Thanks to support from the Beaufort Lions Club, The National Society Children of the American Colonists and the Friends of the NC Maritime Museum, the NC Maritime Museum in Beaufort is now equipped with the NaviLens program. This program is a free audio tour that has so much more to offer. To engage in the tour, visitors need to download the free app from their phone’s app store. There is no registration or fees required, as the fees have been covered by the generous support from the Beaufort Lions Club and Friends of the Museum.

Once the app is downloaded and engaged, visitors can use their phone’s camera to start scanning the colorful codes placed around the Museum. When downloading the app there are two versions of the app: “NaviLens Go” is designed for sighted visitors and will give information about the associated exhibits and artifacts; “NaviLens” provides the same information as “NaviLens Go” but with additional features and descriptive information to assist visitors with low or no vision in understanding and navigating the Museum. Both “NaviLens” and “NaviLens Go” include information about the exhibits and artifacts on display, often expanded from what is included in the exhibits currently, available in an audible format.

In addition to making the Museum exhibits more accessible to visitors with low or no vision, the app also automatically translates its content into 35 different languages. This feature defaults to the language the device is set to, making the museum more accessible to non-English speaking visitors. The North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort is the first museum site in America to utilize this program. We strongly encourage all of our Friends, volunteers, and supporters to try out the NaviLens program and give us feedback either via the Museum’s guest log or through email at Christine.brin@dncr.nc.gov.

What To Know About NaviLens:

NaviLens technology has been installed throughout the Museum to assist the Blind and those with low vision in navigating autonomously. Its sister app, NaviLens GO, uses the same technology to offer the same on-demand, interactive experiences for sighted visitors.

This technology works by using unique colored blocks, referred to as tags, that can be scanned by using the NaviLens or NaviLens GO app on a mobile device. The scanned tag then provides an audio overview of the accompanying exhibit, description of specific artifacts on display plus a related historical anecdote.

It works similarly to how QR codes are accessed. However, the NaviLens tags offer distinct advantages over QR codes:

• NaviLens detects the tags automatically when the app is open. Therefore, the user does not need to know an exact physical location before interacting with a posted code.
• NaviLens captures tags from a distance. As the size of the posted tag increases so does the detectable distance.
• NaviLens captures multiple tags simultaneously.
• NaviLens assists the user in navigating accurately to within one foot of a captured tag using audible prompts.
• NaviLens assists the user in walking autonomously through tagged spaces using prompts between navigational tags.
• NaviLens allows for international access, as 34 languages are currently supported.

NaviLens (designed for the Blind and those with low-vision) and NaviLens Go (designed for the sighted community) are available for download in your iOS or Android app store.

For the comfort of those around you, we request that you use earbuds while using NaviLens audio features.

Articles and Media About NaviLens in Beaufort’s Maritime Museum:

https://wcti12.com/news/local/nc-maritime-museum-introduces-navilens-technology-for-blind-and-low-vision-visitors

https://www.carolinacoastonline.com/news_times/article_87486634-6e7d-11ee-8d14-2bb27d636770.html

https://www.carolinacoastonline.com/news_times/news/article_688aa01c-64f1-11ee-a1cc-1fbaaad9dc89.html

https://www.witn.com/2023/10/17/nc-maritime-museum-adds-resources-assist-vision-impaired

This project, previously supported by the Beaufort Lions Club and the Friends of the Maritime Museum, is designed to utilize smart phone technology to make the Museum a more accessible site for visitors with low or no vision and non-English speaking guests. The National Society Children of the American Colonists held its eighty-fourth general assembly in Carteret County June 14 – 15, with members coming from as far as Washington State. Over the past year, National President Alyvia Kenzie Baxter worked on the project “Bringing Legends to Life,” which included fundraising to help support the museum’s participation on the NaviLens project. “History belongs to us all, and the expansion and maintenance of the NaviLens technology will allow Children of the American Colonists to ‘Bring Legends to Life’ via colonial maritime history to those whose experience would otherwise be limited,” Baxter said. “CAC can help ‘Bring Legends to Life’ for them in a way that will provide better education and inclusion.” The donation will cover the annual service fees for NaviLens for the next three years. The remaining balance of the donation will be used to reprint the existing codes at a smaller size and print new codes to assist with navigation.