Making Europe’s cultural heritage accessible to all
For cultural heritage to be enjoyed by all of Europe’s citizens, whether in person or online, it has to be inclusive and accessible. This is precisely what the EU-funded SHIFT project is doing by improving cultural access for all European citizens using technology. SHIFT is making use of advances in AI and machine learning to create a series of toolkits that make cultural heritage more accessible, inclusive and appealing to all. Intended for European heritage institutions and businesses, the tech solutions involve computer vision, audio, text-to-speech, haptics, semantics and linguistics, and focus on overcoming current shortcomings and limitations of Europe’s cultural and creative industries.
Four toolkits
Proposed solutions include a visual toolkit that makes use of AI and machine learning algorithms to transcribe cultural heritage content automatically. It also includes an international property rights toolkit for tackling the challenge of protecting digital native content. An auditory toolkit is also being designed to “deliver an emotional response to the audience.” As reported in a recent news item posted on ‘Europeana PRO’, a few months earlier SHIFT’s auditory toolkit team led by German project partner audEERING demonstrated the use of a text-to-speech tool. According to the news item, the tool “transcribed heritage videos provided by partners in Romanian and Serbian and then automatically revoiced them in English with emotional affect, moving away from the stilted automatic voices of the past.” Although this tool is being constantly improved, a video of the pilot version can be viewed on YouTube. SHIFT is also creating a haptics toolkit that will enable multisensory interaction with digital objects. Developed by Greek project partner Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas, the toolkit will allow users to explore 3D and 2D objects in museums and other cultural venues through a novel approach that makes use of a haptic glove. The glove delivers sensory feedback that emulates the feeling of touch in a digital object. An early version of the haptics tool can be viewed in a video available on YouTube. Through these toolkits, SHIFT aims to help cultural heritage institutions grow and communicate new experiences to all European citizens, including people with disabilities. However, SHIFT’s work does not end there. “To ensure we deliver the right tools, team SHIFT has launched an extensive set of workshops, focus groups and use cases to assess user requirements and test solutions across partner sites in the museums and libraries of Germany, Greece, Hungary, Romania and Serbia,” the news item reports. This feedback will be used to develop tech solutions that will be more inclusive and accessible to all of users of museums and libraries. SHIFT (MetamorphoSis of cultural Heritage Into augmented hypermedia assets For enhanced accessibiliTy and inclusion) – together with EU-funded projects MuseIT, PERCEIVE, MEMORISE, PREMIERE and MEMENTOES – has published a policy brief that offers key insights into policy frameworks aimed at supporting cultural heritage, fostering innovation and promoting digital inclusion across Europe. The joint policy brief also recommends ways to bridge expertise gaps, build capacity and promote inclusion within the cultural heritage sector. For more information, please see: SHIFT project website
Keywords
SHIFT, cultural heritage, heritage, accessible, haptics, museum, inclusion, library