Tactile Museum Tour Allows Blind and Low-Vision Visitors to Decode History with Their Hands
A touch tour is being offered at the National Constitution Center (NCC) in Philadelphia, offering the chance to feel bronze statues of the founders of the US. The Signers’ Hall at the National Constitution Center, is surrounded by statues of men blind visitors could not see but could read through touch.
Several blind and low-vision visitors took part in ‘Feel the Founders’ Faces, a new program launched by the NCC and Philly Touch Tours, the accessibility organization that has been designing tactile tours of museums and cultural spaces for blind and visually impaired visitors since 2014.
A year in the making, the program will now run four to six times a year on Sunday mornings before the museum opens to the public, giving visitors time to move slowly through Signers’ Hall and take in the room through touch.
Philly Touch Tours has led programs everywhere from the Mütter Museum to the Philadelphia Flower Show. Philly Touch Tours program director Katherine Allen remarked: “It’s like these statues were conceived for a touch tour.”
Source: Disability Scoop
