A little while ago i was approached by Montacute House, a late 16th century Elizabethan mansion with garden in Montacute, South Somerset. It’s owned and managed by The National Trust who do the honourable and noble job of maintaining it and opening it to the public.
Like many older properties, the interior of Montacute House was not originally designed with todays accessibility and disability requirements in mind. Some of the staircases are very steep and narrow, and it’s therefore difficult for less abled visitors to see and experience certain parts of this wonderful treasure house. Such a huge shame … at least until now!
The National Trust were already familiar with my NT approved online virtual reality tours, and they approached me to ask if I could put together a separate iPad tour. This iPad tour would be able to showcase the house to disabled visitors in the NT Visitor Centre, sparing them the difficulty of getting around the hard to reach areas of the property. The iPad tour was put together as a virtual guide book and opened up the enjoyment of the house to visitors who are less fortunate.
360 degree virtual tour of Montacute House, Somerset. Click image to view online tour.
It was made a little trickier as there was no internet or mobile network connection in this part of the house, and with this in mind, i had to compile the tour for offline viewing as a static iBook. Overall, the iBook and virtual tour project was a great success, and proved to be an econonmical way to allow virtual access to disabled visitors.
To view a static PDF file of the iBook, please click this link (PDF) …
