By Susie Cribbs

Close your eyes, cover your ears and imagine what it must be like for the visually and audibly impaired. That's what Robert Segal (A'70) must have done in his latest and most rewarding project in which he redesigned the museum at the Perkins School for the Blind, the late Helen Keller's alma mater in Watertown, Mass.


Bob says the challenge was making the museum both tactile and audible to meet the needs of a broad range of visitors, from the deaf and blind to the wheelchair bound.

“Reaching the broad spectrum of visitors while still maintaining a cohesive and inviting environment made for an often-challenging design,” he said.

Housed in the main hall of the 175-year-old school's central building, the museum once displayed artifacts behind glass doors where blind visitors couldn't access them without help. With the aid of former roommate David Fox (E'70), Bob removed the doors from most of the cases and raised their decks so visitors could easily touch objects and read labels. New lighting made the cases viewable to the visually impaired, and audio devices were installed on each case. He also added Braille labels.

A five-foot-diameter rotating globe takes center stage in the museum. Hand-crafted for the school in 1836, the globe has been used to teach world geography through tactile topography since its installation 168 years ago. After restoration to preserve and stabilize the globe, it was placed in the museum, where it remains touchable and accessible to all visitors.

To complete the museum redesign, Bob created a tactile map of the campus that allowed blind students to comprehend for the first time the overall space and structure of the place where they live. "One of my great pleasures in this project was to see the faces of blind students light up as they touched the map," Bob says.

The school and Bob's museum design won the 2005 award for historic preservation from the Watertown Massachusetts Historical Society.


Related Links:
Perkins School for the Blind