Prioritizing Aesthetic Touch: Interpreting Historical Textiles with Digital Embroidery

A lack of accessible exhibitions for Blind and low-vision (BLV) visitors in art museums and historical sites is a barrier to equitable participation. The design and fabrication of accessible materials can be time-consuming and expensive for many institutions. We describe our work using digital embroidery machines to interpret historical textiles to provide accessible interpretations for BLV museum visitors and tactile learners. Our work focuses on designing solutions that that are informative, durable, and enjoyable to touch, while affordable to produce. Through a collaborative design process with tactile graphics experts in museums we create prototypes of historical textiles that meet these criteria. We describe our design process and offer fabrication guidelines for patterns and materials.