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Ashlyn Chak

Stella Lee Yuen-wa, a Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) teacher who is deaf, is passionate about art and enjoys going on guided tours of museums and art galleries. But a big problem she encounters is a paucity of non-audio explanations.
“Even when I went to museums in Australia and Japan, there would be tours but I couldn’t hear them. Without comprehension, I had no choice but to leave [them] after a short while.”
In Hong Kong, specialists at museums and public galleries are constantly designing new ways to engage with members of the public, such as through multilingual tours and multimedia experiences that help people better understand the objects on show.
But far too often, tours aimed at the disabled community are limited to solving mobility issues, such as providing barrier-free access to exhibition halls.

Things are beginning to change.
In 2023, the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (Chat) in Tsuen Wan, Kowloon, began devising more comprehensive accessibility tours aimed at, and created in partnership with, hearing-impaired people.
“Accessibility services in other museums and art galleries [often] took disabled folks as [only] service recipients,” says Eugenia Law Pik-yu, Chat’s associate curator of learning and community. “We wanted to explore a way to include them, not just as recipients, but also as co-creators.”
In spring 2024, Chat launched Hong Kong’s first training course for both hearing and hearing-impaired guides, who are paired with one another to lead dialogue-based, multisensory tours that cater to both hearing and hearing-impaired people. The free tours began in September 2024.
“We realised Hong Kong Sign Language is a very interesting and visually oriented language and tool,” Law says.
“There are a lot of textile machines in our permanent exhibition, whose techniques [can be] complicated for the audience to grasp. Whether you are deaf, hearing-impaired or hearing, a little bit of HKSL [can help] you understand certain abstract ideas more clearly.”

Guides invite visitors to touch and feel objects to experience the history of Hong Kong’s once-blooming textile industry and the story of the textile museum that honours it.
The accessibility tours also provide an opportunity for hearing people to interact with those who are deaf or have partial hearing – a rare occurrence in most people’s everyday Hong Kong life.
According to the city’s Census and Statistics Department, there were roughly 246,000 people with hearing difficulties in Hong Kong in 2020. However, as of July 2024, there are only 57 names on the city’s official list of sign language interpreters, a number that has only gone up by seven since 2018.
Raymond Wong Cheuk-hon, general manager of the non-profit organisation SLCO Community Resources, says that Chat’s tours help members of the public better understand HKSL and the hearing-impaired community.

SLCO stands for “sign bilingualism and co-enrolment” and the organisation encourages “deaf-hearing inclusiveness”. The “bilingual” in its name refers to how deaf students are encouraged to be fluent in both HKSL and the written and spoken languages of the hearing community.
The organisation helped facilitate the Chat programme alongside the Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and designed the 45-minute tours led by hearing and hearing-impaired guides. The tours take place twice every Sunday until February 23, and may be extended if there is demand.
Museums around the world are increasingly devising programmes that ensure an enjoyable and rewarding exhibition experience for people with disabilities, though most are catered towards the visually impaired.
Examples are the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington’s multisensory tours; Istanbul Modern’s “The Colour I Touch” programme for visually impaired children and young people; the Tactual Museum of Athens, where visitors can touch copies of Ancient Greek sculptures, coins and more; and Madrid’s Typhlological Museum, designed to be seen and touched.

Since September 2021, the Hong Kong Museum of Art has provided multimedia displays, tactile and Braille guides, and multisensory workshops for visually impaired people under its “Beyond Seeing: A Multisensory Art Project”, in collaboration with Beyond Vision Projects, a local non-profit organisation.
M+, the Hong Kong Palace Museum and Tai Kwun all offer tactile maps, graphics, audio descriptions, HKSL interpretation and other tailored accessibility experiences on request.
“We welcome groups as well as individuals,” says M+’s learning and engagement curator Gigi Leung, adding it is recommended to register in advance. “Ultimately, we want to create a platform where audiences with and without disabilities can engage together.”


The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority has organised a series of inclusive activities as part of its new “WestK Inclusive Sharing Month”, which is taking place this month. They include tours at M+ and the Hong Kong Palace Museum with assistive listening devices, audio descriptions, easy-to-read information, HKSL interpretation, theatrical interpretation, and tactile graphics and tools. Appointments are required for some of the more specific services.
Chat’s Law says accessibility tours at most institutions require pre-booking or even an additional fee, which can become a barrier in itself.
“To eliminate this barrier, we make sure our tours are very easy to join,” Law says. “Every Sunday afternoon at 1.45pm and 3.45pm, you can just walk in, register at the reception and immediately join a tour.”

HKSL teacher Lee is one of Chat’s guides. She and Belle Sinn Cheuk-yiu, a language therapy student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, lead the Post on an accessibility tour through the museum’s permanent exhibition.
Lee says she is glad to see that visitors “actually have a lot of curiosity for HKSL and the deaf community”.
Sinn has similar feelings. “The general public has more interest in the deaf community than I expected. Both children and adults got involved and found the tour really easy to understand. After the tour, they would even ask Stella about deaf culture and the community,” she says.
Law hopes that in the future, Chat will work with people from other communities and backgrounds and include them as co-creators of the museum, while using the HKSL guided tours as a framework to develop and expand future programmes.
More information about Chat’s accessibility tours can be found on the Centre for Heritage Arts and Textile website. Details of the WestK Inclusive Sharing Month can be found on the West Kowloon Cultural District’s website.


