Keywords

1 Introduction

 Between 2019 and 2022, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) undertook efforts to develop a new definition of a museum. This new definition expands the scope of these institutions' activities and sets new guiding principles for fulfilling their statutory missions. Key aspects of this new vision include openness to multiculturalism, participation, and activities promoting sustainable development. These principles significantly influence exhibition formats and the accompanying linguistic narratives in contemporary museums. Additionally, one of the most important tasks for museology in the twenty-first century has been established: ensuring broad accessibility to cultural heritage for all audiences, including individuals with various disabilities (“Report on the ICOM Member Feedback for a new museum definition. Independent analysis & report elaborated for the ICOM Define Committee”, 2021).

Contemporary museum activity strategies have evolved in response to positive social changes related to equality and social inclusion, as well as legal and statutory regulations that recommend or mandate specific solutions.The most important Polish legal acts supporting people with various needs in equal access to socio-economic life and cultural goods are: the Charter of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (1997) (“Karta Praw Osób Niepełnosprawnych”, 1997), the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) (“Karta Praw Osób Niepełnosprawnych”, 1997), ratified in Poland in 2012, and the Recommendation CM/Rec 14 of the Committee of Ministers for Member States on the participation of disabled people in political and public life (“Zalecenie CM/Rec(2011)14 Komitetu Ministrów dla państw członkowskich w sprawie uczestnictwa osób niepełnosprawnych w życiu politycznym i publicznym z dn. 16 listopada 2011 r., 2011”).

A new perspective in developing solutions for a diverse group of museum visitors is the increasingly widespread use of the principles of universal design principles in the field of architecture (Kuryłowicz, 1995) and various spheres of social life (Błaszczak & Przybylski, 2010). In Poland, the importance of universal design was affirmed by the “Act of July 19, 2019, on Ensuring Accessibility for People with Special Needs.” This act officially mandated the use of universal design solutions and required all public entities to ensure accessibility in architecture, digital information, and communication. A direct outcome of this legislation is the government program “Accessibility Plus,” which led to the implementation of several initiatives. One such initiative is the research grant “Friendly City: Supporting the Independence of People with Visual Impairments in Using the Public Transport Network in Lodz,” which includes applications for location information and local architectural monuments.

Literature and source materials regarding contact with and reception of works of art by people with disabilities can be divided into three categories:

  • Publications and scientific studies: Among the most important publications related to the theoretical aspect of research on the reception of works of art are: Maria Poprzęcka, Inne obrazy: oko, widzenie, sztuka. Od Albertiego do Duchampa, (Poprzęcka, 2009); Georges Didi-Huberman, Devant l’image: question posée aux fins d'une histoire de l’art, (Didi-Huberman, 1990); Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception. A Psychology of a Creative Eye, (Arnheim, 1990); Freeman Tilden, Interpreting our heritage, (Freeman, 2007). The idea that knowledge allows one to see is also present in the texts of an iconic avant-garde artist who worked in Lodz, Władysław Strzemiński, who emphasized the role of thought, experience and visual awareness being the result of the development of society (Strzemiński, 1969).

  • Legal and normative acts and government recommendations, which officially introduce the requirement to use universal design solutions, as well as the introduction by all public entities of architectural, digital and information and communication accessibility. A vital part of this group of publications are also the documents issued by International Council of Museums (ICOM) and International Council on Monuments and Historic Sites (ICOMOS). Among them, particularly important documents include the ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums and the ICOMOS Charter for the Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage.

  • Reports, statistical summaries and training materials, which in Poland are issued by National Institute for Museums (NIMOZ) and foundations supporting people with disabilities (i.e., Audiodeskrypcja foundation based in Białystok, Poland).

The chapter is structured as follows: Section 2 regards the history of research conducted at the University of Lodz, it shows the background for more recent and currently developed projects. Sections 3 and 4 describe activities undertaken in the “Art from Lodz Against the Background of European Art” and “Friendly City projects”, focusing on their goals, methods of achieving them, eventual challenges and difficulties faced by both organizers and beneficiaries. Section 5 considers the Industrial Doctorate realized in cooperation with the Museum of the City of Lodz, as a way of building theoretical foundations for further development of methods of making art and information more available to users with various impairments. The chapter is ended with a conclusion and clear recommendations regarding making historic buildings available to people with special needs.

