Italy expands creative efforts to make art accessible for blind people

Italy is using tactile models, braille signage, audio guides and sensory tours to help people who are blind or have low vision experience museums and historic sites; projects include upgrades at Pompeii, accessibility guides in Florence, multisensory tours in Rome and a publicly funded tactile museum in Ancona.

Italy is expanding ways for people who are blind or have low vision to experience art and historic sites beyond sight. On a recent weeknight in Rome, a small group toured the Colosseum using touch and sound. The effort follows a rise in accessibility initiatives that accelerated after 2021 when Italy received European Union pandemic recovery funds. Museums and cities are adding tactile models, braille signage and audio guides to open cultural experiences to more visitors. What is being done: - At the Colosseum, visitors used a small tactile model to feel the building's elliptical shape and the grooves of its archways, a method that helped one blind visitor better understand the structure. - Pompeii installed a new system of signage reported to include braille signs, QR-coded audio guides, tactile models and bas-relief replicas of excavated artifacts. - Florence published a guide describing accessibility options at the Uffizi Gallery and other sites, with detailed information on routes and on requirements such as the presence of companions; historic sites like the Boboli Gardens remain not fully accessible. - The Radici Association, which has led tours for people with disabilities since 2015, organizes slower, multisensory tours often at night and uses creative approaches when touching artworks is not possible, including a demonstration that lets visitors feel the posture and contours associated with a statue; sign-language interpretation is used for deaf participants. - The Museo Omero in Ancona is a publicly funded tactile museum founded in the early 1990s by Aldo and Daniela Grassini where replicas and life-sized works are meant to be handled; the museum displays classical and contemporary pieces and includes work by blind artists such as Felice Tagliaferri. - Personal accounts show varied ways of engaging with art: a blind visitor described how a tactile model revealed the Colosseum's shape, and one couple described how a large painting of the sea in their home is appreciated through sound, memory and other senses. Summary: These steps expand sensory ways to present art and adapt museums and historic sites so more people can perceive cultural heritage. Officials and groups frame the work as both rights-based inclusion and a consideration for accessibility in tourism. Undetermined at this time.