• The Aquitaine Museum in Bordeaux inaugurated this Wednesday facilities in the form of touch terminals for visitors with disabilities and others.

  • Some 29 stations allow users to touch reproductions of works, they are supplemented by texts in Braille and audio description.

  • An assessment of the impact of these new devices on visitors is scheduled for the spring.

Nothing to do with a small square adapted for people with disabilities, lost in the middle of a classic museum.

This Wednesday, some 29 sensory stations, positioned approximately every 15 meters in the Aquitaine museum, in Bordeaux, giving reproductions of works, text in Braille, and offering audio descriptions to be touched were officially integrated into the permanent route.

They come to enrich it for people who have problems (of sight, hearing, reading, comprehension or mobility etc.) but also for all the public, in a concern of "universal accessibility", underlines Olivier Escots, deputy mayor of Bordeaux in charge of disability and the fight against all forms of discrimination.

In the majestic hall of the museum, there is the first terminal equipped with a 3D reproduction of the building which offers an orientation plan.

"A person like me does not know where he is when he arrives there", points out Nicolas Caraty, cultural mediator of the museum, himself blind.

He has been experimenting with tactile devices for ten years and has piloted the implementation of these stations created to measure for the museum, in conjunction with around twenty trades (ceramist, luthier, stonemason, etc.) At the same time, a spotlight is cast on the heritage interest of the museum building itself.

“Each time we wondered what more we could bring to all visitors,” underlines Laurent Vedrine, director of the museum.

Casts as close as possible to the works

On one of the first stations of the permanent route of the museum, which takes up the challenge of sweeping 400,000 years of history, there is for example a reproduction of Venus with the horn, which was made by a stonecutter.

The 25,000-year-old one stands behind its window, while its copy can be felt and Nicolas Caraty, after making sure, can testify that it is "a very close cast" of the original.

Prehistoric tools have also been reproduced (as close as possible to the original materials when possible) and can be handled by everyone, especially children.

For the jewels from the treasure of Tayac, in Gironde, which the visitor discovers a little further on, the gold necklaces are reproduced in brass.

Each time “simple texts, written in large print and with significant contrasts, but with the right information, points out Nicolas Caraty.

We know that 18% of the French population has a disability, that's almost one person in five”.

A giant model of the city of Bordeaux, in Roman times when it was called Burdigala, also makes it possible to materialize the nerve centers of the city of the time.

"It is at the top of current scientific research", welcomes the director of the Aquitaine museum.

Playful copies for different audiences

A little further on, a 1/100 reproduction of the Palais Gallien, a 22,000-seat amphitheater, was made by Jacques Vogel, an enthusiast, who assembled a million pieces with tweezers.

It shows a skillfully orchestrated movement of accesses so that women and slaves do not cross paths with the highest social classes, who moreover settled down below, as close as possible to the stage.

With these arrangements, the testimonies of history have a weight, a texture and sometimes a smell.

A station gives pride of place to Bordeaux wine, with the reproduction of a typical amphora (which stands on its own) and different samples to smell.

If some visitors will take a little time to get used to being able to touch works of art in a museum, this playful station like the one that allows you to test copies of African musical instruments should make things easier.

With the support of associations such as Unadev and apiDV, the Aquitaine museum offers a total of 48 videos in sign language and 70 interpreted objects to "tell the museum", underlines Nicolas Caraty.

The terminals have already been in place for several months, as the inauguration had been postponed due to Covid, but it is still difficult to estimate its success with visitors.

An evaluation is scheduled for next spring.


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  • Culture

  • Museum

  • Inclusion

  • Disability

  • Gironde

  • Aquitaine

  • Bordeaux