Towards Inclusive Heritage: How Can Museum and Heritage Sites use Audio Description to Facilitate access to their Gardens for all Visitors?

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Access to green spaces has been shown to promote physical and mental health (WHO, 2016). This, combined with the cultural heritage of gardens, means that these are valuable places that everyone should be able to access and enjoy. This is supported by the Equality Act (2010), which states that service providers, such as a garden or museum, have a duty to make reasonable adjustments in order to provide access to that service. For blind or partially sighted (BPS) people, audio description (AD) is a way of facilitating access to film, TV, theatre, museums, and galleries. AD is a 'verbal commentary, providing visual information for those unable to perceive it themselves' (Fryer, 2016: 1), helping people to build a mental picture of a film, play or exhibition. Screen AD is fully professionalised (Fryer, 2016), with comprehensive research and guidelines for describers. However, museum AD is at a comparatively early stage of development (Hutchinson and Eardley, 2019), and garden AD is arguably at an even earlier stage. Both are based on limited guidelines (such as RNIB, 2010 and ADLAB, 2014), but more research has been undertaken in relation to AD in the museum context. This study will benefit from the extensive research into screen AD, as well as the limited research in museum AD. Whilst there have been some successful examples of audio described gardens, including a multi-sensory audio-described tour at the Chelsea Physic Garden (Audio Description Association, 2014), access to audio described gardens is varied, with little guidance or research to inform what approach should be taken. This means that for the estimated two million people in UK living with sight loss (RNIB, 2019), access services at gardens are limited. So, while further research is required to understand how best to provide access to gardens, there is also an opportunity to consider how access to gardens can be inclusive, rather than providing a separate service for the BPS audience.