Multisensory Descriptive Tours for All: Access to Cultural Venues through AVT

Tourism is a means to promote intercultural exchange while boosting a country’s social welfare and economy. Tourism can be improved and attract more people if it provides inclusive experiences to all visitors including those who have disabilities or are differently abled. This inclusive approach to approach is known as Accessible Tourism. Providing accessibility entails removing barriers and constrains a feat that can be achieved through audiovisual translation. Audio guides are often provided in buses, cultural venues and museums, but seldom do they take into account the needs of people with special needs. In modern visiocentric societies, people with sensory impairment—blindness or low vision, in particular—find it difficult to access the world around them. The audio guides provided at tourist attraction fail to provide the descriptive detail necessary to allow people to “see” space, shape or color, among other things, through the mind’s eye. Descriptive guides may be the solution for those situations. This thesis accounts for the development of a descriptive guide for Katara following three distinct techniques: nominative description, description with movement and description with touch. Further to discussing the process of scripting a descriptive guide, this thesis also accounts for its validation outcomes to show how this audiovisual translation type might contribute to the enjoyment of a visit to a cultural venue in the context of local tourism.