The Typhlological Museum in Madrid

It was a long time dream coming true to visit the Typhlological Museum in Madrid, Museo Tiflológico, a museum for and about blind and visually impaired people. The occasion was that we were speaking at the Inclusive Museum conference in Zaragoza. My options were to fly through Barcelona or Madrid, so I picked Madrid to be able to visit this museum.

After the conference on the way home, I was able to arrange for a guided tour of the museum.

This museum is operated by ONCE, Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles, an organization for blind people in Spain. What they are famous about is that they support themselves by selling lottery tickets throughout Spain. The proceeds of this program allows them to offer services for visually impaired people, run educational programs, do research and innovation.

The museum is designed so that people with all types of visually impairments can easily get around and explore. It is divided into three major sections, architecture of Spain and foreign buildings and monuments, a section displaying the artwork of visually impaired people, and the third section to showcase the development of literacy and innovation for blind people.

The museum has over a thousand artifacts, thus I was only able to review a small fraction of it, next time I am there I will schedule a few days.

The section about architecture houses 16 Spanish, and 21 foreign buildings and monuments. They are each relatively large, about a meter wide. What I liked about them was that they were obviously made for blind and visually impaired people to touch and explore. When it comes to detail, they had a balance of showing what is important, but not to get too much into the minor details. It certainly shows that they put much effort into deciding what is important. It was much more then just smaller representations of buildings, it was more about what would be meaningful to understand by touch.

A few things that stood out:

The Taj Mahal was the model I spent the most time with. It was made of the same type of marble as the original, not the usual substitute materials you find in souvenirs. I have touched miniature versions of the building before, and they give you the shape of it. This was different. With my hands across that much marble, I finally understood what people mean when they talk about the grandeur of the place. It was not the size, I could already imagine that. It was the amount of stone, the idea that someone built at that scale in this material.

The Basilica de El Pilar, was interesting because prior to visiting the museum, I was in Zaragoza where we visited the Basilica. Touching the building model allowed me to understand the complexity of the building. Originally I was hoping to have this one made for myself as a 3D printed model, but I am not sure if such a small model would do it justice.

The layout of Jerusalem, showing the four quadrants of the city, in probably more than 100 small buildings. Most buildings were too small to feel individually, but it was an excellent representation of what Jerusalem looks like in general.

I also had a chance to visit the section where the history of braille writing is exhibited. I touched a Swiss braille writer, and a solution of creating tactile print letters. It is done by selecting individual letter blocks, and pressing it down on top of a sheet of paper, so that on the reverse side the tactile copy of the letter can be felt. The letters were small and simple, so they are easy to read, yet it is possible to put enough on a sheet to make it functional.

But there was much more in the museum. It is the type of tactile museum that truly represents what an ideal museum would be for blind people, where anything you touch is tactile and meaningful, so that you can choose what you will explore. Probably one visit would not be enough to go through it all, I would certainly recommend to spend a few hours at the museum.