Italy gets creative as it works to make art accessible for blind people

ROME (AP) — On a recent weeknight, long after the swarms of tourists had left Rome's Colosseum, a small group of people walked around outside the darkened amphitheater, pausing every so often to take in a new aspect of its history, art or architecture with every sense but sight.

Michela Marcato, 54, has been blind since birth. She and her partially sighted partner were touring the site amid a new effort by Italy to make its myriad artistic treasures more accessible to people with blindness or low vision and enhance how all visitors experience and perceive art.

As she listened to her tour guide, Marcato traced her fingers over a small souvenir model of the Colosseum. She felt the grooves of its archways and rugged rubble of its crumbled side. What she hadn't realized before holding it was the elliptical shape of building.

“Walking around it, I personally would never have realized it. I would never have understood it,” she said. “But with that little model in your hand, it’s obvious!”

Italy and its art-filled cities have no shortage of tourists, but they haven’t always been overly welcoming to visitors with disabilities. People who use wheelchairs often find elevators and doorways that are too narrow, stairs without ramps and uneven pavements.

But in 2021, as a condition of receiving European Union pandemic recovery funds, Italy accelerated its accessibility initiatives, dedicating more attention and resources to removing architectural barriers and making its tourist sites and sporting venues more accessible.

The ancient city of Pompeii recently installed a new system of signage to make the vast archaeological site more accessible to blind and disabled people. The project uses braille signs, QR-coded audio guides, tactile models and bas-relief replicas of artifacts that have been excavated over the years.

The city of Florence, for its part, has produced a guide on the accessibility options at the Uffizi Gallery and its other museums, with detailed information on routes and requirements — including the presence of companions — for sites such as the Boboli Gardens, which because of their historic structures are not fully accessible.

An inclusive tourism model doesn’t just honor the human rights of people with disabilities; it also makes economic sense. Nearly half of the world’s population aged over 60 has a disability, and disabled travelers tend to bring two or more companions, according to the World Tourism Organization.

Giorgio Guardi, a tour guide with the Radici Association, which has been leading tours of Rome for people with disabilities since 2015, said the aim of accessible tourism is to create an experience that is enjoyable for everyone involved, companions included.

That often means slowing down, touching what can be touched and experiencing artwork with different senses. The association often organizes walking tours at night, when there are fewer people out and less distracting ambient noise at famous landmarks.

But it isn’t always possible for blind people to touch artworks, so guides have to get creative.

Take Rome's central Campo dei Fiori piazza and its imposing statue of Giordano Bruno, the 16th-century philosopher burned at the stake during the Inquisition for alleged heresy.

The statue, which stands atop a large pedestal in the middle of the piazza, is too high for visitors to touch. On a recent nighttime tour of the piazza, Guardi encouraged his clients to instead assume Bruno’s position: Hunched over, wearing a heavy hooded cape and clasping a book with both hands.

As one of his clients assumed the position, Guardi draped the cape over him. Others in the group lined up to touch the Bruno impersonator to feel the contours of his drooped shoulders, heavy with the weight of the Inquisition. Visitors who were deaf were also part of the tour, aided by a sign-language interpreter who recounted Bruno’s tragic end.

Aldo and Daniela Grassini, both blind, were avid travelers and art collectors who grew increasingly frustrated that they weren't allowed to touch art when they visited museums around the world. In the early 1990s, they founded what subsequently become Italy's only publicly funded tactile museum, the Museo Omero in the Adriatic coastal city of Ancona, where all the art is meant to be handled.

Named for the blind poet Homer, the museum features life-sized replicas of some of Italy’s most famous artworks, from ancient Roman and Greek statues to the head of Michelangelo’s David, as well as contemporary artworks.

“Touching something isn't like looking at it," said Aldo Grassini. "Not just because of the emotion it offers, but because of the type of knowledge that sensation provides.”

Sight, he said, is an “overbearing sense that tends to monopolize reality,” whereas touch offers a different dimension.

“We love with our eyes and with our hands. If we are in love with a person or an object that is particularly dear to us, is it enough to just look at it? No, we need to caress it, because caressing gives you a different emotion,” he said.

One of the artists whose work is on display at the museum is Felice Tagliaferri, who himself is blind.

At his studio on the outskirts of Cesena, Tagliaferri points to a marble bust he sculpted of his late friend Angela. Tagliaferri recalled that before Angela died of breast cancer, he lay down in bed with her, caressing her bald head.

“When she passed away, Angela remained in my hands, and I recreated this sculpture thinking of her,” he said.

Marcato, the woman who toured the Colosseum, and her partner Massimiliano Naccarato live in a smart apartment on Rome's east side whose living room is dominated by a huge painting of the sea.

Naccarato, who can see using his cellphone to enlarge images and with the help of special lights, purchased the painting to celebrate a professional award, and it has pride of place in their home.

Naccarato installed a special light behind the work so he can see it better. Marcato can’t see it at all, but she knows it’s there. And her own experience at the beach informs the way she enjoys the painting.

For her, the painting recalls her love of the sea, “for the noise it makes, for the thousand different sounds it produces, for the smell you breathe in, for the walks you can take in any season.”

It is a sensory way of appreciating art that has absolutely nothing to do with seeing it.

