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Improving Museum Accessibility through Storytelling in Wearable Immersive Virtual Reality

Migliorare l'Accessibilità dei Musei attraverso il Racconto Digitale in Realtà Virtuale Immersiva Indossabile

Garzotto Franca, Matarazzo Vito, Messina Nicolo, Gelsomini Mirko, Riva Carlo

Venue:

2018 3rd Digital Heritage International Congress (DigitalHERITAGE) held jointly with 2018 24th International Conference on Virtual Systems &amp

Year:

2018

Type:

Conference Paper

URL:

Abstract (EN)

Our research aims at helping people with Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDD) enjoy the experience with artistic or cultural artefacts while visiting museums. We adopted a digital storytelling approach that exploits Wearable Immersive Virtual Reality (WIVR) technology and the social story method. A social story is a short textual and visual narrative that describes a social situation of everyday life using visuals (and text) on paper sheets. This method is widely used in interventions for persons with NDD (particularly autism) to help them gain an accurate understanding of social situations, develop autonomy and learn appropriate behaviour. The paper describes how the traditional concept of social story can evolve when the narrative is implemented using a different medium (virtual reality) and a different interaction paradigm (pointing with head movements). We present the concept of Wearable Immersive Social Stories (WISS for short) and describe the design process - performed in collaboration with NDD experts - that led to the definition of WISS and to the development of new technological tools.

Abstract (IT)

La nostra ricerca mira ad aiutare le persone con disturbi dello sviluppo neuro (NDD) a godere dell'esperienza con artefatti artistici o culturali mentre visitano musei. Abbiamo adottato un approccio di racconto digitale che sfrutta la tecnologia di realtà virtuale immersiva indossabile (WIVR) e il metodo della storia sociale. Le storie sociali sono brevi narrazioni testuali e visive che descrivono situazioni sociali della vita quotidiana, utilizzando immagini e testi. L'articolo descrive il concetto di Storie Sociali Immersive Indossabili (WISS) e il processo di progettazione collaborativa con esperti NDD che ha portato alla definizione di WISS.

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