Throughout my travels, I have visited several coin museums and coin exhibits. Thanks to all the people who made this experience enjoyable, a new world of understanding numismatics opened up to me. As I visited more and more numismatic collections, I was always thinking if this experience could be replicated for other blind people to enjoy.
If you ask me if numismatic museums should be available for the blind, without any hesitation I would say: yes, of course. But the answer is not all that obvious. In this post, I will examine the reasons why blind people would visit a museum which maybe very different from sighted people, and will also discuss the advantage and difficulties of making numismatic collections available through touch. A spoiler alert: I will not answer my question with a yes or no, if coins exhibits should be accessible for the blind. Rather, I will give a few pointers only, because it is ultimately a decision a museum will have to make based on their collection and their abilities to make it available for blind people.
I will provide a few examples to illustrate some concepts, but unfortunately I could not find anything that takes place in a numismatic museum.
Before we can discuss the pros and cons of making a coin exhibit accessible, there are a few things we need to understand about how blind people perceive museums.
I don’t want to generalize here in any way, of course, there are so many reasons why blind people would go to a museum, but it does make sense to go through a few major reasons.
Often, when someone is completely blind, access to the most basic things maybe limited. Understanding the same object for a sighted person is much more obvious. Let’s look at a simple example. In ordinary circumstances, a blind person would have no idea what a lion looks like. Not only because a lion is not available everywhere, but even if there is one nearby in a zoo, it is dangerous to experience a lion in real life. Another approach can be to ask somebody to explain what a lion looks like. This will get closer too reality, but an explanation lacks in so many ways compared to the real experience. While a sighted person can look at a picture of a lion, see one in the zoo, the only option for a blind person is to go to a museum where a prepared animal can be touched. Thus, when a blind person wants to understand an object, it makes most sense to go to a museum that has it, provided that the museum allows to touch their objects on display. Often times even this approach may not work, for example in case of a painting, because even if it can be touched, it does not help in anyway in understanding it.
This is probably one of the most common reasons To go to a museum, sighted or blind. People often go to a museum to learn about something they haven’t experienced before, sometimes with no particular interest, simply because there is a museum nearby. For example, when on a vacation, it does make sense to learn about a city, including its museums, and understand anything there because it is not available at home. In this case, anything that is allowed to be touched can be interesting, and hopefully a particular museum has enough objects to touch for a blind person to make the experience worthwhile.
Another major reason why blind people go to a museum is because the rest of the group is going. For example during a class trip, or a family excursion. This can be problematic when the museum doesn’t have enough objects to touch. Though tour guides or other members of the group can explain what they can see, the primary goal of the trip may not be to provide a tactile experience and it maybe rather boring for a blind person. But in order to talk about the experience it is still necessary to be there, for example when a class needs to write a paper about the visit, or when a family visits a museum together and want to discuss it with their sighted kids. In this case, not participating is probably even worse than going and not getting much out of it.
There are multiple ways a blind person can experience a museum, depending on the availability of the objects to touch. I will list a few below, but normally it is a combination of different approaches.
If the museum has a guided tour, or an employee is willing to explain the exhibit, a blind person can get some understanding, depending on the narration. When I visit a museum, I call ahead and make sure that there is somebody there to explain the exhibit to me. Sometimes it is not an option, in which case I can use a service like Aira or Be My Eyes to have someone explain the exhibit to me. The way it works is that I point the camera to something and in a video call somebody explains what they can see.
Here is a video example of how Be My Eyes works:
In an increasing number of museums, now people can pick up a narration device, which is either developed for this purpose, or it is an iPod or and iPad with a software. The better ones even explain how to get from one point to the other so that blind people can navigate the museum on their own.
There is, however, one problem with personal or audio narrations. It is really not any different than downloading the explanation of the exhibit to a phone and listen to it from home. Of course there is the excitement of going to another city and visiting a museum in person, but in reality often it does not add to the understanding of the exhibit. The other difficulty is when using a narration device is that it is rather difficult to give good directions on how to get from one place to the other. While it would make sense in general, in a bigger crowd it only takes a second to lose orientation and from then on the directions won’t make sense, unless there is a person who can navigate me back to where I was before.
Here is an example of an audio narration with additional sounds:
As much as I appreciate the narration devices, I often found that working with a tour guide makes much more sense, especially when I have additional questions.
The most ideal way of enjoying an exhibit is when everything is out there to be touched. This depends on the nature of the exhibit, for example in a village museum or a statue exhibit this is absolutely not a problem. But even if everything is available to touch, the question remains how these things are identified so that blind people exactly know what it is. A statue for example only makes sense if we know what it is. In this case, audio guidance can still be useful, either automated or in person.
The following video shows an example of a touch exhibit:
The first difficulty of coin museums is that by nature, most things are behind glass. In general it is not the kind of place a blind person would think about visiting, particularly because of the expectation that not many things will be available. Thus, even if a coin museum decides to make an exhibit accessible, it also takes some marketing to ensure that blind people understand that they will find enough interesting things there.
There are some objects in a coin museum which should not be touched, no matter how much we want to make it accessible. Coins which would lose their value when touched, currencies which will ultimately be destroyed when too many people touch them, or documents which are not necessarily meaningful to touch without explanation.
