Visiting Museums from the Perspective of Visually Impaired Visitors: Experiences and Accessibility Resources in Portuguese Museums

Although new, renewed, and innovative museum experiences are constantly provided to the sighted public, millions of visually impaired persons worldwide are still deprived of access to enjoying and engaging with collections. This research aims to investigate the limitations of blind or partially sighted persons in visiting a museum nowadays. Semi-structured interviews with seventy-two visually impaired Portuguese individuals revealed reasons and factors that contribute to positive and negative visiting experiences, and the assessment of sixteen accessibility resources demonstrates their frequency and potential usefulness in museum visits. It concludes that the actual limited experiences in museums could be surpassed and enhanced by moving beyond accessibility, embracing inclusion, and focusing on the creation of multimodal and multisensory approaches to promote exceptional, memorable, and exciting visiting opportunities for all.