Capption vs. Bloomberg Connects: true accessibility at a fraction of the download

Evaluation methodology: In-context heuristic analysis of Bloomberg Connects across three regional cultural institutions with disabled testers, synthesis of public app store reviews, and technical investigation conducted by Capption accessibility engineers. Updated September 2026.

Comparison summary

Bloomberg Connects makes museums into mobile apps, stuffing exhibition overviews, media files, maps, 3D tours, and audio tracks into massive downloads that enhance an exhibitor's online storytelling. Capption shatters known, common, real-world exhibit visual, social, physical, and language accessibility barriers during and after a physical museum visit, instantly bridging any visitor's curiosity with the exhibit's context.

Visitor experience comparison

Bloomberg Connects puts an entire museum on a visitor's phone, requiring they search and download multiple times, installing 300+ megabytes on throttled lobby WiFi to learn about a single exhibit. Capption leverages NFC taps to deliver exhibit content immediately and accessibly, bypassing tedious menu searching and download waits that outlast your visitors' interest.

Bloomberg Connects strengths

Bloomberg Connects helps subsidized institutions reach remote virtual travelers across the world provided they possess:

1. A dedicated digital product manager
2. Open calendar for a multi-month onboarding project
3. The primary goal of placing their permanent collection inside a vast directory alongside the Met and MoMA

For those going global, Bloomberg Connects offers a robust, zero-software-cost platform.

How visitors with disabilities experience Bloomberg Connects

Although Bloomberg Connects touts accessibility features, our real-world testing with disabled users uncovered an experience more frustrating than not:

1. Prohibitively ravenous. Visitors standing in crowded, sunlit lobbies must download a ~125MB application followed by >250MB museum data package over throttled guest Wi-Fi.
2. Barriers to entry. Once you have the app, getting started takes yet more time. Unless you scan a QR code, it's up to you to search, scroll, and choose your museum.
3. Content blocks content. With the institution content package installed, visitors slash through taxonomy to find what they're looking for.
4. Multi-exhibit fatigue. Inputting an exhibit ID code or scanning a QR code are both slow compared to NFC. Visitors must see well to use both, too.
5. Derelict content. Several museums obviously implemented Bloomberg Connects once and stopped maintaining it, resulting in partial content coverage aggravating to visitors who endured the install process.
6. Time machine needed. Given the download size, using Bloomberg Connects requires preparation that few users actually perform. They need content now. The frustration of acquiring Bloomberg Connects mid-visit kills its then-and-there utility.
7. Accessibility successes. Translation and font size inheritance worked most of the time. Mapping helpful outside but useless indoors.
8. Accessibility deficiencies. No dark mode, weak respect for user settings, audio titles translated when the actual audio is in English, unimpressive screen reader support, unfindable font size adjustment.
9. Technical difficulties. During this test, users found Bloomberg Connects remarkably unstable. The iOS app crashed frequently, and the Android app often failed to initialize but worked once it did.
10. Lost history. "What was that thing..?" Good luck with that. Even if Bloomberg Connects had an exhibit history, visitors would have to re-download the whole museum content package to view a single item.

Most users we tested with didn't consider Bloomberg Connects' value worth the experiential difficulty, especially considering the download size. That's why it hovers around ~3 star ratings:

"So much install, so little result." — Verified App Store review

Ultimately, checkbox accessibility that leaves museums vulnerable under ADA Title III digital access mandates.

What Capption delivers that Bloomberg Connects can't

Capption obsoletes Bloomberg's web CMS experience with targeted, in-gallery utility engineered for actual human behavior against accessibility barriers:

1. Sub-second entry, instant exit. A single NFC tap opens exhibit context instantly from any active phone screen. Scan again at any point to continue.
2. No search indignity. Typing, filtering, focusing a camera, or entering a number needlessly impede a visitor's thirst for knowledge. Capption eliminates it all.
3. Genuine accessibility. Inherits user font, language, light/dark mode, and screenreader settings instantly. Displays in Atkinson Hyperlegible font for maximum legibility.
4. Rapid understanding. In practice, true accessibility accelerates visitors' comprehension, enhancing their engagement with an exhibit.
5. Exhibit focus. Bloomberg Connects delivers content only after you machete through its entry barriers, transferring visitor focus from the exhibit to their phone.
6. Persistent, personal history. Capption lets visitors re-access exhibit context without re-downloading an entire museum's worth of content, enabling exhibit recall, review, and reminiscence.
7. Responsible storage and bandwidth usage. After visiting 3 museums, Bloomberg Connects put 2.1 GB of data on a single phone. Dozens of accessed Capptions consume less than 15MB total.
8. Non-disruptive activation hardware. Discreet, color-matched NFC indicators attach to historic or sensitive backing without wires, drilling, or aesthetic clutter. Tags work through glass, wood, and plastic.
9. Focused administration. Create, read, update, delete, label, archive, sort, filter. No layers, no fussing with styling. We designed administration specifically for occasional use.
10. Grantable, donatable, sponsorable. Capption's 100% US-designed, engineered, and hosted by US nationals with disabilities. Your implementation isn't some billionaire's tax write-off.

We designed Capption for the hustle and bustle of a busy museum's activity: scan, read, close, chase kids, discuss, don't open it for 20 minutes, take pictures, scan, respond to a notification, return, read, close, re-read content 10 days later. Visitors will have finished reading a Capption (in their language and text format) before finding Bloomberg Connects in the App Store.

Choosing between Capption and Bloomberg Connects

On the surface, both Bloomberg Connects and Capption deliver digital cultural content to visitors' smartphones, but they're fundamentally different tools built for different purposes.

Bloomberg Connects makes a museum into a mobile app, placing their entirety—information, maps, programs, exhibitions, and exhibits—on remote and local visitors' phones. Capption's an assistive technology designed to help institutions include and serve new and otherwise excluded audiences, enabling exhibit accessibility for 20 million visually-impaired people, 60 million seniors, and 52 million non-native speakers in the US alone.

If your goal is to digitize your catalog and offer remote virtual tours, implement Bloomberg Connects. If you want to remove in-person barriers for on-site visitors without interrupting your physical museum experience or operations, implement Capption.

You can also do both.

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See Capption in practice

• Read how the Putnam Museum used Capption to bulk-encode 37 exhibits in 50 minutes
• Discover how Mia achieved 32% accessibility usage without printing QR codes
• Try Capption yourself

Take action: Ready to eliminate lobby app friction and deliver instant exhibit accessibility? Schedule your demo of Capption today.