Nghiên cứu Audio Description trong bảo tàng - Rachel Hutchinson

WestminsterResearch http://www.uk/westminsterresearch Museums for all: towards engaging, memorable museum experiences through inclusive audio description Hutchinson, R. This is an electronic version of a PhD thesis awarded by the University of Westminster. © Mrs Rachel Hutchinson, 2019. The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience.

Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Museums for all: towards engaging, memorable museum experiences through inclusive audio description By Rachel Hutchinson A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Westminster for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Psychology University of Westminster December, 2019 “…I hope that audio description can be elevated from its current status as a segregated accommodation outside the general public’s awareness and launched into the new media – a literary/interpretative form with limitless possibilities.” – Georgina Kleege (1956 - ) i Abstract Museums seek to offer their visitors a rich and rewarding experience that is accessible and inclusive. Many museums rely on vision as a means of access to collections. Yet having vision does not necessarily mean that visitors are able to engage with exhibits.

Audio Description (AD) has traditionally been defined as an access tool for people who are blind or partially sighted (BPS), which seeks to make visual information accessible though spoken language. However, AD could simultaneously provide ‘guided looking’ for people with sight. This interdisciplinary thesis sets out the first empirical investigation of AD in museums and its potential as inclusive design. Study 1 examines current understandings of museum AD, through an international practitioner survey.

It reveals disagreement regarding whether AD should aspire to be an objective visual- verbal ‘translation’ or whether it should incorporate interpretative techniques in order to provide a rich experience. Study 2 explores the nature of the museum experience by analysing autobiographical memories for museum visits, demonstrating the importance of thoughts, feelings and personal context in museum memories and demonstrating an autobiographical memory coding model. Study 3 investigates the impact of AD on the experience, engagement and memorability of sighted participants, with AD resulting in richer memories compared to standard audio guides or minimal text interpretation. Study 4 compares sound enriched and standard AD on the experience, engagement and memorability of blind and sighted people, finding experience benefits for all and memorability benefits for BPS people.

This research therefore concludes that AD should be taken out of its access ‘niche’ and considered as an inclusive interpretation tool to enhance engagement and access for all visitors. It argues further that the development of inclusive museum AD should be driven by a fuller understanding of the nature of the museum experience and its lasting impact. ii Publications and Conferences: Parts of this thesis have appeared in the following forms: Journal Articles: Hutchinson, R. Towards the Accessible Museum: Understanding International Museum Audio Description Practices.

Remembering Cultural Experiences: lifespan distributions, richness and content of autobiographical memories of museum visits, Memory Hutchinson, R. Museum audio description: the problem of textual fidelity. Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice, 27(1), 42–57. International Conferences: Hutchinson, R.

Making Memories: measuring the impact of AD facilitated experiences with Autobiographical Memory theory. Paper presented at the Audio-Visual Translation Intermedia Conference, Warsaw, Poland, 19-20th September. Audio Description in an Inclusive Museum. Paper presented at the Sensing Culture Conference, University of Bath, UK, 26-27th March.

Enhancing Museum Visits with Audio Description: Challenges and Opportunities. Paper presented at the Art of Access conference on Audio Description. London, UK, 21st October. Audio description: Intermodal Translation in Museums.

Paper presented at the Translation and the Creative Industries Conference. University of Westminster, London, 6-7th October. iii Contents Introduction to the thesis. 1 Chapter 1: Introduction: a place for audio description in an inclusive museum?.

5 What is access?. 6 The museum experience. 7 What is engagement in the museum?. 12 Barriers to engagement.

14 What is the role of museum interpretation in overcoming these barriers?. 15 Audio in museums: Audio Description. 16 Audio in museums: Audio Guides. 18 Could AD benefit sighted visitors?.

20 Cognition in the museum: imagery, multisensory processing, and memorability. 22 How can the museum experience, including AD facilitated experiences, be evaluated?. 29 Introduction to autobiographical memory, its functions, and importance to museums. 33 The structure of this thesis.

34 Chapter 2: Understanding museum AD: current practices, regional differences and implications. 36 Part A: Towards an understanding of international museum audio description practices: practitioner perspectives. 43 Use of touch. 43 Role of museum AD.

44 Objectivity vs interpretation. 45 Content and style. 48 Part B: Translating the Museum: AD and the implications of textual fidelity. 52 Objectivity and the visibility of the describer-translator.

53 The nature of the source text. 56 The recipient experience. 63 Chapter 3: Autobiographical memories of museum visits: using autobiographical memory theory to explore museum experiences and their lasting impact. 66 What is autobiographical memory?.

67 Autobiographical memory and the self-memory system:. 68 Autobiographical remembering: rehearsal and cueing:. 69 Using autobiographical memory theory to evaluate impact:. 80 Life-span distribution.

94 Chapter 4: ‘Guided looking’: supporting visual exploration of artworks with audio description. 96 Barriers to access and AD as inclusive design. 96 Engaging experiences: approaches to measurement. 108 Participant demographics and time taken to follow up.

108 Experience and engagement. 118 Standard audio guide, audio descriptive guide or visual exploration alone: similarities and differences in experience, engagement and memorability. 118 The impact of AD on the participant experience, engagement and memorability: similarities and differences between SAG and ADG. 126 Chapter 5: The impact of enriched audio description on the exploration of Henry Grant photography, in people with and without sight.

