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An audio tour for visually impaired visitors needs three things an ordinary tour doesn’t: a description of what there is to see, directions for walking the route, and an app that can be used with a screen reader. Below, for each part, is what you actually do, from the first sentence you write to the test round with real visitors.
The rest of your tour barely changes. You work with the same galleries, objects and clips. You just write the texts differently, and you pay attention to a few points in the controls that are easy to overlook when you can see.
Writing audio description: describe first, interpret afterwards
Audio description is the spoken description of what there is to see. With a painting, a machine or a view, your text replaces the image. That only works if you describe in the order in which someone looks: first the whole, then the parts, then the detail.
Start with size and material. “A landscape-format canvas about a metre wide, oil paint.” Then the composition: what’s on the left, what’s on the right, what’s in the foreground. Then colour and light. Only after that do you get to the meaning, the story or the historical context. A visitor who first hears that a work “expresses the restlessness of the nineteenth century” still has no image in mind and cannot place the rest of your story.
A few things that make the difference in practice:
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Use directions that make sense from the visitor’s perspective, not from the object’s. “To the right of the centre” is clear; “on the right-hand side of the person portrayed” is not.
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Give measurements using tangible comparisons: at eye level, as high as a door, about the size of a hand.
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Name colours plainly. Visitors who were born blind also know what red or gold means.
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Describe one object per clip. Two paintings in one recording can’t be found again if someone’s attention wanders halfway through.
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Keep a clip short, about one to two minutes. Listening without an image to go with it takes more attention than reading.
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Say what is not there when it matters: no handrail, no threshold, no seat in the room.
Write the text for the ear: short sentences, few subordinate clauses, no references like “as described above”. Read each clip aloud once; what you can’t say in one breath yourself will sound messy in a recording too.
Route and orientation directions: from one point to the next
A sighted visitor reads a sign or sees the next gallery. Without that, someone needs spoken directions that lead from each point to the next. That’s a separate type of clip, apart from the content, and you write one for each link between two stops.
Use fixed building blocks: where you are now, which direction to take, how far to go, what to look out for and how you know you have arrived.
“You are standing with your back to the display case. Walk straight ahead for about ten steps, until you feel a wooden floor under your feet. Turn left there. The next stop is on your right.”
Guidelines to stick to:
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Count in steps or metres, not “carry on a bit”.
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Use left and right from the walking direction, and always say first which way someone is facing.
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Choose landmarks that can be heard, felt or smelled: a change in flooring, a revolving door, the echo of a high-ceilinged gallery, the warmth near a window.
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Warn about obstacles before they get in the way, not afterwards: a staircase with the number of steps, a threshold, a protruding plinth.
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At a fork, describe both options and say which one to take.
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Add a way back: what to do if you notice you’re going the wrong way.
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End each stop with the start of the next direction, so there’s no silence in which someone doesn’t know what to do.
On an outdoor route this matters even more. Traffic, roadworks and loose paving stones change; a route along a tactile guide path or a quiet pavement is more useful than the shortest way.
GPS triggers do a lot of the work here. A clip that starts automatically as soon as someone reaches the spot saves searching for a number or a button. Make the zone a little larger than you would for a sighted tour, and have the tour say the name of the stop first, so the visitor hears straight away where they are.
Controls with a screen reader and speech
Visitors with a visual impairment use VoiceOver on iOS or TalkBack on Android to operate their phones. They swipe across the screen, hear what is under their finger and double-tap to activate it. Your tour only works when every element has a name that can be read out.
Where it gets stuck in practice:
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Buttons without text labels. An arrow or icon is announced as “button” and nothing more. Every button gets a name: “Play”, “Next stop”, “Back to the gallery list”.
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Images without alt text. A photo with a stop should have a short description; a decorative image, on the other hand, should be skipped.
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An incorrect reading order. Swipe through the tour from top to bottom and check that the elements appear in a logical order.
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Small touch targets. Make buttons large enough to tap without looking, and put them in the same place at every stop.
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Screens that move automatically. If the tour scrolls to the next clip by itself, someone loses their position.
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Time running out. No message that disappears after three seconds; let the visitor close it themselves.
The spoken text itself comes from text-to-speech. Watch out for the things a voice mispronounces: proper names, dates, abbreviations, Latin names in a nature reserve. Spell them out phonetically in your source text if the voice doesn’t read them correctly, and listen to every clip all the way through once.
Think about the run-up too. Someone has to be able to find and start the tour without help: for this audience a QR code is no way in, so provide a short web link and a spoken introduction that explains how many stops there are, how long the tour takes and how to skip forwards and back. A tour that opens straight in the browser saves the detour of installing an app.
Testing with visitors who will actually use the tour
You can’t judge audio description and route directions from behind your desk. First walk the tour yourself with your eyes closed and a companion beside you; you’ll already hear where a direction is too vague. Then test with a small group of visitors with a visual impairment, using their own phones and their own screen reader settings.
During that test, watch where someone stops, where they turn back and where they ask a question. Every question is a gap in your text. Adjust the direction straight away and walk that stretch again.
How to make it in Wandrz
In Wandrz you put the tour together in the browser: galleries, objects, text, images and video. For an audio tour for visually impaired visitors you use the same setup, with a few choices you make in advance.
For each stop, set up the description clip and the route direction as separate parts, so a visitor can listen to the way again without repeating the whole description. Let text-to-speech voice the texts with a natural voice, in every language you need; with automatic translation into more than 70 languages, you also have a version of the same tour for visitors who speak another language. GPS triggers start the right clip on location. And the tour runs in your own branding, right in the browser.
No technical hassle, so your attention goes to what matters: texts that replace the image and directions that help someone follow the route independently.
Want to know how this would work out for your venue? Request a demo and we’ll go through one stop of your existing tour with you, in an accessible version.