Experiences

Following are live projects using the DiscoveryPEN system

Conan Doyle Museum
Dr Janner’s Museum
Ashdown Forest Trail
‘The Gosport Gazette – 1914 to 1919’
RNIB Tactile Images and Map

Following are the completed projects in the last years:

Teignmouth Heritage Trail

There are twelve boards around the town which all are accessible via the pens.
The text on the boards is read to the user, as well as an anecdotal story about the area where the board is located.

Butler Gallery Ireland

Holywells Park

Holywells Park in Ipswich Suffolk have just installed the Discover Bird board in their newly refurbished café. The Park has undergone a 3.5 m restoration as part of the Parks for People project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Big Lottery Fund, with additional financial support from Ipswich Borough Council and the Friends of Holywells Park. The board has been a great success with families learning about the 70 birds on the board. They love listening to the birds calls and song and the quiz is a real hit, especially the question about Harry Potters owl.

Oxford University Botanic Gardens

In 2011, after seeing DiscoveryPEN at the Museums and Heritage Show, London, Alison Forster Curator ordered the DP Systerm. They wanted to issue visitors with the PEN and a leaflet that mapped the trail in a creative and informal way. Designed for the general public, the leaflet contains interviews with Philip Pullman, who’s visit to the gardens was the inspiration for the Dark Materials series of books. There are sound spots with story-telling, introduction to various members of staff and of course explanations about various plants. The print is on Polypropylene A4 double-sided coloured sheets. The trail was created by independent interpreter, Eka Morgan. So far they have two talking publications – “Tales of Trees and other Plants” and “Discovery Trail – an audio trail told by Oxford Chemists”.

Culloden Battlefield Museum, Inverness

Most blind and partially-sighted people visiting a museum need help being taken around. The helper usually narrates or explains what information is being conveyed. This can become a rather tiring, sometimes inaccurate, often not very animated process. In order to avoid manual explanations, Culloden was looking for a simple-to-use, digitally-produced solution. Unlike Oxford, (who have leaflets,) the curator decided to apply sound enabled leaflet and discs onto the glass cabinets. Thereby, simply touching an illustration of the rifle used provides a full explanation. In total, there are over 25,000 words used in the entire audio exhibit, positioned in less than 30 A4 sheets.

St Andrews Golf Museum.

ST Andrews have a lot of secondary and primary school visits. The curator wanted to have a simple device that could be used for project work, in which students could build their own trail of information learnt during their visit. Using the DiscoveryPEN and recordable stickers students are able to build their own trail with their own voice recordings, recordings free from the web as well as illustrations of photographs of the mayor taken during the day.

Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

Kay Cooper wanted to enhance the experience blind people had at their museum. She chose the DP System with its recordable stickers. Duxford made specially designed cases with recesses for the stickers to create a seamless display originally designed for blind. As the project progressed, however, the possibility of use by sighted people was taken into consideration.

Bristol M Shed Museum, Bristol

The M Shed museum is a state of the art museum that expresses and informs people of the role Bristol played in various vital industries for Britain. They originally used the PENfriend with plastic medallions, but are replacing these with the DiscoveryPEN with recordable badges. Paul Sullivan is a great believer in maximising the experience of blind people. When asked what motivated blind people to visit museums, he replied, “It’s like this: suppose you were on holiday in Greece and you phone home. You would give a verbal description of the place, the sunsets, the cities, the beaches, etc and the listener would build a picture of you in Greece. So the same thing happens with Museums.” (PENfriend is designed for personal use by blind people; DiscoveryPEN is more for institutions.)

Bristol City Museum Audio Guide

We have partnered with Bristol Museum, enabling blind visitors to find out about many historic artefacts for the first time. Objects in the Egypt exhibition at the museum have been given stickers with audio descriptions stored on PenFriends.

“For visually impaired people, they just walk round museums and it’s just one glass case after another. The PENfriend really brought it to life. We knew what we were looking at, we knew the history of the items and how old they were and what they were used for. All things that we had no idea of before.” – Jennifer Stirratt, registered blind person

We are currently developing similar projects with The National Trust.

Ted Hughes Poetry Trail Audio

We worked with Stover Country Park, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Local Reserve that includes the Ted Hughes Poetry Trail. The poems in the pack were recorded by the poet Alice Oswald. Next to each title and poem on the sheet are soundspots for the TalkingPEN to play back the relevant recording.
See the Ted Huges poetry trail.

Testimonials

Accessibility Coordinator, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources: Fern Trail

"This is probably the most accessible trail of people of all kinds of disabilities in the entire state. I really hope it spreads."

Paul Sullivan - Museum Access and Inclusion Officer, Bristol

The pilot project has been so successful that the pen will be extended to more galleries and collection.

British Golf Museum

The DiscoveryPEN has been very successful in our trial and has received excellent feedback. We have extended its run and will certainly look to use this on a wider scale in the Museum in the future – incorporating different languages too

John Fletcher, Manager of Oral Histories, Anderson House

"We are very excited to get started. There are so many possibilities. This will really benefit our site."

Katey Boal - Learning Manager, Culloden Battlefield and Visitor Centre

"We are very pleased with the Discovery PEN - It is an easy way to increase accessibility within the galleries."

Visitor Feedback - Oxford Botanical Garden

"The audio was great. Very easy to follow and find sites and I am directionally challenged. Excellent guide for all ages. It was very easy to use. I wear hearing aids and I could hear it very clearly. Thankyou for a very interesting tour"

Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden

"There is this 'Ah Ha' moment when visitors used the pen. It is magic."