Accessibility Integration
and Artificial Intelligence for Museums

aimused.eu

Timeline

27–28 October 2025 / First AIMused Project Meeting

The first AIMused project meeting took place at the National Marine Fisheries Research Institute in Gdynia. For two days, we discussed what accessibility in tourism means to us, how to jointly implement our ideas, and how to shape the project so that it brings real change in the South Baltic region. The meeting was attended by project partners, representatives of the Interreg South Baltic Programme, and the Pomeranian Regional Tourist Organization.

13 October 2025 / AIMused officially launched

Director of the National Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Piotr Margoński, and Secretary of State at the Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy, Jacek Karnowski, signed the subsidy contract for the AIMused project, thus launching its implementation. The project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund under the Interreg South Baltic Programme 2021–2027.

About the project

AIMused is the first initiative in the South Baltic region that combines artificial intelligence and accessibility in educational tourism.

Its goal is to make the content and experiences offered by tourist attractions more accessible – so that everyone, regardless of age, ability or perception of the world, can enjoy them fully.

The project brings together institutions with diverse profiles – museums, an aquarium, SMEs and universities. This cross-sectoral collaboration merges scientific, technological and social expertise to create tools that will make tourism more inclusive, understandable and visitor-friendly.

Project co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund under the Interreg South Baltic Programme 2021–2027.

Project objective

Across Europe – and in the South Baltic region as well – societies are ageing and the number of people with cognitive and accessibility needs is growing.
According to Eurostat data (2023), 27% of Europeans aged 16 and over reported having some form of disability. This equals 101 million people, or one in four adults in the EU.

For the countries in our region, the statistics are as follows:
Poland – 24.4%, Germany – 28.2%, Denmark – 36.7%, Lithuania – 27.4%, Sweden – 22.6%.

The AIMused project aims to improve the digital and informational accessibility of tourist attractions and to create a more inclusive offer for people with diverse needs – including persons with disabilities, older adults and neurodivergent visitors. The project uses modern tools, including those based on artificial intelligence, to help attractions adapt their content and communication to different audiences.

Presenting information in a way that is accessible to as many people as possible strengthens their participation in cultural, educational and environmental experiences.
This is why inclusive solutions are needed – so that everyone can take part in tourism and learning without barriers and in a way that matches their abilities.

Project impact

AIMused will set new standards for content accessibility in educational tourism.
Through international cooperation, the project will deliver scalable and transferable solutions that can be implemented in various types of institutions – from science centres and museums to theme parks and nature heritage sites.It will help organisations develop offers that combine education, technology and accessibility – so that everyone can take part in discovering the world.

What will be developed?

• Guidelines describing best practices for accessibility in tourism, universal design and plain language,
• Digital and physical tools improving access to content in tourist sites,
• Training and workshops for tourism and education professionals on communication, cognitive accessibility and the use of AI to support visitors,
• Publications – scientific and popular – summarising the project’s results and recommendations for the tourism sector.

All solutions will be tested in different South Baltic countries with the participation of people with special needs and accessibility experts.

Project partners

• project leader: National Marine Fisheries Research Institute – Gdynia Aquarium (Poland)
• University of Szczecin (Poland)
• Lithuanian Sea Museum (Lithuania)
• NaturBornholm (Denmark)
• Technical University of Applied Sciences Wildau (Germany)
• Kalmar County Museum (Sweden)
• KL Kulturland MV gGmbH (Germany)
• Nautil – Leszek Chojnicki (Poland)
• and 11 associated partners from Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Lithuania and Poland.

Project duration

18 September 2025 – 18 August 2028

Budget

Total project budget: EUR 2,076,967.75
ERDF co-financing: EUR 1,661,574.20

The Ministry of Education and Science, as part of the “Social Responsibility of Science” program, granted the Sea Fisheries Institute – National Research Institute a grant for the implementation of the project entitled “Baltic Scientist – series of films popularizing science about the Baltic Sea for school children”. The task is coordinated by the NMFRI Gdynia Aquarium.

What will be created as part of the project?

