How an ‘unseen’ experience completes the picture for everyone

“What I love the most is the freedom,” says Tessa, a partially sighted young woman who works as a guide at muZIEum, an interactive museum in Nijmegen, Netherlands, that lets visitors experience what it’s like to be visually impaired. “When I'm in other museums, my biggest fear is that I’ll bump into something that I'm not allowed to touch. Here, I am free to feel everything – because everything is meant to be touched.”

And that’s what muZIEum does: turns the accepted standards of the way that art is experienced on its head, creating an environment which not only welcomes everyone, but invites a new level of understanding of sight loss through action, not instruction. “We do two things,” explains muZIEum director, Heleen Vermeulen. “We want our visitors to understand what it is like to live with a visual impairment. And we also provide jobs for people with visual impairments.” So, it was moment of real serendipity when she learnt of our World Unseen exhibitions last year, as the museum was undergoing a major remodelling project and looking at options for powerful ways to relaunch the experience.

“As two organisations we are so different,” she observes. “The core business of Canon is seeing, and our core business is not seeing. But when we heard the ideology behind World Unseen, we felt that we could combine it with the stories of all the people with visual impairment who work in our museum. It’s a match made in heaven.” The new exhibition space (Called “Unseen”, as a nod to its predecessor), sits alongside two permanent muZIEum experiences (‘A Day in the Life’and ‘On Holiday With…’) and together they set a new bar for accessibility. Both set in total darkness, sighted visitors step into a non-sighted world, putting their trust in their blind or partially sighted guide. As they move through an unfamiliar museum for an hour, they learn what is needed to navigate the space and understand what is around them. “You visit a world in which there’s nothing to see,” explains Heleen.

The second half is an enhanced version of World Unseen, where tactile elevated prints from Canon Ambassador, Brent Stirton’s, State of Blindness project sit alongside images from pioneering blind photographers, Ian Treherne and Evgen Bavcar, plus work from Daphne Wageman, who is one of the earliest artists to use Canon’s elevated print technology. The height of the elevated print in this show has also been doubled – from two millimetres to four millimetres – which might not seem much, but makes a world of difference, as Tessa explains. “Four millimetres creates more depth in the picture. Because tactile pictures mostly focus on the contrast between light and dark but, of course, there are many shades of light and dark.”

Tim ten Cate of Canon Netherlands believes that working with muZIEum has really helped to push the technology, adding, “It was their idea to go for the four millimetres and evolve what we’ve been doing with the Arizona printer and PRISMAelevate XL software.” For Heleen, designing experiences in collaboration is the way forward. “You innovate together by listening to each other and really understanding each other. That means you are designing ‘with’ instead of ‘for.”

Every image is paired with an audio description, braille and, for sighted visitors, glasses which simulate a range of sight loss conditions. But there are a number of less obvious touches that, if rolled out everywhere, would make a world of difference to blind and partially sighted people – not only in galleries and museums, but in workplaces and civic spaces. For example, a tactile handrail, with braille and indicators to provide information, runs through the whole building and acts as a guide. “When I'm in like a normal museum, I'm always afraid that I’m missing out on something, perhaps just round the corner, or even another room,” explains Tessa. “If I follow the tactile handrail, I know I’ve experienced everything.”

Before you’ve even entered the exhibition, all storage lockers have braille numbers and, in the café, each table has a small hole for cane storage. The team at muZIEum briefed a designer to conceive these small, but exceptionally important touches which bring a welcome sense of independence to blind and partially sighted visitors and show sighted visitors what is possible. While not groundbreaking or technologically advanced, their value cannot be overstated. And these – and solutions like them – could be so easily replicated in any number of public places. “Seemingly small things make a big difference,” says Tessa. “And makes it easier for us to move around more independently.”

As a guide, she’s also enjoyed the response of sighted visitors to Unseen, noting that people are “paying attention in a different way”. Becoming conscious that sight is their default in a museum or gallery setting, they are finding that the addition of sound and touch somehow creates a more rounded, or whole, experience of the art. “When I look at the pictures, hear the audio descriptions and feel the tactile picture it makes the story complete for me,” says Tessa. “And for visitors who are not visually impaired, they can put on simulation glasses and experience what it’s like to look at pictures when you can't really see them.”

“They also ask me a lot of questions about how it is to be partly sighted, and what I experience when I see the pictures. So, they really try to understand. And I like to tell them the stories of the photographers too, because two are legally blind and two have a strong connection with blindness or low vision. That's what makes it even more special to me, as a partly sighted person. It tells me what can be achieved.” 

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