How 'image whisperers' assist blind museum visitors
"They are our eyes," said Karin happily after releasing the arm of one of the specialised "image whisperers" guiding her and other blind people around Geneva's Red Cross museum.
The museum has been offering its new image prompter service to the visually impaired since late last year.
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Karin, who did not want to give her last name, was one of four blind visitors to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum on the last Sunday in March.
The middle-aged woman, who was blinded by illness in her teens, said she was thrilled with her appointed whisperer, Alice Baronnet.
It was great! Just a wonderful experience, a wonderful encounter.
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Baronnet, a spokeswoman for the museum who was among nearly 30 art specialists, guides and artists who last October underwent the necessary training to become an image prompter, was also happy with the experience.
"It's very important for us to be as inclusive as possible," she told AFP.
During the visit, each pair moved around at will.
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Entering a darkened room with black walls, Waltraud Quiblier, a retired teacher who gradually lost her vision, listened intently to her whisperer, Cecile Crassier Mokdad.
Holding Quiblier's arm, the professional guide described the scene.
"There's a large sculpture depicting the founder of the Red Cross, Henry Dunant, sitting at his desk on an inclined plane," she said.
"The sculpture is all white. It's quite realistic."
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A little further along, she invited Quiblier to reach out and feel a giant off-white foot towering three metres in the air, describing the images scrolling on the floor below, depicting the horrors of war.
"You have to say what you see, to leave room for interpretation," Crassier Mokdad explained.
Around a dozen cultural institutions in Switzerland currently benefit from the image prompter service established by the Red Cross museum.
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- 'Better understanding' -
Art historian Marie-Fabienne Aymon was taking on the image whisperer role for only the second time.
"Aside from the human connection, it is the relationship between words and the visible that interests me," she told AFP.
She said she enjoyed mulling "how to best translate what I see to someone who can't see, through words".
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Aymon did not hide her emotions as she guided Nicolas Frachet through a room filled with objects made by prisoners of war out of the few rudimentary materials at their disposal, and given as gifts to visiting delegates from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
"These are very beautiful, very moving things," she whispered to him.
She highlighted in particular "a very colourful motorcycle made in Indonesia in 2007 with whatever was at hand: old coloured cigarette packs", and "a snake made of beads, assembled by Turkish prisoners of war in 1919".
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- 'Deeper' -
Frachet, who is blind but has a slight perception of light, said his experience with Aymon was richer than previous experiences with volunteer guides in various settings.
"She provides a deeper description. She is more specialised," he said.
Olivier Mamini, who toured the museum's temporary exhibit on the links between sound and humanitarian action, was also thrilled with his experience.
If it hadn't been for the whisperers, I don't think I would have come. I do a lot of sports but thanks to the whisperers, I'm going to visit more museums.
- DEI -
Antoine Possa, head of the museum's cultural participation programme, said the image whisperers were an important part of the institution's mission to enable diversity, equity and inclusion.
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Such concepts have been under attack since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January.
Speaking in his personal capacity, Possa decried that a number of companies and institutions had given into pressure to weed out DEI policies and practices.
"I hope that the large companies that have decided to eliminate their inclusion policies" will make an "about-face", he told AFP.
"That's not how we move the world forward.
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There have been many exhibitions and museums that have made their displays more accessible for those with disabilities.
Art and history are meant to be enjoyed by and accessible to all.
Here are some other institutions that have done exactly that:
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Main image courtesy of International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum/Facebook