The Indiana Medical History Museum, a non-profit, relies on their guided tours for operations. Due to these limitations, the museum cannot implement assistance for those with hearing impairments. They rely heavily on volunteers for these tours and finding volunteers with the ability to speak ASL proves to be very difficult. This puts limitations on the visitors to the museum and since the IMHM is not as large as many other museums in Indianapolis, this is not ideal.
In order to open up the museum to a new demographic of people, I proposed a mobile application to supplement the guided tour for those with hearing impairments. This application would be accessible for this group of people at the museum and enable them to take the tour with the supplemental application provided.
Integrating technology into this establishment would be something that helps the efforts of the museum and could possibly bring them more attention and in turn, funding for operations and programming.
Masters Capstone
Project Description
I will be working closely with the Indiana Medical History Museum to provide accessible technology to their current guided tour. Presently, the museum implements volunteer docents to give these tours. My project will implement mobile technology to the museum by way of an application that would supplement the IMHM's current tour for the deaf and hard of hearing. The prototype will be designed for iPad, since this device is currently used for payment methods at the museum.
In order to make this application as successful and user friendly as possible I will require implementation of ASL video since many of those who are born deaf speak ASL and not written English as a native language. These video clips for each subsequent room on the museum's tour will be broken down on a room-by-room basis, just as the current tour is formatted. There is a general transcript that has been put together for the guided tour, which is based off of multiple recorded tour transcriptions. My end product will be a functional, interactive prototype, but not a fully working application.