Fri. Mar 29th, 2024
npressfetimg-1300.png

A still from an “Asian Art in ASL” tour focused on a Korean moon jar in the museum’s collection (all screenshots Valentina Di Liscia/Hyperallergic)

To broaden accessibility, San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum (AAM) started including audio descriptions as well as captions for videos displayed in its galleries. But when Deaf people expressed that captions weren’t enough — and that text was completely different from American Sign Language — staff members decided to put together a digital tour in ASL starting with 17 of the museum’s masterpieces, including the Hindu deity Parvati, a ritual vessel shaped like a rhinoceros, and a Korean moon jar. And they turned to experts for help. 

They chose Sam Sepah, an accessibility research product manager in Silicon Valley, as a consultant. He helped cast docents for the tour, available as an app for iOS and Android and on YouTube, and brought in Linda Bove, who appeared on Sesame Street from 1971 to 2002 as Linda the Librarian — the first Deaf actor to be part of the children show’s recurring cast. Because of her experience with film and TV, Sepah says Bove understood how to coach people to be on camera, ensuring the signer’s hands were completely in the frame of the video and the lighting showed their expressions. 

Linda Bove (photo courtesy the Sesame Workshop)

“I wanted to explore the best fit in terms of translation,” Bove told Hyperallergic on a video call with Sepah and an interpreter. “It’s a visual language, and we have to frame it correctly in the lens. I think of the process as choreography — they’re two completely different languages.”

You can appreciate details and subtlety in an ASL tour that you might not during a speaking one, Sepah added. Bove noticed, for instance, that when someone was signing the dimensions of a cup, he made it seem about the size of a fist. But in reality, the object was much smaller — the size of a thimble. “You have to use the right hand shapes to convey the right meaning, so it does justice to the artwork,” Sepah said. “Linda kept on top of that, and she helped us describe a lot more with our hands.” 

Sepah added that since ASL interpreters use facial expressions as well as their hands, there’s more nuance in their tours. “There’s more color and context,” he said. “For example, if you’re talking about an old ceramic bowl, you can show with your expression how fragile it is. With English you might just say it’s very old.”

They both visited the museum (Bove lives in Arizona and Sepah in Silicon Valley) and worked for months with the team there, interviewing the docents on the project — who are all Asian and Deaf — about their backgrounds and knowledge of art and translating …….

Source: https://hyperallergic.com/766162/touring-san-franciscos-asian-art-museum-in-sign-language/