The project will include the production of a series of 12 films, i.e. popular science video reportages for school children. The films will take the form of “meetings with scientists”. The next episodes of the Baltic Scientist will be a modern way for oceanographers to reach young recipients with knowledge in the field of “science“.

Who will appear in the movies and what will it be about?

Who will the films for?

 Imagine being part of a dynamic online group of like-minded practitioners to mutually support each other keeping pace with ever new digital challenges and opportunities! How to set up and maintain such group for tourism attractions is what the project “Connectivist Massive Open Online Courses for Digitalization in Baltic Tourism Attractions” – or in short “Baltic DigiTour“ – is about to investigate.

“Baltic DigiTour“ is a seed money project, co-financed by Interreg Baltic Sea Region within the European Regional Development Fund. Seed-money shall support the consortium of this one-year-project to conduct background investigations and thereby prepare for developing a fully-fledged main project.

Implementation period

01.10.2020 -30.09.2021

Partners

• Stralsund University of Applied Sciences, DE (Lead Partner)
• Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Tourist Board, DE
• University of Szczecin, PL
• National Marine Fisheries Research Institute Gdynia Aquarium, PL
• LAB University of Applied Sciences, FI

Knowledge on digitalization is constantly evolving, vastly spread across organizations and countries, and thus very complex to pool under one organizational entity’s governance. An online community approach to distributed knowledge agglomerating in a virtual space could provide an alternative to deal with this complexity. Building an online knowledge community is embraced by the concept of cMOOCs: connectivist Massive Open Online Courses. While MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) provide teacher-based knowledge publicly online and therefore scaling the outreach of teacher knowledge, cMOOCs emphasize the collaboration of learners and other knowledge sources. The connectivist approach sees all participants as both learners and teachers, with the mutual exchange building the dynamic content and value of learning.

In the current seed money project “Baltic DigiTour“, four different analysis will help to further detail the requirements and opportunities for a future main project:

• Investigation of existing cMOOC models and success criteria (cMOOC analysis).
• Initial research on content experts e.g. in universities, bloggers, online groups, projects on digitalization in tourism (Content matter experts’ analysis)
• Analysis of needs and requirements of potential participants of the knowledge community and those who can make use of the developed underlying cMOOC concept and transfer it to other areas both within tourism and beyond (Stakeholder analysis)
• Investigation of suitable cMOOC IT platforms along with an evaluation of resources, limitations, functionalities (IT platform analysis)

Based on the findings, gaps will be identified and how an international project could help fill these. A full project plan will be developed from that, including the set-up of a suitable consortium. In addition, funding programs will be analyzed for suitability for the potential main project.

The project supports the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR) in the Policy Area of ‘Tourism’.

The main objective of the project was to develop new IT-enabled tourism products for natural and cultural heritage tourist destinations in the SBR in the form of multilingual BYOD-guided tours, providing an enhanced visitor experience during and after the visit thanks to gamification, multimedia content, and augmented reality techniques.

The guides provided informational and educational content to visitors lacking access to other types of guides due to high-season crowds or insufficient language skills. They were especially suitable for lone and cross-border travelers.

The common gamification service made the visitors’ experience more engaging and extended it beyond a single visit, fostering long-term relationships. A new region-wide brand (working name: South Baltic Spotter) was introduced to make the new gamified products more recognizable and marketable. This not only made the tourist offer of the SBR more visible and coherent to visitors but also formed a sustainable cross-border network of tourist destinations using the brand, open and prepared for new members to join.

The user-centric design process of the new products involved the organization of special events during the off-season, which additionally served promotional purposes and attracted a new kind of visitors (IT fans) to the destinations. Both the gamified tourism products offered under a region-wide brand and the way end-users were involved in the design of tourism products were novel in the SBR.

The project outputs directly benefited visitors to natural and cultural heritage sites in the SBR by enhancing the tourism supply, as well as managers of these sites by providing ready-to-implement solutions and knowledge on how to use them. Indirectly, managers of tourist agencies also benefited from the new brand, which fostered greater interest among tourists.

