Adelaide Fringe festival caters to the vision-impaired
For the first time ever, vision-impaired and blind people had the chance to touch and feel the floats and costumes before the Adelaide Fringe Festival parade last night.
The parade, which kicked off the festival, consisted of 80 colourful floats and flocks of performers. It’s a spectacle that vision-impaired people had not been able to be part of but organisers hope that the “touch tour” would help the vision-impaired visualise the parade when they listened to it.
“It's really important because otherwise you wouldn't see anything or know what's happening,” Gloria, a vision-impaired student, told the ABC.
“It's better to have a feel because then you know what it's like instead of just hearing music,” added her friend Courtney.
Both student said that the touch tour helped them have a better idea of the parade.
“The majority of people who have a vision impairment lose their sight, so they've had sight before,” said Gaelle Mellis from Access2Arts who helped organise the touch tour.
“They might have really enjoyed going to the theatre or the Fringe parade, for example, and they think that they can't do that anymore, that that's closed off.
“What audio description does, because it's actually describing the visual elements it actually opens that experience up again.”
Image credit: Adelaide Fringe Facebook
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