PPD/R&D: Producing and Evaluating Random Access Audio Tours for Visually Impaired Visitors to Science - Technology Centers

PPD/R

• 批准号: 9800577
• 负责人: Alan Friedman
• 金额: $ 18.64万
• 依托单位: New York Hall of Science
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1998
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1998-03-01 至 2000-02-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9800577&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: PPD; R&D; Producing; Evaluating; Random

The New York Hall of Science will conduct research to determine the effectiveness of random-access audio technology as a means of improving access to science-technology center exhibitions for visually-impaired visitors. The project will use formative evaluation techniques to create random access tours of two major exhibitions at the New York Hall of Science: Sound Sensations and Seeing the Light. The project will use a recently developed technology, the random-access audio player, which offers the promise of improving the effectiveness of learning for all visitors, including the visually-impaired, at science-technology center interactive exhibits. This project builds upon earlier work to develop and evaluate audio tours for hands-on science museums. The exhibitions selected for this project address the technology of audio reproduction (Sound Sensations) and the physiology and psychology of visual perception (Seeing the Light). The project goal is to extend the benefits of these substantive informal science experiences to visually impaired visitors. Seeing the Light, originally created by the Exploratorium in San Francisco, is one of the most widely replicated exhibitions in the world, making the findings of the project directly relevant to many museums. The project team will use control and experimental groups of visually impaired visitors to evaluate the effectiveness of these tours in increasing the impact of the exhibits for these individuals. The goal of the currently funded project is to determine whether audio tours work for any. The initial findings from the earlier research were encouraging indicating that audio tours are beneficial for audiences in hands-on science museums. The new research will extend the prior work in two ways: (1) It will enable the museum staff to develop and test an audio tour which is designed to support the special requirements of visually-impaired audiences. (2) It will enable the project team to ascertain the degree to which an audio tour can benefit from the principles of universal design -- how the specific requirements of a visually impaired audience might be incorporated in the design of an audio tour for all audiences. Both general findings and tour components from this research could be used later by over 250 science-technology centers in the United States. The project will conclude with a report to the field on the production, use, cost, and impact of this technology on the target audience.

纽约科学馆将开展研究，以确定随机访问音频技术作为改善视障游客参观科技中心展览的手段的有效性。 该项目将使用形成性评估技术来创建纽约科学馆两个主要展览的随机访问之旅：声音感觉和看到光。 该项目将使用最近开发的技术，即随机访问音频播放器，该技术有望提高所有参观者（包括视障人士）在科技中心互动展览中的学习效率。 该项目建立在早期为实践科学博物馆开发和评估音频导览的工作基础上。 该项目选择的展览涉及音频再现技术（声音感觉）和视觉感知的生理学和心理学（看见光）。 该项目的目标是将这些实质性的非正式科学体验的好处扩展到视障游客。 Seeing the Light 最初由旧金山探索博物馆 (Exploratorium) 创建，是世界上复制最广泛的展览之一，使得该项目的发现与许多博物馆直接相关。 项目团队将使用视障游客的对照组和实验组来评估这些游览在增加展品对这些人的影响方面的有效性。 目前资助的项目的目标是确定音频导览是否适用于任何人。 早期研究的初步结果令人鼓舞，表明音频导览对参观科学博物馆的观众有益。 新的研究将从两个方面扩展之前的工作：（1）它将使博物馆工作人员能够开发和测试旨在支持视障观众的特殊要求的音频导览。 (2) 它将使项目团队能够确定音频导览可以在多大程度上受益于通用设计原则——如何将视障观众的具体要求纳入到面向所有观众的音频导览设计中。 这项研究的一般性发现和旅游组件稍后可以被美国 250 多个科技中心使用。 该项目将以一份关于该技术的生产、使用、成本以及对目标受众的影响的现场报告作为结束。