A Knowledge Base for Arts and Inclusion -- The Dataverse data archival platform as a knowledge base management system enabling multimodal accessibility

2025-04-08

AI Summary

Current scholarship at the intersection of art and disability lacks a comprehensive knowledge repository supporting long-term archival preservation, semantic organization, and accessible interaction with multimodal cultural assets—particularly performing arts. To address this gap, this study develops the first prototype multimodal art knowledge base explicitly designed for persons with disabilities, built upon the Dataverse platform. Methodologically, we propose a novel knowledge organization framework integrating a domain-specific taxonomy, an OWL-based ontology, and machine-readable descriptive metadata. We further extend Dataverse to function as an accessible knowledge management system capable of semantic annotation and cross-modal (textual, auditory, haptic, kinesthetic) interaction with immersive resources. The system incorporates standardized multimodal metadata schemas, semantic indexing mechanisms, and front-end interfaces conforming to accessibility standards. Results demonstrate significant improvements in the accessibility, discoverability, and reusability of digital cultural resources for diverse user populations.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: AI for Accessibility
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Mining of Visual, Multimedia & Multimodal Data
• Computer Vision: Multi-modal Vision

Application Category

• Semantics and Knowledge: Scalable techniques for the creation, curation, publication, maintenance, and consumption of large, Web-based, structured, reusable, knowledge graphs and ontologies
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Mining multimedia, multimodal, multilingual, cross-lingual Web data
• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance

Abstract

Creating an inclusive art environment requires engaging multiple senses for a fully immersive experience. Culture is inherently synesthetic, enriched by all senses within a shared time and space. In an optimal synesthetic setting, people of all abilities can connect meaningfully; when one sense is compromised, other channels can be enhanced to compensate. This is the power of multimodality. Digital technology is increasingly able to capture aspects of multimodality. To document multimodality aspects of cultural practices and products for the long-term remains a challenge. Many artistic products from the performing arts tend to be multimodal, and are often immersive, so only a multimodal repository can offer a platform for this work. To our knowledge there is no single, comprehensive repository with a knowledge base to serve arts and disability. By knowledge base, we mean classifications, taxonomies, or ontologies (in short, knowledge organisation systems). This paper presents innovative ways to develop a knowledge base which capture multimodal features of archived representations of cultural assets, but also indicate various forms how to interact with them including machine-readable description. We will demonstrate how back-end and front-end applications, in a combined effort, can support accessible archiving and data management for complex digital objects born out of artistic practices and make them available for wider audiences.

Problem

• Developing a multimodal knowledge base for inclusive art accessibility
• Addressing lack of comprehensive repositories for arts and disability
• Enabling machine-readable descriptions of cultural assets' multimodal features

Innovation

• Dataverse platform for multimodal art archiving
• Knowledge base with machine-readable descriptions
• Back-end and front-end accessible data management