Abstract

Social inclusion for blind people is always neglected when dealing with visual art accessibility, from artwork to art galleries and museums, not to mention the art education system. Exposure to visual art should be easy access for everyone including blind and visually impaired individuals. Many studies have claimed to explore opportunities and exploration of art accessibility toward these communities. However, there is much investigation that is needed to understand their perspective, issues, and challenges toward this subject. We have conducted semi-structured interviews with twenty-one blind and visually impaired people from the Malaysian Association for the Blind and Persatuan Orang-orang Cacat Islam Malaysia. The interview is to understand their feelings and perspective toward the art education background, art accessibility, and art exposure from galleries and museums and to understand the importance of touch in accessing visual art. The findings could include advocating for the development of new assistive technology, with more supporting organizations that could work to drive innovations and improvement through design interventions and technological advancement for art accessibility and giving awareness on art accessibility for blind and visually impaired problems on visual arts.