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L’audiodescription proposée aux personnes malvoyantes et non voyantes dans les musées de France n’est-elle qu’une pollution sonore ?

Abstract

In France the number of exhibitions that go beyond “exhibiting” is growing - if we consider “exhibiting” as “making visible”. Examples include the current range of exhibitions on offer such as: “Prière de toucher ! L’art et la matière” at the Musée d’arts de Nantes, “Toucher l’arc- en-ciel” at the centre Pompidou or the olfactory exhibition “Parfums d’Orient” on show at the Institut du Monde Arabe. This invitation to experience art in a way that is more than just visual, highly reveals the ambitious initiatives undertaken by museums since the 1980s to make themselves more accessible to people with visual disabilities. However, this article responds to the optimism of this observation by highlighting the conceptual errors commonly made when considering the notion of accessibility. The critical philosophy study that we have carried out on audiodescriptions in French museums has led us to formulate the idea of a disjunction between the mediation systems in place and the content that they disclose, being rarely adapted to the needs of such an audience. We propose here a critical reflection on the term “accessibility” in order to formulate a clearer conceptualisation of it: in order to avoid this disjunction, which blurs the access of audiences with visual disabilities to the aesthetic power of works of art; we focus on recent experimental models of sound mediation, whereby seeking to produce multi-sensory experiences seems to be a more effective vector of equality in the right and access to culture.