Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, public sites in the United States must be accessible to people who are disabled. But there are publicly-owned historic buildings with very old architecture that can be difficult for people with mobility issues to access. For example, many of these old buildings have narrow staircases that people in wheelchairs can’t get up. And because they are historic buildings, elevators can’t be built in them. 

To solve this problem, a group of engineering and photography students from the County College of Morris in Randolph, New Jersey, created a Google Street View-style virtual navigator that helps disabled people explore historical buildings without having to physically be there, northjersey.com reported.

The team visited a 168-year-old mansion called The Willows located on a former colonial farm in New Jersey. They took high-resolution photos of the upstairs rooms using a 360-degree camera, then used the image to create a 3D tour of the house, which can be experienced with a virtual reality headset. 

“Every 360 shot is a collage of six individual images that students worked diligently to stitch together,” Professor Nicole Schwartz told the newspaper. 

While the technology to create 3D tours can be expensive, it provides a solution for historical sites like the Willows that need to make their buildings accessible to people with disabilities, and also gives disabled historians a way to easily explore these spaces.  

“It’s an adaptation,” Sean Dineen, a history professor at Kean University who depends on a wheelchair, said. “Ideally, I’d rather we were all on a level playing field, but I would rather have something like this than nothing at all.” 

Check out the students’ 3D virtual tour here.