2 History of Research and Worked Out Solutions

The “Friendly City” project is one of the activities undertaken at the Institute of Art History of the University of Lodz, in the field of making art accessible to people with visual impairments. Before presenting the basic concepts, it is essential to highlight the preliminary solutions piloted in Lodz and its region. It is also important to note that all developed approaches were consistently consulted with the final beneficiaries—people with sensory disabilities—as well as museum curators and educators. Key questions addressed during the implementation of all accessibility projects include:

  • What and how should we, as a society, but also scientists, do to make social inclusion even greater?

  • What kind of message would be full and clear for people with non-standard needs?

  • How to make it easy to convey, but also to understand?

  • What makes it modern and suitable for the twenty-first century?

Research into ways of supporting people with visual disabilities began at the University of Lodz in the academic year 2013/2014 as part of the course “Audio Description of Works of Art” under the supervision of Prof. Aneta Pawłowska from the Department of Art History of the University of Lodz. During the classes, a group of students, in consultation with blind audio describer Barbara Szymańska from the “Audiodekrypcja” Foundation in Białystok, prepared a description of the key space of the Museum of Art in Lodz, the Neoplastic Room designed by Władysław Strzemiński in 1948. Separate descriptions were made for the artistic objects exhibited within. The course was intended to introduce the topic of verbal description of works of art, so that it meets the needs of people with advanced visual impairment (i.e., audio description of artistic objects) to the interest of art historians (Pawłowska, 2015). The classes conducted in subsequent years were carried out using the project method in cooperation with local cultural institutions (Museum of Art in Lodz, Museum of the City of Lodz, Museum of the Factory in Manufaktura, Museum of Independence Traditions). The classes’ main goal was to familiarize students with the principles of making art accessible to people with visual impairments, with particular emphasis on the ability to create audio descriptions. For students, it was also an opportunity to learn about the realities of work in institutions that could be their potential places of employment. During classes, working in groups, they tested their skills in practice and consolidated the acquired knowledge in the field of history of art and the region.

The following academic year, another group of students prepared audio descriptions for the second branch of the Museum of Art in Lodz-ms2. The institution boasts one of the world’s oldest publicly exhibited collections of modern art. A key part of the collection are works of art that are non-figurative. Working with paintings seemingly devoid of narrative made students aware of the importance of using precise vocabulary while creating descriptions, but above all, the need for constant consultations and gaining feedback on the effects of their work from people with visual impairments. Since the beginning of research and implementation of activities related to audio description, the Institute of Art History of the University of Lodz has been continuously cooperating with local associations of visually impaired people. The regularly organized meetings highlight the significant role that emotions play in the perception of a work of art. This emphasizes the challenging task of an audio describer, who must verbally convey colors and the relationships between elements in a composition. The goal is to enable people with visual impairments to achieve a comprehensive perception of the artwork, rather than merely becoming superficially familiar with its appearance. (Drozdowski & Pawłowska, 2019).

While implementing projects, prepared descriptions are not limited to sculptures or paintings. This diversity was particularly visible in the case of the project carried out at the Museum of the City of Lodz, located in the former palace of the Poznański family. In 2015, students worked on descriptions of the interiors and their furnishing elements (e.g., furniture, fireplaces, decorations, everyday items, etc.), supporting the “Museum at Your Fingertips” project (2015), created as part of the “Accessible Culture” program of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. The aim of the activities was to adapt the Museum of the City of Lodz for the use of people with non-standard needs.

To promote the active and independent participation of people with visual impairments in engaging with art, researchers from the University of Lodz developed a special mobile application for the private Factory Museum located in the Lodz shopping and entertainment center, Manufaktura. The application's task is to help future users navigate the facility. The project was developed in collaboration with three faculties of the University of Lodz: the Faculty of Philosophy and History, the Faculty of Philology, and the Faculty of Physics and Applied Computer Science. This interdisciplinary cooperation resulted in a guidance system with dedicated audio descriptions. The solution was repeatedly evaluated by the final beneficiaries—people with various visual impairments and histories of eyesight loss. It is based on a mobile application and a system of guiding markers (beacons), which enable visually impaired visitors to independently explore urban spaces or exhibitions by directing them to specific locations and describing the appearance of these spaces or objects (Fig. 1). Although the audio description has been prepared, and the application developed, it turned out to be too expensive for the privately owned museum to commercialize. This highlights that financial constraints can sometimes prevent the implementation of prepared solutions, either entirely or partially, depending on the decisions of private owners. Solutions like this can be used by all people using a smartphone or smartwatch application. The application was supposed to be free, and was prepared as compatible with both IOS and Android environments (Drozdowski et al., 2019). This project called “I See Because I Hear: audio description—contemporary support for people with visual impairments in contact with art” was awarded at the INTARG 2020 International Fair of Economic and Scientific Innovations (Drozdowski et al., 2019).

