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One group of students used
the GSE Makery (which
Forssell directs) to create a small-scale, 3-D replica of The Thinker, the
one-ton Rodin sculpture that dominates the Cantor’s Diekman Gallery. The
idea is to allow visitors who can’t see the work to at least feel it, by
running their hands over the miniature version.
Another group of students
worked on an idea where Cantor visitors could bring in an iPad or similar
device and activate a haptic map to navigate the museum. (A haptic experience
is one that’s based on vibration and touch, and for the Blind Posse,
it’s a key way to make art museums more user-friendly.) The vibrations on
tablets aren’t sophisticated enough for that idea to be implemented yet,
but what’s important is that students think creatively and expansively,
says Forssell.
“We’re not
delivering finished products,” she says. “What we’re bringing to
the table is being a thought partner for organizations like the Cantor.
We’re partnering with them on digging into something that they care about
– something that maybe they don’t have the bandwidth to pay attention
to right now, or that they want some fresh thinking about.”
Engineering prototypes
with promise
Meanwhile, in the
Mechanical Engineering Department, adjunct lecturer David L. Jaffe has been
teaching a course called Perspectives
in Assistive Technology for 16 years. Students in his class also work
with community partners, though sometimes the partner is a single individual -
a person with cerebral palsy, say, who could benefit from a specific wheelchair
accessory. One team in last winter’s class designed flip-flops for a
student who wears a prosthetic leg; another worked to modify a ski pole for a
Haas Center employee who has limited range of motion in his left arm.
Like Forssell’s class,
the assistive technology class is designated by the Haas Center as a Cardinal
Course. And, as in Forssell’s class, student teams in Jaffe’s class
may not address the challenge solve the problem completely.
“I tell the end user
that it may not be suitable; it may be too early; it may break within a couple
of weeks,” Jaffe says. “And they all know that. None of them count on
what the student team did as a necessary part of their life.” In part
that’s because a 10-week quarter just isn’t enough time to bring a
solution to commercial fruition; the best anyone can hope for is a working
prototype.
In Jaffe’s class this
past winter quarter, two teams of three students each worked on projects with
the Blind Posse and the Cantor Arts Center. (A total of 44 students took the
class; the two Cantor projects were among about a dozen available experiences.)
One team, which called itself ArtTech, developed a prototype for a smartphone
app that describes the exhibits for museum visitors.
(Apps, headsets, and other
devices that offer audio descriptions of the art are high on the Blind
Posse’s list of best practices for art museum accessibility. It’s not
enough to provide narration about the artist’s background or the
importance of the work, Yarnell says; instead what’s needed is a physical
description of the lines, colors, and textures.)
The other team in
Jaffe’s class, calling themselves the Cantor Crew, included a student who
herself is blind: Cricket Bidelman, a journalism major. Bidelman visited the
Cantor Arts Center, then she and her teammates produced a video about the
obstacles she encountered – a floor plan she found confusing to navigate,
a lack of Braille or large-print signs, no way to know which exhibits she could
touch.
One student took both Karin
Forssell’s and David L. Jaffe’s classes. Malika Kanatbek kyzy, MS
’22, a GSE student from Kyrgyzstan, enrolled in the GSE’s LDT program
specifically because she’s interested in creating educational technology
for children with disabilities.
The Cantor project
“was perfect for me,” says Kanatbek kyzy, who was part of the team
that worked on a haptic approach to navigating the museum; then, in David L.
Jaffe’s assistive technology class the following quarter, she helped
develop the prototype for the app that describes the museum’s various
artworks.
Coming into grad school,
Kanatbek kyzy wasn’t sure what kinds of disabilities to focus on in her
work. The experience in the two classes helped her narrow her emphasis to
visually impaired and blind children, and her master’s project is a
web-based platform for helping blind children learn English
vocabulary.
Moving ideas
forward
The students in both
classes have moved on to other classes and other projects, leaving the Cantor
Arts Center staff with a trove of ideas to pursue.
“It gives us a
database of projects and inspiration that we can work from,” says McKenzie
Lynch, academic programs coordinator at the museum. The video produced by the
Cantor Crew is particularly helpful, Lynch says, and she has already shared it
with a number of Cantor staff. “It shows us the accessibility needs of the
museum, so that we as staff can better understand what we should be working
on.”
Advances in accessibility
can be helpful to others, even those without limited vision, Stanley Yarnell
points out. For instance, more signs for wayfinding are helpful for any
visitor, and audio descriptions can help fully sighted visitors appreciate the
art even more, by guiding their eyes around the canvas and calling attention to
details they might otherwise have overlooked. Making an art museum easier for
blind people to navigate and appreciate, Yarnell says, has a way of enriching
the experience for everyone. |
