V-touch is a project exploring the difficulties encountered by people who are blind or visually impaired during their visits to museums and galleries. Due to funding restraints, the cost of existing resources and the poor use of those existing resources, the visual arts are still not accessible to people who are blind or have vision impairment. The aim of the project is to enable those visitors to ‘see’ art pieces such as paintings, pottery, sculpture and others. To do so, the V-Touch includes a glove, which enables the wearer to feel the depth of a painting, and the Sonochromatic Scale to translate the painting’s color into music notes. By combining this sensory information, the user, who is wearing a glove containing vibro-tactile sensors, is able to ‘touch’ the painting and interpret it in their own way. The other objective of the V-Touch is to enable people who are blind or have vision impairment to have more freedom of movement in public places such as museums and galleries, but also, (if further developed), in their everyday lives. It would enable them to develop their own taste in Art, instead of relying on others to describe the exhibition. The author includes future works that could be installed to make the V-Touch available in museums and galleries. To develop such a technology, understanding what resources are currently available in museums and galleries is important. It is also important to know what staff members of both museums and galleries would like to see developed in order to fit the different spaces in both places. For the V-Touch, research was carried out with staff members from museums and galleries around Ireland, as well as staff members from the National Council for the Blind of Ireland.
