Designing Accessible Urban AR Experiences for Digital Humanities

This paper presents the results of a design activity targeted to create urban experiences based on the use of augmented reality and focused on the domain of digital humanities. While augmented reality provides the opportunity to link physical context to digital content and services, with benefits in terms of engagement and lower cognitive loads, it reduces easy access to content. The exploration of the alternatives to permitting users to access content, while maintaining a strong link with the context, led to a possible solution which may represent the core of a multifaceted approach useful for a large number of user experiences, increasing the number of situations where content can be communicated and services accessed. The final part of the paper, starting from the current design results, discusses some directions for offering comprehensive solutions targeted to improve the accessibility of urban user experiences for different categories of users.