Remembering Judy Heumann 1947-2023
The disability rights activist Judith (Judy) Heumann died in Washington, D.C. on the afternoon of March 4, 2023. She was a fearless advocate for inclusion of disabled people in society, and she was an effective organizer of nonviolent protests when officials were not listening. Her advocacy, in solidarity with many others, dramatically improved the quality […]
Survey of Blind Adults About Museums
When I started this blog, I wrote short posts announcing my publications with the link to each publication. I hadn’t developed my current practice of summarizing each paper as a blog post. This post summarizes the paper titled “Assessing Attitudes of Blind Adults About Museums”. The paper documents systemic problems that blind people face with […]
Exploring scientific concepts and data with sonification
This post is the second in a series about sonification, representing data with nonspeech audio. I will demonstrate that sonification is an effective tool for learning scientific concepts and analyzing data giving examples from the field of astronomy. The Chandra Photo Album Sonification Collection hosted by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics shows that sonification can […]
Introducing Sonification
In this post, I define sonification as nonspeech audio that conveys information. It can also express emotion. Well-known examples of pattern recognition using sound include the tones of Big Ben for the BBC and the three-tone chime for NBC radio. I discuss using sound to enhance storytelling in a classic orchestral piece, “Peter And The […]
2022 in review
In a December tradition, I write a post about the highlights of my work each year. This year I am focusing on multisensory exhibits that opened in 2022—because exhibit planning can take months or years, I note the project phases completed in 2021. In the spring of 2022, the Please Touch Tour at Macculloch Hall […]
Descriptions are Boring!
Recently, I attended a webinar series about creating museum exhibits. During this series, the presenter repeated a key phrase that got me thinking. “Descriptions are boring.” Then the presenter would remind his audience that people wanted interactive content—something to do. The first time I heard this phrase, I laughed out loud because descriptions are the […]
Challenge And Opportunity
This post is the written version of a short presentation that I gave during the 2022 convention of the National Federation of the Blind of Maryland. It discusses the challenges of convincing museums to add tactile and audio components to exhibits. Then I highlight instances where audio tools were used to convey information. The two […]
Commentary: Accessing the Ancient Mediterranean Studies Classroom
From time to time, I write about the work of others. The article I discuss in this post was shared on social media. It is: Accessing the Ancient Mediterranean Studies Classroom Written by Dr. Daniel C. Smith and published in Ancient Jew Review (AJR) on OCTOBER 24, 2022 Dr. Smith is a Visiting Assistant Professor […]
What’s That? Problems with Automated Image Detection
Technology companies such as Google and Microsoft have developed software algorithms that recognize images and automatically generate descriptions for them. Computer-generated descriptions are improving, but human-generated image descriptions are still the gold standard for creating accessible content. People know their own content, and they can determine the essential details about photographs that are needed when […]