Nicole Winfield contributed.

Francesca Inglese, who is blind, touches a marble relief on the corner of a building during an inclusive art tour in downtown Rome, on Nov. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Michela Marcato, left, who is blind, and her partially sighted partner Massimiliano Naccarato, stand in front of a painting representing the sea during an interview at their home in Rome, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Aldo Grassini and Daniela Bottegoni, both blind, who founded in 1993 the Omero Tactile Museum, the first publicly funded tactile museum in Italy, pose for a portrait in their home in Ancona, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Stefania Terre, left, touches a reproduction of Michelangelo's sculpture La Pieta with Carmine Laezza, standing at right, during a tour for blind people with Monica Bernacchia, center, at the Omero Tactile Museum in Ancona, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Stefania Terre, who is blind, uses a small light on her fingers while touching a life-size reproduction of the head of Michelangelo's David as she poses for a long-exposure photograph at the Omero Tactile Museum in Ancona, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A new Tennessee law has eased up on two longstanding financial hurdles for people with felony sentences who want their voting rights back, including a unique requirement among states that they must have fully paid their child support costs.

The Republican-supermajority Legislature approved the Democratic-sponsored change, which now lets people prove they have complied for the last year with child support orders, such as payment plans. The legislation also unties the payment of all court costs from voting rights restoration.

Advocates for years have sought various changes to Tennessee’s voting rights restoration system at the statehouse and in court. They say loosening these two rules marks the biggest rollback of restrictions to voting rights restoration in decades.

“This is huge and this is history,” said Keeda Haynes, senior attorney for the advocacy group Free Hearts led by formerly incarcerated women like her.

Most Republicans voted for it and Democrats supported it unanimously. The law took effect immediately upon Republican Gov. Bill Lee's signature last week.

“I think people are at a point where they want to just remove the barriers out of the way and allow people to be fully functional members of society,” said Democratic House Minority Leader Karen Camper, a bill sponsor.

In 2023 and early 2024, the state decided that the system did require going to court or showing proof of a pardon, not just a paperwork process, and that gun rights were required to restore the right to vote. Election officials said a court ruling made the changes necessary, though voting rights advocates said officials misinterpreted the order.

Last year, lawmakers untangled voting and gun rights. But voting rights advocates opposed some of the bill's other provisions, such as keeping the process in the courts, where costs can rack up if someone isn't ruled indigent.

Easing up on the financial requirements uncommonly split legislative Republicans. For instance, Senate Speaker Randy McNally voted against it, while House Speaker Cameron Sexton supported it, noting that people aren't getting forgiveness on making their payments.

“They need to continue paying that, and as long as they do, then there’s a possibility (to restore their voting rights)," Sexton said. "I really think that’s harder for people to argue against than maybe what something else was.”

Republican Rep. Johnny Garrett, who voted no, said in committee his vote would hinge on whether “there still can be an (child support) arrearage owed beyond that 12 months.”

For some, backed-up child support payments could reach hundreds or thousands of dollars, and court costs could be hundreds or thousands more, said Gicola Lane, Campaign Legal Center's Restore Your Vote community partnership senior manager.

Advocates credited their narrowed focus, omitting goals such as automatic restoration of rights, no longer tying restitution payments to voting rights, or offering a path for certain people to restore their right who are permanently disenfranchised, including those convicted of voter fraud or most murder charges.

The bill passed the Senate last year and the House this year.

Lawmakers gave the child support requirement final passage in 2006 within an overhaul bill that also created a voting rights restoration process outside of court. Critics said the child support rule penalized impoverished parents.

Democrats were then narrowly hanging onto legislative leadership in both chambers. Republicans held a slim Senate majority but GOP defectors voted for a Democratic speaker.

Last year marked the dismissal of a nearly five-year-old federal lawsuit over Tennessee’s voting-rights restoration system. Free Hearts and the Campaign Legal Center represented plaintiffs in the long-delayed case, which saw some election policy changes along the way.

Roughly 184,000 people have completed supervision for felonies and their offenses don't preclude them from restoring their voting rights, according to a plaintiffs expert’s 2023 estimate in the lawsuit. About one in 10 were estimated to have outstanding child support payments, and more than six in 10 owed court courts, restitution or both, the expert said.

Both Republican and Democratic-led states have eased the voting rights restoration process in recent years. Some states have added complexities.

In Florida, after voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2018 restoring the right to vote for people with felony convictions, the Republican-controlled Legislature watered that down by requiring payment of fines, fees and court costs.

Voting rights are automatically restored upon release in nearly half of states. In 15 others, it occurs after parole, probation or a similar period and sometimes requires paying outstanding court costs, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In Maine and Vermont, people with felonies keep their voting rights in prison, the NCSL says.

Ten other states including Tennessee require additional government action. Virginia ’s governor must intervene to restore voting rights of people convicted of felonies. In some states, including Tennessee, certain conviction types render someone ineligible.

However, Virginia lawmakers this year have passed a proposed state constitutional amendment to ask voters whether they want automatic voting rights restoration after someone is released from prison. Kentucky lawmakers have proposed a similar change for voters' consideration that would automatically restore voting rights after certain completed sentences, including probation.

FILE - The Tennessee Capitol is seen, Jan. 22, 2024, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File)