Touching Civilization: Enhancing Museum Experience for Visually Impaired Individuals through Spatiotemporal Guidance

Abstract

Museum experiences remain largely inaccessible for blind and low-vision (BLV) individuals due to the visual-centric nature of traditional exhibitions. To address this gap, we present a VR-haptic museum system that combines digital 3D printing and virtual reality (VR) to deliver passive haptic experiences for BLV visitors. The system features a novel Spatiotemporal Guidance (StG) interaction mode designed to enhance accessibility and engagement. We evaluated our approach with 62 BLV participants and 19 sighted individuals under blindfolded conditions in a community setting, collecting data through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, behavioral metrics, and vision tests. For BLV participants, StG received significantly more favorable subjective ratings across all five measured dimensions and showed the longest mean touch duration and the lowest mean touch speed. Qualitative heatmaps further suggest more systematic touch distributions around the guided artifact features. A formal group \(\times\) mode analysis identified a group-dependent effect specifically on cognitive load, highlighting the importance of involving BLV users directly when evaluating the cognitive demands of non-visual interaction. Our findings provide both practical design guidelines for accessible museum systems and methodological insights for BLV-focused research.