistance at art venues | 0.71 | 0.702 | 4.26 | 0.039
Access visual arts online | 8.5 | 0.014 | 7.37 | 0.007
Source of Enjoyment |  |  |  |
Imagination | 1.78 | 0.41 | 0.23 | 0.629
Touching | 9.17 | 0.01 | 4.94 | 0.026
Learning related stories | 2.3 | 0.317 | 0.12 | 0.729
Conversation with peers | 2.29 | 0.319 | 0 | 1
Physically co-present with art pieces | 6.04 | 0.049 | 1.4 | 0.236
Motivation |  |  |  |
Learning | 2.02 | 0.364 | 4.97 | 0.026
Encouragement | 6.93 | 0.031 | 0.63 | 0.428
Activism | 0.41 | 0.813 | 0 | 1
Social | 2.8 | 0.246 | 2 | 0.158
Relaxation | 2.19 | 0.335 | 0 | 1
Nostalgic | 6.98 | 0.031 | 3.43 | 0.064
Desired Design Changes |  |  |  |
DC1 | 0.79 | 0.674 | 1.89 | 0.169
DC2 | 1.71 | 0.424 | 1.19 | 0.276
DC3 | 7.23 | 0.027 | 1.01 | 0.314
DC4 | 1.04 | 0.595 | 0.42 | 0.517
DC5 | 0.94 | 0.626 | 2.77 | 0.096
DC6 | 0.76 | 0.685 | 1.2 | 0.274
DC7 | 4.16 | 0.125 | 0 | 1
DC8 | 0.75 | 0.688 | 0 | 1
Table 4. Summary of statistical results from N=220 survey respondents’
preferred access methods, source of enjoyment, motivation, and design
considerations across onset of blindness and vision level. DC1 = Have the
option to access the art piece through multiple modalities (such as tactile
and audio) at the same time, DC2 = Have visual details delivered through
tactile and background information delivered through audio, DC3 = Have a clear
art description standard discussed and agreed with describers-such as what
vocabularies to use, DC4 = Have flexibility over the pace & location & time of
art appreciation experience, DC5 = Have a social setting where you feel more
comfortable and less stigmatized to enjoy visual art, DC6 = Have the ability
to filter out subjective interpretation in the art description-such as those
from sighted peers or docents, DC7 = Have art descriptions adapted to your
experience and knowledge-such as skipping information that you already knew,
DC8 = Have the ability to acquire answers from someone you trust whenever you
have a question.

##  Appendix C Onset of Blindness on Preferred Method

Figure 5. Survey respondents’ preferences on tactile access at art venue
(left) and online access (right) across different age range of blindness
onset.

Two bar charts, the left chart shows the preference on tactile at art venue.
The y-axis has five different age groups (40-60, 30-39, 20-29, 10-19, 0-9) and
the x-axis has different percentage rates. The right figure shows the
preference on online access. The y-axis has five different age groups (40-60,
30-39, 20-29, 10-19, 0-9) and the x-axis has different percentage rates.