SuperAble

Accessibility to archaeological sites for an Inclusive Culture

Technological development truly reaches its peak when it becomes a tool to make life easier for people, especially the most disadvantaged groups.

This is the case of people with reduced mobility, who too often cannot fully enjoy cultural sites such as museums and archaeological parks, due to architectural and technological barriers.

For this reason, the mission of the SuperAble project is to ideally break down the barriers that prevent users with reduced mobility from enjoying the great Italian archaeological heritage, thanks to the development of immersive itineraries in Virtual Reality specifically designed for the itineraries proposed for their needs.

The SuperAble project aims to satisfy the need for accessibility, inclusiveness and modernity, in museums and archaeological sites, in order to make them more accessible to people with reduced mobility.

SuperAble aims to promote and enhance the routes dedicated to users with reduced mobility in historic sites, by offering the latest generation of virtual and immersive tools, designed specifically for their needs.

The technology used is Mixed Virtual Reality (MVR), also called Hybrid Reality, or the combination of digital and virtual worlds capable of restoring new environments and views in which virtual and physical objects coexist and interact with each other in real time.

The SuperAble system, in fact, uses time windows in the main monumental areas of a museum or historical itinerary, proposing immersive and dynamic 360-degree views of Antiquity, and thus allowing to visualize the state of an archaeological site or a monument, as well museums, palaces, historic villages, interactively superimposing the 3D reconstructions on the current state of the places.

Normally the Hybrid Reality, whose use is possible through special devices such as VR viewers or smart glasses, is applied in contexts where the user is in a fixed point, given that, wearing the viewer, he would not be able to move with the necessary spatial cognition in real space.

By means of the SuperAble technology, a wheelchair user will be able to move on pre-arranged paths, within the 3D virtual reconstruction of the surrounding site, with the opportunity to also view different angles of the surrounding scene: subjective, from above, superimposed on today’s.

The Virtual3D offered will be immersive and dynamic, therefore, in a constant fluid change, synchronized with the real progress in the site space.

The combination of movement in the real and virtual world will offer users an unprecedented perception of movement in space, as well as in time.

A revolutionary mode of use destined to lead the way for similar projects in museums and archaeological parks around the world, such as, for example, in Pompeii or the Acropolis of Athens, where enabling paths are already being set up.

To expand this new travel opportunity in the Heritage, partnerships between public and private will be activated, through collaboration agreements between the various players in the sector, to develop proposals articulated on a wide network of immersive itineraries.