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Article published In:
Methodological Issues in Experimental Research in Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility
Edited by Gian Maria Greco, Anna Jankowska and Agnieszka Szarkowska
[Translation Spaces 11:1] 2022
► pp. 134–156

Evaluating audio description and emotional engagement for BPS visitors in a museum context

An experimental perspective

ORCID logo | Queen’s University Belfast
ORCID logo | Queen’s University Belfast
ORCID logo | Queen’s University Belfast
| Queen’s University Belfast

Museums face a particular challenge in enabling blind and partially sighted (BPS) visitors to engage emotionally with the narrative(s) they present. In collaboration with a world-leading tourist attraction (Titanic Belfast) and the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), we have applied several different approaches for improving emotional engagement for BPS visitors. This paper addresses the critical challenge of how to obtain reliable evidence for evaluating the emotional response of BPS visitors to the museum’s audio description (AD) and overall experience. We consider six different methods for measuring emotional engagement, and consider their potential for providing reliable experimental evidence. Based on BPS-user feedback, we present a qualitative comparison of these methods, uniquely all applied to the same museum context.

Keywords: audio description (AD), emotion, museum, blind and partially sighted (BPS), evaluation methods
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Importance of accessibility in museums
    • 2.2Current solutions for enhancing emotional engagement
    • 2.3Current methods for evaluating emotional responses
  • 3.Our research context: Three projects with Titanic Belfast
    • 3.1Project 1 – An analysis of BPS visitor experience
    • 3.2Project 2 – The ‘Story to journey to smart map’ (SJSM) approach
    • 3.3Project 3 – A voice-driven interactive audio-descriptive guide
  • 4.Measuring AD and emotional engagement and experimental analysis
    • 4.1Questionnaires
    • 4.2In-tour questions
    • 4.3Focus groups
    • 4.4EEG
    • 4.5A Tactile Self-Assessment Manikin (T-SAM)
    • 4.6On-the-fly interaction usage statistics
    • 4.7Qualitative comparison of the six methods
  • 5.Conclusions
  • References
Published online: 23 May 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.21019.wan
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