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

纽约科学馆将进行研究，以确定随机访问音频技术的有效性，以此作为改善视障参观者进入科技中心展览的一种手段。该项目将使用形成性评估技术，为纽约科学馆的两个主要展览创建随机访问之旅：声觉和看到光。该项目将使用一种最近开发的技术-随机访问音频播放器，它有望在科技中心的互动展品中为包括视障人士在内的所有参观者提高学习效率。该项目建立在早期为科学博物馆开发和评估音频之旅的工作基础上。为这个项目选择的展览涉及音频复制技术(声音感觉)和视觉感知的生理学和心理学(看到光)。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。最初由旧金山探索博物馆创建的Seing the Light展览是世界上复制最广泛的展览之一，使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参观者的对照组和试验组来评估这些参观活动在增加展品对这些人的影响方面的有效性。目前资助的这个项目的目标是确定有声之旅是否适用于任何人。早期研究的初步发现令人鼓舞，表明有声参观对亲手操作的科学博物馆的观众是有益的。这项新的研究将从两个方面扩展先前的工作：(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有声之旅。(2)这将使项目组能够确定有声旅游在多大程度上可以从通用设计原则中受益--如何将视障观众的具体要求纳入为所有观众设计的有声旅游中。这项研究的一般发现和旅行部分稍后都可以被美国的250多个科学技术中心使用。该项目最后将向实地报告这项技术的生产、使用、成本和对目标受众的影响。

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.