Virtual Museum for People with Low Vision: Comparison of the Experience on Flat and Head-Mounted Displays

An increasing number of virtual museums (VMs) are used as educational materials because the VM can provide experiencing and learning virtual hands-on exhibitions without being limited in a place and a time for the users. However, most of the VM does not always accessible for people with low vision because of the limited functions including elusive annotations, passive zooming control, and incompatibility of various accessibility functions. In this paper, our objective is to demonstrate the issues and the solutions of VMs for these people. We first developed a prototype of VMs for low vision and then experimentally evaluated the VMs to find the requirements that people with low vision can easily control and have experience learning in VMs. The result shows that those who have immersive tendency would prefer the VM with an HMD.