Events for Blind and Visually Impaired Visitors

• Large-print lists of works and gallery guides are available for every exhibition and are archived online here.

Audio Description and Handling Events are scheduled for every exhibition as well as the Permanent Collections. An audio describer delivers a verbal description of artworks. Visitors also handle multi-sensory tailor made objects created by an artist educator to illustrate the exhibition.

• All exhibition audio guides have additional audio described stops
(click here to read the transcripts).

• You can book one-to-one audio described tours of exhibitions.

• Every year a number of sculptures in the Summer Exhibition are available to be explored by touch. They are identified by a large print list of works.

• A photo gallery from previous events is available for viewing here.

Recorded Audio Described Tours

Click here to listen to an audio description tour of 'Bronze', Autumn 2012

Click here to listen to an audio description tour of the 'David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture' exhibition, Spring 2012

Click here to listen to an audio description tour of the 'Degas and the Ballet' exhibition, Autumn 2011

Click here to listen to an audio description tour of the 'Modern British Sculpture' exhibition, Spring 2011

Click here to listen to an audio description tour of the 'Glasgow Boys' exhibition, Autumn 2010

Click here to listen and watch audio descriptions of five key works from the 'Real Van Gogh' exhibition, Spring 2010

Handling resources; 'The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters' exhibition, 2010
Audio Description & Handling Session for Blind and Partially Sighted visitors in the RA Sculpture Store Permanent Collections November 2010

The session this morning was excellent and as always I am left wanting more. We are so lucky that you do this for us and it is heartening to know that you provide professionals to take the class. Bridget is such an enthusiastic describer who knows what she is talking about which comes across so well in her descriptions. Harry was excellent too.
A visitor to the audio description of the 'Modern British Sculpture' exhibition

...Thank you for setting our recent visit to 'Sargent and the Sea'. We thoroughly enjoyed it, and my Mum was especially delighted at how much she was able to appreciate thanks to the descriptions. It was also very good for me too because it increased my awareness of the type of detail that I could give to my Mum when we're visiting things together, to describe things more clearly.
A visitor to the audio one-to-one descriptive tour of the 'Sargent and the Sea' exhibition

Thanks so much for today's descriptions and handling session…really interesting and stimulating!!...I also really enjoyed the handling stuff! Being able to hold palettes, brushes, paint tubes etc is so exhilarating; that sounds a bit over the top, and yes, maybe I need to get out more, but when one has to rely so much on imagination and the experiential side of life is by necessity quite limited, it really is quite breathtaking to have these physical encounters with objects.
Feedback regarding an Audio Description and Handling Session

• Royal Academy of Arts