139 Participant demographics and time taken to follow up. 139 Comparison of the impact of ADG and EDG, for BPS and sighted participants. 140 The overall AD experience: levels of engagement of BPS and sighted participants. 153 The impact of EDG and ADG on BPS and sighted listeners: experience and engagement.

154 The impact of EDG and ADG on BPS and sighted listeners: memorability. 156 The overall AD experience for BPS and sighted participants:. 161 Chapter 6: Revisiting inclusive experiences facilitated through Audio Description. 162 Discussion of the research findings.

163 The purpose of museum AD. 163 The long-term impact of the museum experience and approaches to evaluation. 165 AD as a tool for inclusive design. 169 Inclusive AD: implications for practice and avenues for future research.

175 Rethinking museum AD. 179 Summary of contribution to knowledge: .1: Museum AD questionnaire.1: Museum memories questionnaire.2: Instructions and examples for second coder .1: Henry Grant photographs .2: Audio guide and audio description texts .5: Instructions and examples for second coder .1: Additional Henry Grant photo and AD text:. 290 Glossary of Abbreviations. 306 viii List of Figures Figure 3.1: Distribution of specific memories across the life span; expected and observed data .2: Periods in participants’ lives when they visited museums the most, by frequency .3: Percentage of memories up to age 40 by age at encoding, split by visit frequency, with five-year recency removed .4: Mean (SD) percentages of specific and general memories by participant groups .5: Mean (SD) percentage values for content categories .1: Mean (SD) frequencies of detail types recalled by participant group, at Time B .1: Mean detail counts for categories: content, event/activity/movement, spatial, reactions (participants’ thoughts, emotions and memories), semantic information (socio-historical details and details about the photographer), emotion and atmosphere (including non visual imagery) and sound (references to sound and sound images) by participant group and stimuli type (ADG, EDG), at time B.

148 ix List of Tables Table 2.1 Median (Range) Recommended Durations in Minutes for Live and Recorded AD (single stops and full tours) by region .2 Agreement ratings (median, range) for the role of AD for a museum visitor, where 5=’strongly agree’ and 1=’strongly disagree.3 Importance of Content and Style Variables by Region (Median, Range), where 5=’extremely important’ and 1=’not at all important.1: Mean (SD) ages and genders of participant groups by age and visit frequency .2: Mean (SD) number of memories provided, by participant group .3 The mean (SD) word count per memory for young and senior frequent and infrequent museum visitors.1 Age, gender, and number of participants (time A), by research condition 104 Table 4.2 Decision to look further and additional browse time (seconds), by participant group .3: Types of follow-up engagement, by participant group .1: Selection of most and least interesting photos: proportions with ADG and EDG, by participant group .2: Number of participants who selected EDG or ADG for the most/least interesting photo, and percentage thereof who reported experiencing emotion .4: Audio preferences (percentages) by participant group (BPS, sighted) at times A and B .5: Recall of details for ADG or EDG only, and no recall of photos, by participant group .6: Enjoyment ratings (median, range) at times A and B, where the maximum score is 7 .7: Likely re-engagement scores at times A and B (median, range) for BPS and sighted participant groups, where maximum score=5 (definitely).8: Details of further engagement for the BPS and sighted participants who engaged with the content between times A and B. 151 xi Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisory team. Thanks to Alison Eardley for her fantastic supervision throughout the duration of this research. I have valued and benefited from Alison’s wide-ranging interdisciplinary knowledge, ability to make connections and to see things in new ways, not to mention her contagious enthusiasm, appetite for research and generous support and friendship.

My thanks to Peter Ride for his comments on drafts of my thesis and for his insight and contribution to our group meetings. I would also like to thank VocalEyes, in particular Matthew Cock, CEO, for the support for this project and the resources provided, without which it simply would not have been possible. I have also appreciated and learnt much from the on-going discussions with Matthew Cock, Anna Fineman, and all the VocalEyes describers that I have been lucky enough to meet. The partnership with VocalEyes hugely enriched the experience of doing this research.

Thank you to the Museum of London, particularly Frazer Swift, for supporting my work with the Henry Grant collections, for providing space for my studies and helping with participant recruitment, all of which was invaluable and made the research possible. Thanks also to the Thomas Pocklington Trust for funding Study 4, and to both Thomas Pocklington Trust and RNIB for their helpful support in participant recruitment as well as providing space for me to conduct my research at their offices. I would like to thank Louise Fryer, whose academic research and practice has been a constant source of inspiration throughout this work. It was hearing Louise speak about AD at the Blind Creations conference in 2015 that sparked my interest and it has been a privilege to discuss various aspects of AD with her ever since.

Thanks also to Louise and to Lindsay Bywood for reading drafts of this work at various stages throughout the project. Thanks to Joselia Neves for her input on the sound enrichment. A special mention of thanks to Matt Rubery, QMUL, whose encouragement made all the difference when I was a Master’s student heading back into Higher Education after a decade away. Without his support and encouragement, I would never have discovered this fascinating field of research, or applied for a PhD, and so I will be eternally grateful for that.

A huge thanks to all the people who took part in my studies, without whom the research would not have been possible, and from whom I learnt a great deal. And last but not least, I would like to thank my family.