00:00President Barbuto, within the framework of the e-forum Building the Future Together, organized by Meta,
00:06She took part in the panel entitled Art and Culture Accessible to All Thanks to Technology.
00:12What are the limitations for a blind person who wants to enter a museum?
00:18The current limitations are linked first of all to the impossibility of knowing at every step,
00:27in each room, what is there and have a description of what is there.
00:35This can be partly overcome with the presence of a companion, someone who can describe things to you.
00:46and the use of the audio guide.
00:49The limit of these alternative solutions, however, lies in the impossibility of going into greater depth,
00:59while the tools we are currently experimenting with
01:06they allow you to ask for all the specifications you want with an intelligent interaction
01:15on what you are looking at.
01:18So starting from what I'm looking at, what's in front of me,
01:22What are the works that are exhibited in this room,
01:28to then get to ask about the color of the draperies,
01:35hair color, hair length,
01:40the hands, the presence of jewelry, etc.,
01:44things that are difficult to achieve in a structured audio description before
01:50it would be possible to acquire.
01:52Look, Mr. President, can we say that we are moving towards a real conquest of freedom?
01:58Obviously we don't have to ask technologies
02:01to replace the sight that isn't there.
02:05We must ask for the possibility of broadening our range,
02:12our range of freedom.
02:15And so what essentially is freedom,
02:19if not the ability to choose at what time,
02:24with what kind of experience, in what place,
02:27I want and can do a certain thing.
02:31I believe technology can help us achieve this.
02:37As his speech progressed,
02:40But she spoke of a conquest,
02:42that of being able to use the books.
02:45Yes, because the path we are living now
02:49with the exploration and enjoyment of the museum's art,
02:55after all we experienced it 30 years ago
02:59with the question of books which is perhaps also simpler to understand
03:05in terms of freedom.
03:08Until about twenty years ago,
03:11maybe even something more,
03:16I had to read the books that had already been prepared,
03:22those that had been made in braille or those that had been made
03:28in audiobook form.
03:31Instead, I wanted to choose the book I liked to read at that moment.
03:36Today, thanks to technology, you can do this 100%.
03:41I think we are walking on the same path
03:48as regards the enjoyment of art,
03:53which is more difficult because art is precisely a visual communication,
03:59to-cour, total,
04:01and therefore the sophistication of the means available must be much higher.
04:09and I'm living, I'm lucky enough to live two great revolutions
04:15which I am very happy about.
04:18The first one is the one from the period in which books were not available to me.
04:24I had to settle for smelling the paper or little more.
04:30and then instead they were totally at my disposal.
04:35Today the same thing happens with the enjoyment of art and museums.
04:43Mr. President, what are the next steps for the UIC?
04:47We have completed and defined now in these weeks
04:55an agreement with Essilor Luxottica
04:59and our partner, the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness
05:05and with the collaboration and participation of Meta
05:09to conduct a study on the use of smart glasses
05:19but from the point of view of a visually impaired or blind user.
05:26So we will have testers, about ten testers among blind and visually impaired users,
05:32software engineers, artificial intelligence engineers, psychologists
05:37which will help us not only to identify the critical issues but also the possibilities of the instrument a posteriori
05:47but to grow a new generation of this instrument
05:52also based on basic observations and surveys
05:59that a certain category of users in a targeted, organized and structured way
06:06will do with this research which we hope can then be transferred
06:11directly into the instrument, into the smart glasses that will be found on the market and on the market.
06:22Thank you
