Visually impaired people can experience the paintings in the permanent collection with the 3D tactile plates (made of polyurethane resin). You can find them next to the related paintings throughout the museum.
At the moment, four of them are installed in the museum galleries, and the MSK has the ambition to invest in similar tactile plates in the future. You can find the images next to Gustave De Smet's 'The Good House', in the portrait gallery next to 'Portrait of a young woman' by Frans Pourbus, 'Christ Carrying the Cross' by Jheronimus Bosch and next to 'Harbour. Opus 2' by Victor Servranckx.
Some figures
About 2 out of 100 people in Belgium have a visual handicap. Of these, about 1 person in 1000 is blind. In other words, more than 200.000 people in Belgium are partially sighted and +/- 11.000 people are blind. Many people only become visually impaired when they reach a later age. About 85% of people with a visual handicap are older than 50 years. In our ageing society, seniors with visual impairments are therefore an increasingly large group.
