Museum for All: Wearable Immersive Virtual Tours in Museums for People with Neurodevelopmental Disorders

• Published in: IOP conference series. Materials Science and Engineering Vol. 364; no. 1; pp. 12047 - 12054
• Main Authors: Messina, Nicolò, Matarazzo, Vito, Occhiuto, Daniele, Gelsomini, Mirko, Garzotto, Franca
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 01.06.2018
• Subjects: Disorders; Immersive virtual reality; Museums; Wearable technology
• ISSN: 1757-8981; 1757-899X
• DOI: 10.1088/1757-899X/364/1/012047

"Social stories" are used in educational interventions for subjects with Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDD) to help them gain an accurate understanding of social situations, develop autonomy and learn appropriate behavior. Traditionally, a social story is a short narrative that uses paper sheets, animations, or videos to describe a social situation of everyday life, e.g., "going to school", "visiting a museum", "shopping at the supermarket". In our research, we exploit Wearable Immersive Virtual Reality (WIVR) technology to create a novel form of social story called Wearable Immersive Social Story (WISS). The paper describes the idea of transforming paper-based social stories, written for the project "Museo per tutti" (Museum for All), into WISS to better support persons with NDD in visiting museums and thus increasing their accessibility.