Fig. 1
2 screenshots of the view controller and description view controller. The view controller has a text that reads Zbliz sie do do eksponatu numer 1. The description view controller has a text that reads plan ogolny.

Screenshots of the application. The first one guides viewers to the next object on the exhibition tour, and the second shows part of the audio description prepared

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The key conclusions drawn from projects that supported Lodz museologists with human resources, recruited from art history students at the University of Lodz, were twofold. First, it is essential to sensitize audio describers to the critical importance of well-constructed verbal descriptions. Second, the subjective input of people with visual disabilities is invaluable when consulting on these descriptions of works of art. The experiences and recommendations for proceeding with the above activities were presented in the academic textbook by Aneta Pawłowska and Julia Sowińska-Heim entitled “Audio Description of Works of Art. Methods, Problems, Examples” (Pawłowska & Sowińska-Heim, 2016).

3 “Art from Lodz Against the Background of European Art”

As part of the Operational Program Knowledge Education Development 2014–2020, which is financed by the EU, a team of employees of the Institute of Art History of the University of Lodz and the Museum of the City of Lodz, made an attempt at answering the question: How to encourage the viewer to have more frequent and open contact with museums and art?

The goal of the project “Art from Lodz Against the Background of European art. Excluded/Included” POWR.03.01.00-00-T141/18 (project director—Aneta Pawłowska) was to familiarize recipients from the Lodz Voivodeship, seniors and school youth with visual or hearing impairments, with issues related to broadly understood visual arts (paintings, sculptures, installations, murals and objects of decorative art) and architecture (Pawłowska & Długosz, 2020). The activities were aimed at disseminating regional cultural heritage among non-standard higher education recipients.Footnote 1 In the project, it was important to take action in the context of the current and, above all, projected demographic situation of the voivodeship’s population. Data collected in June 2023 shows that over 600,000 people living in the area are senior citizens. The last data on people with disabilities collected in 2021, shows that almost 400,000 declared legal or biological disability.Footnote 2 The project, carried out from February 2019 to September 2022 involved 693 people with visual, hearing and other disabilities from the Lodz Voivodeship. In the additional, fourth year (until September 30, 2023), another 219 people were invited to the project, and the group of beneficiaries was expanded to include cultural animators.

To better illustrate the phenomena, concepts, and characteristics of different eras, beneficiaries had access to typhlographics (graphic reliefs made using the thermoforming technique) that depicted buildings, architectural details, and other related aspects of Lodz and European architecture. These typhlographics became one of the most important tools for understanding monuments. A crucial factor in presenting buildings through typhlographics is selecting an appropriate façade that is both characteristic and visually identifiable with the landmark. When describing architecture, it is also important to present the monument's floor plan, typically limited to the ground floor. However, for twentieth and twenty-first-century architecture, where floor layouts can vary significantly, it is beneficial to illustrate a combination of several floors. Additionally, three volumes of the textbook series “Lodz Art in Europe, European Art in Lodz” were developed (Pawłowska & Długosz, 2021, 2022a, 2022b). The publications were done in enlarged black print, correlated with dot notation in Braille. Each volume is divided into several shorter topics, discussing important phenomena and styles in art, as well as selected artists. Individual topics are complemented by audio descriptions adjacent to full-page, colorful, convex graphics (typhlographics) (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2
A screenshot of the book with a spiral binding, featuring a page with text and a picture of a building. The texts are in a foreign language.

Examplary pages from the “Lodz Art in Europe, European Art in Lodz” textbook, showcasing the topic: “What is modernism in architecture?” and a correlated typhlographic of the PAST telephone exchange building, 1928

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The participants significantly improved their qualifications in contact with art and knowledge of the language used to describe works of art. They also strengthened their life skills, such as special orientation or overcoming communication barriers and improved their Polish. The participants generally stated that their involvement in the project boosted their knowledge on art and culture. This was also measured by using pre-tests and post-tests in which outcomes (in the first year of the project duration) are presented on graphs (Figs. 3 and 4).

