Spaces Capption enhances
Capption serves all cultural and public institutions who aspire to improve their visitor experience:
- Museums: art, history, science, children’s, natural history, specialty, cultural centers, and historic sites and structures.
- Galleries: for-profit and public.
- Parks: urban, community parks, national, state parks, wildlife, and special-use.
- Nature centers: traditional zoos, aquariums, petting zoos, arboretums, and botanical gardens.
- Public spaces: libraries, landmarks, monuments, plazas, transportation hubs, and arenas.
- Sacred spaces: religious buildings, cemeteries, memorial parks.
- Commercial venues: malls, markets, and complex retailers.
If your space displays information, Capption makes it accessible.
Effortless integration: Capption’s implementation process for institutions
Implementing Capption transforms visitor engagement without disrupting any existing process or physical structure. Just as Capption’s visitor experience delivers accessibility with maximum simplicity, Capption’s institutional experience weaves lightly into pre-existing operations, requiring minimal up-front lift and casual, infrequent administration thereafter.
Capption implementations typically occur in four small phases: preparation, administration, installation, and introduction. All three can happen at any pace from months to mere days.
Exhibit preparation
Capption adds two small steps to your existing label prep and exhibit signage operation:
- Indicator graphic selection. The Capption indicator graphic tells exhibit visitors to “hold their phone here”. Most often, design teams print the indicator as part of the exhibit wall label, though they can be retrofitted atop existing labels or presented separately from the label. While most institutions indicate using our C brandmark, we do not require that our brandmark be your indicator. This is fully customizable to match your aesthetic.
- Visitor signage. Although some visitors figure out Capption cold, most need to learn a. that Capption’s available, b. what it’s for, and c. how to activate it. To achieve this, institutions generally create layers of information: posters, table tents, and how-to posters for the front desk, exhibit entrance, and areas deeper in the exhibit. Docent badges with NFC tags help guides demonstrate Capption directly. We’ll provide plenty of inspiration material for this content.
Due to the physical design nature of this phase, Curatorial, Exhibits, and sometimes Visitor Services staff execute it. Don’t forget to update the Accessibility portion of your website as well!
Content administration
We’ve made this part so easy our most common feedback is “well that was fast!”
- Administrator setup. List your authorized content administrators, and we’ll set up your account and ensure they have access. We authenticate against your identity provider so there’s no need to remember yet another password.
- Content input. Content entry takes one of several forms depending on your needs. Most often, label content lives in a .pdf, .doc, or similar, so your administrator pastes that content into a new Capption and adjusts formatting accordingly. A 30-piece exhibit takes maybe 30–45 minutes to input. For bigger exhibits, our bulk upload and integration options work very well.
- Media references. If you’ve got Capptions using externally-hosted images, links, audio, etc., you can enter their information any time or as part of the previous step.
- Review, testing, refinement. Spelling errors, formatting, human translations—there’s always something to tweak! Adding, editing, archiving, and managing Capptions directly from a mobile comes in very handy.
Whoever creates content at your institution today usually drives this part. Capption often assists with content entry during onboarding.
Exhibit installation
Real-life exhibit installation rarely matches the planned layout, so we built flexibility into the installation process.
- Tag encoding. Capption leverages Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, similar to tap-to-pay systems. Data on the NFC tag (sticker) tells the Capption app what to retrieve. There are two ways to encode a tag. First, tags pre-coded by us with pre-assigned IDs mean that no encoding needs to be done on-site, but requires that installers match the ID to the correct label. Uncoded tags can be applied in situ without matching anything—just encode (and lock) them with a straightforward mobile app after installation.
- Installing NFC tags. There’s no wires or hardware to setup, so installation’s literally as simple as applying a sticker on the back side of your label underneath the indicator mark. Capption provides NFC tags as part of your annual subscription. Installation can happen fast—we watched a group of three match and apply 60 pre-coded tags to 60 labels in 8 minutes.
In practice, most small exhibits install faster with uncoded tags. The threshhold where pre-coding creates efficiency is about 50 labels.
Exhibits, Curatorial, or Visitor Services staff usually perform installation, sometimes with personal assistance from us if we can be there.
Exhibit and Capption introduction
It’s almost first look! Time for the finishing touches:
- Floor staff training. Capption’s visitor experience takes seconds to learn, but your team will require a little training to introduce and assist visitors with Capption. The trick is ensuring everybody knows the two differences between the iOS and Android experiences.
- Co-promotion. Obviously we want to brag about your new (and future) Capption-enabled exhibits. We’ll align with your promotional plan and shout your name from the (social media) rooftops!
If possible, someone from Capption attends your newly-accessible exhibit’s first look.
Unlocking curiosity together
That’s it. That’s all it takes to bring full-time accessibility to your institution and maintain it, delivering inclusion with dignity:
- Frictionless accessibility
- Broken low vision, mobility, and anxiety barriers
- Automatic translation to as many as 136 languages
- Rich audio and image content
- Exhibit history
To millions of underserved visitors:
- Non-native speakers
- Low- or lost-vision
- Seniors
- Mobility-limited
- Learning-impaired
- Socially-anxious
- Those crowded out
- Anyone wanting an exhibit record
While gaining the following institutional benefits:
- Always-on accessibility for a diverse audience
- Reduced print, translation, and change costs
- A move beyond periodic, staff-dependent solutions
- Valuable insights into visitor patterns to inform future programming
- Broadened reach and measurable mission advancement
All through a digital experience so usable the entire experience—from curiosity to comprehension—occurs in seconds.
Connect with us today if Capption can make a difference for your visitors.