unseen, seen
Surinde Staetenburg
Antwerp, Belgium
About
After earning her first bachelor’s degree in Communication Management, Surinde Staetenburg began working in communication for various cultural organizations, including Tourism Lier, Tourism Antwerp, the Rubenshuis, and the DIVA Museum. She combined this with further studies in communication, graphic design, and web development.
Her personal motivation for this topic stems from her own experience with poor vision. This confronted her with a fundamental question: what remains of a museum visit when sight is lost? From this question grew the conviction that museums must be visually accessible.
Project
“unseen, seen” is a practical guide designed to help museums make their collection accessible to people with visual impairments. This publication is based on the principle that accessibility is not a matter of special treatment, but rather an enrichment of the museum experience for everyone. By focusing on clear communication, multisensory experiences, and thoughtful scenography, a museum can evolve into a visually inclusive space where culture is truly shared.
The publication consists of six chapters with tips on making various aspects of the museum experience more visually inclusive. The first chapter explains what accessibility means, followed by a chapter that explains what a visual impairment entails. The third chapter offers a brief guide for training staff in interacting with the target audience. The next two chapters discuss specific ways to optimize both the print and digital environments. The final chapter focuses on multisensory elements and explains how they can contribute to visual accessibility and how they should be implemented.
The chapters include concrete examples that demonstrate what visual inclusion can look like in practice. The publication concludes with an afterword by Erik De Snerck, head of the accessibility team at Licht & Liefde. He emphasizes why visual accessibility is so important.