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Tactile artefacts are some of the key features of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority’s new “WestK Inclusive Sharing Month” in January 2025. Photo: WKCDA

Stella Lee (left), a deaf guide and Hong Kong Sign Language teacher, and Belle Sinn, a hearing guide and language therapy student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, give a tour at the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (Chat) in Tsuen Wan, Kowloon. Photo: SCMP

The Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (Chat) in Tsuen Wan began offering accessibility tours in September 2024. Photo: Chat

People take part in an accessibility tour at Chat. Photo: Chat

Theatrical HKSL interpretations are one of the major parts of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority’s “WestK Inclusive Sharing Month” in January. Photo: WKCDA

The Hong Kong Museum of Art’s “Beyond Seeing: A Multisensory Project” features tactile guides for different levels of visual ability. Photo: HKMOA

Tactile artefacts are key features of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority’s “WestK Inclusive Sharing Month”. Photo: WKCDA

A blind participant feels a traditional musical instrument at an event during the “WestK Inclusive Sharing Month” in January. Photo: WKCDA

Eugenia Law is associate curator of learning and community at Chat. Photo: Chat

14 Hong Kong art exhibitions coming in 2025, including Mughal treasures, Picasso, Cézanne

Portrait de Dora Maar by Pablo Picasso. Photo: Handout

La Vie Des Champs (1876-1877) by Paul Cézanne. Exhibitions of paintings by Cézanne, Renoir and Picasso are among the events art aficionados in Hong Kong can look forward to in the city in 2025.

Mughal emperor Shah Jahan commissioned the building of the Taj Mahal in Agra, India during his empire’s golden age, the focus of a Hong Kong Palace Museum exhibition this year. Photo: AFP

The Pharoah Tutankhamun will be the focus of an exhibition at the Hong Kong Palace Museum along with recent archaeological finds from the large tombs uncovered in Saqqara, Egypt. Photo: Hong Kong Palace Museum

Pablo Picasso’s The Acrobat (1930) will be on display at the Picasso for Asia: A Conversation exhibition at M+ from March to July 2025. Photo: Handout

M+ Sigg Collection: Another Story (above) is still running at M+, and the third edition – M+ Sigg Collection: Inner Worlds – opens in August 2025. Photo: SCMP

M+ in West Kowloon will be putting on a number of exhibitions in 2025, including “Dream Rooms: Environments by Women Artists 1950s-Now” and “M+ Sigg Collection: Inner Worlds”. Photo: West Kowloon Cultural District

Alicja Kwade’s Conservation in Perspective (2016). Kwade’s exhibition, “Pretopia”, runs from January to April 2025 at Tai Kwun, in Central, Hong Kong. Photo: courtesy of K11 Musea

InnerGlow, a light show of digital art projection, at the parade ground in Tai Kwun. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

The Card Players by Paul Cézanne. Works by Cézanne and Pierre-Auguste Renoir can be viewed at the Hong Kong Museum of Art from January until May 2025. 

Lynne Drexler poses with one of her paintings in 1968. Photo: Dorothy Beskind

Sea Ear Hi-hat, 2020 by So Wing-po. Photo: Para Site

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People play booth games at the AIA Carnival, at the Central Harbourfront Event Space, on December 22, 2024. Photo: Elson Li

People enjoy a ride at the AIA Carnival on December 22, 2024. Photo: Elson Li

Peony Wong (left), the carnival’s assistant games manager, and Sammy Lau (centre), its HR and site manager, prepare to throw basketballs in a game at the event on December 22, 2024. Photo: Elson Li

Great Entertainment Group founder and chairman Michael Denmark poses with an astronaut model at the AIA Carnival on December 22, 2024. Photo: Elson Li

Game booths and their prizes can be seen at the AIA Carnival on December 21, 2024. Photo: Edmond So

People enjoy food and drinks in the carnival’s “Blue Girl Dai Pai Dong” area on December 22, 2024. Photo: Elson Li

‘Crip art’: disabled artists get new Hong Kong platform, sparked by shocking job interview

Installation and performance artist Yeung Siu-fong paints using her foot at the c.95d8 art collective’s village house in Sai Kung, Hong Kong. Photo: c.95d8

Installation and performance artist Yeung Siu-fong paints using her foot at the c.95d8 art collective’s village house in Sai Kung, Hong Kong. The collective’s “crip art” platform is helping bring disabled artists’ experiences to the public arena. Photo: c.95d8

Art collective c.95d8 founders (from left) Thisby Cheng, Yeung Siu-fong and Bomb Lam at Para Site in Quarry Bay. Photo: Sun Yeung

Yeung Siu-fong performs at the launch of the “Love+: Awakenings” exhibition at Pao Galleries, at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, on November 16, 2022. The performance required Yeung to pull herself from a body suit that was glued to a piece of plywood.

Yeung performs a work titled Balance. Photo: Jill Wong

Young naked women are their canvas – nude art of 2 anonymous Hong Kong artists challenges city’s conservative attitudes towards sex

Lousy’s body paint on a nude woman. The anonymous Hong Kong graffiti artist paints bold designs on young, naked women then photographs them in erotic poses. Photo: Lousy                                                         

Another of Lousy’s “kissfaces”, on Queen’s Road West in Hong Kong. Photo: Lousy

Lousy’s photobook “Yook”, published in 2020. Photo: Lousy

Matsushimaon’s body art on a nude woman. Photo: Matsushimaon

Professor Sonia Wong says there is not a lot of space in erotic or explicit artistic disciplines for women to express their sexuality, especially in Hong Kong. Photo: Professor Sonia Wong

Artist Lousy’s portrait. Photo: Lousy

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A museum’s free accessible tours for the hearing-impaired use Hong Kong Sign Language, while M+ and the Palace Museum offer new options


A museum’s free accessible tours for the hearing-impaired use Hong Kong Sign Language, while M+ and the Palace Museum offer new options.