Fig. 3
A bar chart comparing pre and post test scores for various age groups on their knowledge and skills in art and language. The age groups range from young children to older adults. The chart indicates that all age groups showed improvement in both art and language after the project.

Graphs showing assessment of growth of knowledge, measured by using pre- and post-tests

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Fig. 4
A bar graph plots the increase in skills in contact with art. The bars are plotted for 12 categories. The highest increase is observed in the senior women with visual impairments.

Graphs showing assessment of growth of skills, measured by using pre- and post-tests

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The activities developed in the project showed how, without interfering with the fabric of the monument, and with a small financial outlay, it is possible to bring the recipient closer to the work of art. One of the alternative forms, which does not interfere with the structure of the building and allows for getting to know it, is using audio description (written or recorded in Polish Sign Language) combined (or standing alone) with typhlographics. The correlated impact on hearing and touching enables visually impaired people to have significant access to architectural monuments. This may be particularly important in the broader context of independent exploration of art, which goes beyond the competence of museums or galleries.

4 The “Friendly City” Project—Boosting Activity

The project “Friendly City. Supporting the independence of people with visual impairments in the use of the public transport network in Lodz, including applications regarding location information and local architectural monuments” (implementation 2021–2024, grant holder Aneta Pawłowska) is a joint effort of employees of the Institute of Art History of the University of Lodz and the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw (SWPS). The main goal of the project is to improve the accessibility of cultural heritage for people with visual impairments, focusing on the space of the historic city with unique 19th-century buildings. The main aim of the project is to develop an application that makes it easier for the visually impaired people to navigate around Lodz, but it will also be dedicated to foreign tourists (available languages: Polish, English, Spanish and Ukrainian). In Poland, people with vision problems have significant difficulties in moving around and visiting or exploring cities on their own. In result, they are not fully independent, nor do they enjoy much aesthetic experiences. The appearance of eclectic monuments or whole building complexes and its urban context seem particularly difficult to perceive by people with visual impairments.

Lodz is the first city affected, but also treated as a pilot center. The scalability of IT solutions will allow them to be introduced in other European cities (e.g., within the prestigious group of universities associated with the European University of Post-industrial Cities (UNIC) network, of which the University of Lodz is a member).

It is important to note the variety of level of accessibility among the historic buildings in Lodz. The ones that are best prepared for visiting by visitors with disabilities are currently, primarily museums and galleries. In the project however, the area of interest of scholars was wider and included buildings and whole complexes, that are characteristic of the urban fabric and represent a wide range of public utility, not only relating to culture. These include 19th-century tenement houses, former industrialists’ palaces, churches, but also buildings erected in recent years, such as the Fabryczna Railway Station or the EC1 complex.

The combination of experience in creating audio description and eye-tracker research (oculograph) (Krejtz et al., 2024), in which effects will be presented in a form of a free application for smartphones, smartwatches and other devices in the IoS and Android environment is intended to increase the level of independence in mobility and experiencing cultural goods, and set to break the current barriers of visually impaired people in the field of tourism. Application users will receive precise voice messages regarding location and information on selected objects through their own devices. The final product will contain five paths with the most interesting objects that can be visited “from the level of a passer-by”. One of the functions prepared for users will be the ability to independently create routes with their favorite objects (Pawłowska et al., 2023a, 2023b).

There will be over eighty historically and culturally interesting places on the map of Lodz, selected and described by art historians. All of them have been provided with an audio description consisting of the property’s “bio”, a detailed description of the style and architectural details, and additional information (fun facts and historical information related to a given place). The texts were prepared according to the established rules resulting from the principles of audio description, professional description of a work of art, the outcomes of eye-tracking tests and consultations with people with various visual impairments.

Participants of the consultations were members of the Polish Association of the Blind (PZN)—branch in Sieradz, the Lodz District—Lodz—Gorna Circle and the Municipal Circle No. 3 Lodz-Centrum. The consulting group was varied in terms of age, eye-sight loss history and educational background (Fig. 5.). Interviews with this target group have been conducted since the beginning of 2022 and have contributed a lot of important remarks to the development of audio descriptions. One of the problems was adapting the language of the descriptions to make it as understandable and as accessible as possible for those using the application. Many hours of conversations with people from PZN led to the selection of two solutions for constructing the audio description content. The first is providing given technical terms in the field of architecture (tympanum, pilaster, portal, etc.), with simple two- or three-word explanations in brackets. This solution freed people who were not sufficiently proficient in using the mobile application from searching for explanations in the resident dictionary program, and thus made the application easier to use and more thorough. The second proposed solution, which additionally enriches the application’s functions, is a glossary explaining the more difficult terms broadly (Krejtz et al., 2023).