The project vastly contributed to increasing the popularity of natural and cultural heritage sites of the SBR as tourism destinations.

Our goals

The natural and cultural heritage assets of the SBR served as a base for significant tourism services, which were also available in the low season and in bad weather and played a considerable educational role. There was still a large potential for improving their use.

The three main challenges were: improving the quality of the visitor experience, especially during the high season when sites were overcrowded and for those facing language barriers; attracting new visitor target groups, particularly in the low season; and making the tourism offer of the SBR destinations more coherent and recognizable.

Opportunities were identified based on the worldwide opinion-leading NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Museum Edition. Three of these, which had not yet been adequately exploited in the SBR, were selected: Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), allowing visitors to use their own smartphones for guided tours; Gamification, defined as “the use of game design and game psychology in non-game settings to engage the target audience and motivate specific behaviors”; and (Visitor) Data Analytics, which provided new information for management.

There was a synergy in the simultaneous implementation of these approaches, as BYOD allowed gamification to extend beyond specific locations and countries, while also providing crucial context for data analysis—such as identifying the same visitor in various locations.

Another challenge was preparing the personnel of hosting institutions—both mentally and in terms of technical knowledge and skills (also mentioned in the Horizon Report)—as well as the technical environment necessary for these innovations to succeed. However, this also created an additional opportunity: allowing relevant products to be co-developed by users themselves during hackathon events, which could help attract a new type of visitor (IT enthusiasts) during the off-season.

Introducing the new products under a common regional brand created an opportunity to increase visitor awareness and build long-term relationships.

The chosen approach ensured high user-perceived quality of the products (thanks to end-user involvement at multiple stages of development), provided cost advantages (as outputs were used by multiple institutions), made efficient use of the project partners’ competencies (through knowledge sharing), and ensured the transferability of results to other destinations (by sharing both know-how and solutions).

BalticMuseums 2.0 Plus (2010 – 2015)

Wishing to ensure a high level of comfort for both adults and children in our exhibition, the Gdynia Aquarium has been carrying out BalticMuseums 2.0 Plus project since 2010. In collaboration with South Baltic’s scientific and oceanographic museums, we have created an electronic guidance system (eGuide).

We give you a unique opportunity to get to know our animals, along with a modern eGuide. Adults will be introduced to the underwater world by Krystyna Czubówna, a popular polish lector known from movies about nature, while children are offered to get to know animals through series of stories.

The tours are available in English and German.

The BalticMuseums 2.0 Plus project is a continuation of the BalticMuseums 2.0 project, where partners have developed a common oceanographic information platform, virtual tours and other interesting products for visitors to the South Baltic.

Project partners:

University of Stralsund, Stralsund, Germany
University of Szczecin, Szczecin, Poland
German Oceanographic Museum, Stralsund, Germany
NMFRI Gdynia Aquarium, Gdynia, Poland
Lithuanian Maritime Museum, Klaipeda, Lithuania
Museum of the World Ocean, Kaliningrad, Russia.

More about the project at: www.balticmuseums.org.

BalticMuseums 2.0 (2009 – 2012)

BalticMuseums 2.0 project is a project completed in 2012. One of the most important results of the project is the online information platform of Baltic oceanographic museums developed in co-operation with 6 scientific and educational centers from the South Baltic countries. The content has been translated into 6 languages in order to reach as many foreign audiences as possible.

Partners have been working on joint promotion and online ticketing. Additional virtual tours include the Gdynia Aquarium, the Lithuanian Maritime Museum in Klaipeda, the German Maritime Museum in Stralsund and the Kaliningrad Museum. As part of the museum project, they have prepared prototype eGuide devices – electronic guides for exhibition tours. The electronic guidance system was developed in the continuation of the project – BalticMuseums 2.0 Plus.

Within the framework of the cooperation the partners have also prepared a special website devoted to children interested in the sea life, so called “Kid’s Zone“.

Cooperation was supposed to increase the attractiveness of partner museums abroad, thus helping to promote local tourism.

