Press releases

VITEBSK, 7 December (BelTA) – An audio description of the Marc Chagall Museum was presented in Vitebsk on 7 December, BelTA has learned.

The audio guide for visually challenged people was created as part of the Belarusian-Polish project focusing on developing techniques for adjusting information and art to the needs of visually challenged and aurally challenged people.

The project’s coordinator Paulina Pielech, who represented the Polish foundation HumanDoc, remarked that the project had been implemented in two Belarusian museums — the National Art Museum in Minsk and the Marc Chagall Museum in Vitebsk. “The Marc Chagall Museum was chosen because the painter is known all over the world. People in Poland love his works, too. The museum director Irina Voronova welcomed our proposal right away,” noted Paulina Pielech.

“We hope that the project will snowball into more projects. Belarusians will now be able to make audio descriptions of museum expositions and movies on their own. I’d like to believe it will be so because the people, who turned up for our educational seminars, are very active and creative. They have a lot of ideas and plans. I think they are quite capable of continuing work in this direction,” said the project’s coordinator.

The audio guide contains six tracks stored in tablet computers. They describe the house museum, the store, the boys’ room, the guest room, the red hall, and the kitchen. Apart from that, several exhibits are available for tactile examination.

One of the first few visitors, who had been able to appreciate the novelty in the museum, made a few remarks for mass media. “My vision is not so bad for now. I can walk anywhere on my own. But for the last few years I’ve been using only audio books. It is hard for me to read now. I can see only general outlines of objects. It is beautiful when the audio supplies details. If someone is totally blind and can hear only sounds, it is the words that convey the main information,” said the visitor. She thanked everyone, who had helped implement the audio guide for visually challenged people.

The project was created and financed by the Warsaw-based foundation HumanDoc and the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Volunteers from the Belarusian Association of Visually Challenged People and other organizations, who have been trained by Polish colleagues, took part in the project’s implementation.