Fig. 5
A photo of the group of people in a conference room, discussing the accessibility of an application for the visually impaired.

Consultation meeting for the early drafts of the application, 2023. Due to technological progress, mobile phones have become the basic tool for exploring space for the visually impaired. Hence, the authors notice that retirees are willing to engage in work on such applications. Although it is difficult to determine what percentage of the final users of the application will be seniors, they constitute a significant group that should not be forgotten when designing mobile solutions

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During the development of audio descriptions, numerous walks around Lodz were conducted. Testers, consisting of both sighted and visually impaired individuals, were recruited for the project to provide feedback on the clarity of the texts presented. During this process, sighted people wore eye trackers that recorded the movement of their eyemovements. Based on the tests, audio descriptions were created according to the hierarchy of points that most frequently attracted the participants' gaze. In the next stage of refining the descriptions, both versions (the one consulted with the Polish Association for the Blind (PZN) and the one based on the eye-tracking results) were read to visually impaired consultants. Their feedback on the usefulness of the audio descriptions was collected through a survey prepared by SWPS employees. (Pawłowska et al., 2023a, 2023b).

The application will be coordinated with Totupoint navigation and information system (http://www.Totupoint.Pl/Strona.Php?Nazwa=start). The installation of the system’s wireless tag network took place in the last quarter of 2023, but the list is still being supplemented. What is important the process is noninvasive, it does not interfere with the edifice’s structure permanently (i.e., there is no need for drilling holes, the device can be mounted using a special adhesive tape) and does not significantly interfere with the visual sphere of objects. The tags were placed at both public transport stops, and the monuments indicated in the project. Within the principles of universal design, the developed system will be incorporated into the urban tourist infrastructure and public transport (buses, trams and stops). It is worth mentioning that the stage of preparing cooperation agreements with MPK (local public transport) and managers of buildings such as the Grand Theater, District Court or Fabryczna Railway Station caused the most difficulties. These problems were mainly issues of time-consuming bureaucracy, permissions for placing the devices on historical buildings had to be obtained from both current users or owners and the Provincial Office for the Protection of Monuments. However, in each of the places selected for the project, researchers met with a remarkably friendly reception and full support for the initiative. It should be added that a significant problem hindering the smooth implementation of the projects schedule are large-scale works in the center of Lodz, such as the prolonged renovation of Freedom Square, where several navigation and information devices are planned to be placed.

The finalization of project activities aims to address the main research question: how can the availability of architecture for all its recipients shape their attitudes toward it, and what new standards can be established for the dissemination of cultural goods? Lodz, a city reflecting the history of the 19th-century textile industry, has the potential to become an inclusive place, widely accessible to people with disabilities and tourists from abroad.