Project Partners:

University of Stralsund, Stralsund, Germany
University of Szczecin, Szczecin, Poland
German Oceanographic Museum, Stralsund, Germany
NMFRI Gdynia Aquarium, Gdynia, Poland
Lithuanian Maritime Museum, Klaipeda, Lithuania
Museum of the World Ocean, Kaliningrad, Russia.

Fundraising for our project is done by selling a silver bracelet Save the Sea designed and sold by Amber Girl. The bracelet is made of high quality 925 silver and a rPET string produced from recycled plastic bottles and other consumer post and industrial PET waste. The main silver element of the bracelet refers to the coat of arms of Gdynia and is designed to unite everyone interested in the fate of the Baltic Sea. In addition to financial support for the purchase of a Seabin device, the bracelet is also educational. By creating a recognizable symbol of social responsibility, we can contribute to the development of ecological awareness not only in the target group, but also outside of it. The bracelet itself and the packaging (glass bottle filled with amber, wooden chips, cardboard box and ecological protective envelopes) are consistent with the idea of ​​the design. The bracelet will be sold via the Amber Girl website. All proceeds from the sale will be donated to the Gdynia Aquarium Development Foundation for the purchase of the Seabin device.

Soon, the concept also reached Europe, where EMSEA (European Marine Educators Association), an association that promotes knowledge of the sea in Europe, was created. To implement the idea of ​​ocean literacy, international cooperation was established between scientists, teachers and educators. The Gdynia Aquarium is one of the organizations operating within EMSEA and responsible for propagating ideas in Poland.

Ocean Literacy is based on 7 assumptions. The way they are formulated illustrates the interdisciplinary nature of marine knowledge. This content provides organization, compliance and consistency in the transfer of knowledge about the ocean.

The ocean covers most of the planet’s surface, regulates weather and climate, provides most of the oxygen we breathe, and is a source of food. After decades of pollution, habitat degradation and unsustainable fisheries, and now also climate change and acidification of waters, ocean health is at great risk. The greater the public knowledge, the more willingly ocean health activities are supported. Maritime education of society is an important aspect of solving multidimensional and critical problems.

To learn more about how we are developing work on this issue in Poland or to start cooperation with us, visit our Ocean Literacy page or see our Facebook page: European Marine Science Educators Association – Baltic Sea.

Why are we doing this

The natural and cultural heritage assets of the SBR serve as a base for significant tourism services, which are also available in low season and in bad weather, and play a considerable educational role. There is still a large potential for the improvement of their use. The three main challenges are: to improve the quality experienced by the visitors, especially during the high season when the sites are cramped, and for those having language barriers; to attract new visitor target groups, especially in the low season; to make the tourism offer of the SBR destinations more coherent and recognizable. The opportunities are pointed to by the worldwide opinion-leading “NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Museum Edition”, three of them were selected that have not yet been adequately exploited in this regard in the SBR: Bring Your Own Device (BYOD, letting visitors use their own smartphones for a guided tour), Gamification (“the use of game-design and game psychology in non-game settings to engage the target audience and motivate specific behaviors”) and (Visitor) Data Analytics (which provides new information for management). There is a synergy in simultaneous implementation of these, as BYOD lets gamification to span out of specific location and country, and provides a crucial context for data analysis, i.e. identification of the same visitor in various locations. Another challenge is to prepare the hosting institutions’ personnel (mentally and in terms of technical knowledge and skills, also mentioned in the Horizon Report) and technical environment, necessary for these innovative developments to succeed. On the other hand, it creates an additional opportunity: letting the relevant products to be co-developed by users themselves in a hackathon events, which could help bring in a new type of visitors (IT enthusiasts) in the off-season. Introducing the new products under a common regional brand creates an opportunity to increase visitors’ awareness and build long-term relationship.
The chosen approach ensures the high user-perceived quality of the products (thanks to involvement of end-users on several stages of their development), provides cost advantages (outputs used by many institutions), makes efficient use of the project partners’ competencies (by knowledge sharing), ensures transferability of the results to other destinations (sharing of both know-how and solutions).