On 11 December 2014 the official AMBAVis kick-off meeting took place in Vienna. Project partners from Slovakia, Germany, United Kingdom and Austria came together at the venue of Economica in order to discuss general approaches as well as the expected outcome of the project. The first steps within the project comprise an overview over “good practice” of existing handling sessions for blind and visually impaired people in museums and the development of a prototype relief-printing-medium. The medium will be used later on in order to prepare various haptic media for the focus group: Therefore a discussion about possible paintings and objects of partner museums to be transformed into haptics within the project took place. The significance of criteria for art history as well as the technical feasibility were analyzed. Regarding the economic analysis requirements to the data have been set up. Furthermore there has been a discussion about a possible copyright exception for haptic media similar to the WIPO treaty which allows for national limitations and exceptions to the copyright-holders in order to provide books in accessible formats.
In total the kick-off meeting was characterized by fruitful discussions, committed project partners and the common goal to launch a successful project. The next project partner meeting will take place in May 2015 in Manchester and the project partners are looking forward to intensify the cooperative partnership!