5 “The Industrial Doctorate”—Good Practices in Museology and Language

The implementation of the described projects was not only an opportunity to create specific tools and solutions supporting access to culture for the widest possible audience, but also paved the way for their permanent implementation in Polish cultural institutions. An attempt to further standardize and introduce said changes to the area of museum practice was conducted during the period October 2018–June 2023 as part of the doctoral studies in the second edition of the grant program of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education “Industrial Doctorate”. The research work carried out was entitled “Assessment and verification of modern methods of translating the visual code of an art object and a historical object into a descriptive language in the educational space of a museum exhibition”. Its main part was realized at the Museum of the City of Lodz—an interdisciplinary institution located in a former factory owner’s residence, which is a symbol of the industrial city. The aim of the research project was to comprehensively implement a new methodology and accessibility standards for the design of language message systems in exhibition spaces. Reflections obtained through the implementation of the previously described university projects, as well as surveys with disabled beneficiaries conducted within them, allowed for the development of key research assumptions. The primary goal of the work was to analyze and verify the linguistic methods currently used in museum practice to support the perception and knowledge of a visual object (“Act of November 21, 1996, on museums”, 1996),Footnote 3 which is an exhibit or a work of art. The assessment was carried out in terms of their effectiveness, compatibility with the competences of a modern recipient and accessibility in the case of recipients with special needs (including, above all, recipients with visual impairments and intellectual disabilities). The main research problem was an attempt to answer the question of what a universal formula of a linguistic message in a museum should look like, how can it fulfill not only informational or educational functions, but through its structure and method of communication could become a tool supporting the cultural and social inclusion of the recipient, and also implement the universal design requirements. The solution to the problem outlined above assumed the implementation of a number of projects in the scope of standard activities of the Museum of the City of Lodz, within which research (qualitative and quantitative) was carried out on the effectiveness of traditional and modern types of linguistic messages present in the space and educational activities of museum institutions. Research was conducted with the museum’s audience (surveys, observations, interviews and eye tracking) in order to identify their needs and habits in terms of activities undertaken while visiting museum exhibitions and the attitudes they adopt when contacting a visual object. It should be emphasized that the direction of this research and some of the tools used to conduct it (including typhlographics and audio description texts assessed by respondents) were a direct result of the experience, conclusions and material results of previous projects of the University of Lodz. Their introduction into museum practice was carried out by preparing pilot (and later partial and main) solutions for the space of new permanent and temporary exhibitions (e.g., through leaflets accompanying exhibitions in the ETR—easy to read formula, audio descriptions, pre-guides) along with their evaluation (Długosz, 2022).

Then, based on the collected results, an improved system of methods and tools was prepared, which, after evaluation and pilot implementation, was standardized to become a formula that could also be used in other museums and cultural institutions. The final stage of implementation was the adoption at the Museum of the City of Lodz of “Standards for Communication and Information Accessibility in the Exhibition and Educational Spaces of the Museum of the City of Lodz”, taking into account and specifying the solutions that turned out to be the most effective tools during the research [i.e., texts written in simple Polish in accordance with the principles of plain language (Piekot & Maziarz, 2014), which were recognized as the lowest common denominator of other language systems present in museum spaces], as well as the introduction of a system of linguistic messages that meet these principles to all permanent exhibition spaces.

6 Conclusions and Recommendations Regarding Making Historic Spaces, Buildings and Objects Available to People with Special Needs

The conclusions and experiences resulting from the projects described above, obtained during many years of research by scholars and museologists from Lodz, allowed for the development of a number of recommendations and good practices related to making cultural goods available to people with various needs. They can be described by determining three basic aspects of the activities undertaken in the fields of:

  • Cooperation, in which it is vital to involve the future recipients of the designed solutions (including people with various degrees and types of disabilities), as well as the administrators or organizers responsible for the space provided (i.e., museums and exhibition institutions, private owners of historic buildings, representatives of city authorities, etc.).

  • Communication (both during the implementation of the accessibility project and as an effect of its results), which assumes starting from the simplest and most accessible messages toward more advanced linguistic forms. Thanks to that, instead of adapting a previously prepared wide range of content, it should first be prepared in a simplified form (in accordance with the rules of simple Polish and using elements of ETR texts), and then developed into more extensive variants or adapted to specific information transmission channels (sound, e.g., audio description or visual, e.g., supplemented with translations into Polish sign language).

  • Polysensory, thanks to which, depending on the needs of the respondents’ various senses, they can freely and flexibly choose the most convenient solutions. An example may be the desire to integrate words and images, in example, by combining text and graphic content within tools supporting the tour (such as captions, boards and typhlographics). In this respect, exhibition plans or diagrams are particularly useful. They can be used to present in the form of a mind map the spatial arrangement of individual issues and thematic sequences within an exhibition or a more complex work of art. As research shows, the support most expected by the recipient from the linguistic narrative in the museum space is the ability to understand the material arrangement and the general curatorial concept of the exhibition, which is therefore read as an integrated, ordered message.

Considering the challenges of modern times and rapidly developing technologies, we would like to point out the potential of building digital accessibility, e.g., by creating dedicated applications, an example of which can be the activities for the Factory Museum in Manufaktura and the project “Friendly City. Supporting the independence of people with visual impairments in the use of the public transport network in Lodz, including applications regarding location information and local architectural monuments” described in this chapter. The implemented methods are particularly important because they do not interfere with the historic fabric of the building. Moreover, the use of this type of tools allows to explore monuments independently and frequently return to the content, which translates into deeper knowledge and satisfaction from gaining it. The digitally based methods are also easier to disseminate, standardize and optimize costs, which will translate into their universality and availability.