The other concern is that when numismatic items are out on open display, they are generally small and unless they are secured, they may just disappear. But when a coin or a small numismatic object is secured, it may not provide a good tactile experience.
Coins have to be specifically described for blind people. When a sighted person looks at a coin in a museum, the additional explanation assumes that they have looked at a coin or bank note. This will not work for blind people, it will only make sense if the coin is described in greater detail before they can understand the other notes created for sighted people.
For a second let’s assume that a coin exhibit can be touched, it is described to the fullest extent and blind people have the same amount information sighted people do. There is only so much a blind person can feel on a coin. It is interesting to touch one or two, but touching tens or hundreds of coins which practically feel the same is not interesting after a while, while visually it creates a diverse viewing experience. One example would be the numismatic collection of the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, which I had an opportunity to visit. It was one of the greatest experiences to be able to touch hundreds of coins and understand the diversity of items. In my case, being a coin collector it was extremely interesting. But let’s face it, for somebody who is just getting acquainted with numismatics, this is not the most interesting approach. On the other hand, in the Currency Museum of Ottawa for example, I had a chance to touch a select few different objects, which opened new perspectives to different areas of numismatics, which would probably be equally interesting to someone who is just getting started as well as someone who knows a lot about numismatics.
After all this background, let’s look at what would make sense for a blind person in a numismatic museum and how to approach a successful special exhibit.
My first recommendation would be to create a special viewing for blind people and make it available upon request. As I described above, a coin museum does not provide an interesting tactile experience by default. But when I talked to museums before my visit and explained what it is that I am looking for, without an exception they provided me with a special set of objects to touch which will be memorable for life. I had a chance to touch hundreds of objects which I will never own in my life and probably will never have the chance to touch again.
It is important to look at such an approach strategically. It is not sufficient to make a certain percentage of an exhibit available through touch, but it is also necessary that the tactile exhibit is organized in a way that the viewers get an introduction to as many areas as possible. One example would be the National Museum in New Delhi. Though it has an impressive coin exhibit, I had a chance to visit the rest of the museum. By default people are requested not to touch anything, but this requirement is rather flexible and there are a few things that blind people are able to experience throughout the museum. But the reason why I mention it as an example, is because the museum has a section which is set up specifically for blind people. It has 25 objects representing different exhibits of the museum. Each one of them are secured and specially placed there to touch. Each object also has a braille description. While the majority of the museum is not necessarily blind friendly without a tour guide, the special section for the blind alone makes it worthwhile to visit the museum.
No matter how inclusive we want to make a coin exhibit, simply, there will just be things which cannot, and should not be touched. This is by no means a violation of accessibility or the lack of an inclusive experience, rather, a responsible conservation of objects. In this case replicas can be useful to show. A one of a kind bank note for example does not make sense to be touched, but it is reasonable to show a similar note and explain that by touch the differences are negligible. Another example would be an older US coin which would use value when touched by many people, but it can be replaced with one of thee large replicas which one can buy in Washington DC from many street vendors for a couple of Dollars. For that matter, a larger replica may even make more sense for some people.
When an object can’t be touched and an equivalent is hard to find, it still does make sense to provide descriptions only. As I mentioned earlier, such descriptions do not require a museum visit, and one can just download it to a phone and listen to it.. However, a value added solution would be to have a guide available who is able to answer any questions regarding the objects. An example would be when I visited the Ottawa Mint on a Sunday night, and the production area could only be viewed through glass. While the Mint didn’t have too many things for me to touch, they have done a fantastic job explaining to me what is there to be seen, and the guide was extremely knowledgeable. I certainly had an experience I couldn’t have had just by visiting the Mint’s web site.
One question that often comes up is if explanations should be made available in braille. Primarily, I would say that a coin museum is better viewed with a guide, but if labels and descriptions are provided, it cannot be assumed that all blind people read braille. For those who do, it can be extremely useful, but those who don’t, may need an alternative solution, for example automated narration.
As promised, I will not give you an answer if you should make your coin exhibit accessible to blind people. It is much more than a yes or no question. However, I would encourage all coin museums to consider it, because a coin exhibit can create a lifelong memory, particularly because not too many are available, and it is rather difficult for blind people to be exposed to numismatics.
When such a decision is made, it will depend on the objects exhibited, the availability of space for a potential special exhibit, and the availability of staff who would be offering a specially guided numismatic tour.
It is equally important to remember that since a numismatic exhibit is by default not something that blind people would think of as a tactile experience, if you decide to make your exhibit available to blind people, market it through the right channels to get the necessary publicity. The best places to start is blindness related organizations in your area, magazines and conferences for the blind.
Finally, let me show you an example of how such a thing would work. Just recently I wrote about the Coin petting zoo, organized by the Lawrence University. Though this exhibit wasn’t made with blind people in mind, it could easily be one of the greatest numismatic experiences for a blind person that’s out there. You can read my post about the coin petting zoo here.
In this post I could only touch the tip of the iceberg, and there is so much more about making a coin exhibit successfully available to blind people, but I hope I was able to give you a few pointers to get started. If you have any questions, please contact me or leave a comment below, I will be happy to help you to share numismatics with your blind visitors.
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