Web accessibility

Using Science Museum Group websites

This accessibility statement applies to all websites operated by the Science Museum Group across the following domains:

Science Museum sciencemuseum.org.uk
Science Museum Group sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk
Railway Museum railwaymuseum.org.uk
Science and Media Museum scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk
Science and Industry Museum scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk
Locomotion locomotion.org.uk
Hire the Science Museum hirethesciencemuseum.com
Hire the Railway Museum hiretherailwaymuseum.com
Hire the Science and Industry Museum hirethescienceandindustrymuseum.com

These websites are run by The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DD (‘the Science Museum Group’, also referred to in this statement as ‘we’, ‘our’ or ‘us’) and we would like as many people as possible to be able to use them.

You should be able to do things like:

change colours, contrast levels and fonts
zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
navigate most of our websites using just a keyboard
navigate most of our websites using speech recognition software
listen to most of our websites using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

This statement explains what we are doing to address the accessibility of our websites and how to contact us about web accessibility.

How accessible are our websites

We are working to improve the accessibility of all our websites, but we know that some areas are not yet fully accessible. In particular, we know that you may encounter:

PDF and office documents that are not properly formatted to be accessible
Images with missing or unhelpful alternative text
Iframes without titles and videos without closed captions or transcripts
HTML and ARIA markup errors that may make using a screen reader difficult
Some of the text over images or video may not provide sufficient contrast

Contacting us about our websites

If you would like to get in touch to ask or tell us anything regarding the web accessibility of our websites, please

email webaccessibility@sciencemuseumgroup.ac.uk
phone 033 0058 0058

We want to improve our web accessibility and welcome your feedback. We will respond in no more than 5 working days but hope to do it more quickly than that in most cases.

Please do not use this email address for general enquiries regarding objects in the collection or research requests.

Contacting us about physical visits

If you need any assistance or information to help you plan a visit to one of our museums, please use the following contact details:

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the ‘accessibility regulations’). If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The Science Museum Group is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Compliance status

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances and exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Some videos lack captions and some audio lacks transcriptions, so the information in them isn’t available to people using a screen reader. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non- text content). When we publish new audio content we’ll make sure our use of audio meets accessibility standards
There’s no alt text on some of the images on the site. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (Non- text Content). Mitigation in progress. Due for completion Spring 2022. When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.
Insufficient colour contrast between text and background. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum). Mitigation in progress. Due for completion Summer 2022.
Incorrect ARIA implementations. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value. Mitigation in progress. Due for completion Spring 2022.
Iframes without titles. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value. Mitigation in progress. Due for completion Spring 2022.
The Preevue page on the Hire the Science Museum website doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion but would conform if the Preevue 3rd party app from uncontrolled sources were removed.

Disproportionate burden

Some of our older interactives and games, such as Launchball, are not compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard.

We’ve assessed the cost and resources needed to fix the issues we believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. When choosing new suppliers and agencies we will ensure all new interactives will be compliant.

Launchball is an interactive game that was developed over 5 years ago. The game was developed by an external digital agency at a cost of £70k. The SMG digital department does not have an internal development team so would need to go back to the agency to redevelop it. To make the game WAI compliant would require rebuilding it from scratch at a cost of around £70k as accessibility features would need to be built into the game mechanics throughout. The game can not currently be controlled by a keyboard and is not compatible with screen reading technology. To make the game accessible to blind users would also require adding audio descriptions of the interactivity within the game so that users could understand what was happening on screen as a result of their actions.

As SMG does not have an internal development team, the majority of the Digital budget is spent on the ongoing hosting, maintenance and support of the websites via external agencies. We would not have the necessary budget to redevelop Launchball and would need to find additional funds elsewhere.

Launchball receives around 22,000 visits per month. The benefits of solving the issues would be that the game could be navigated via keyboard and compatible with screen reader technology.

We do not expect to resolve the accessibility issues with this game as we will not have the necessary budget. The game is now quite old and a legacy project. Instead, we would like to put any digital budget towards making sure that any future interactives are fully accessible.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

PDFs and other documents

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. By Summer 2022, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 as they’re not essential to providing our services.

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 23 September 2019. It was last reviewed on 14 June 2022.

This website was last tested on 5 October 2021. We use PowerMapper to scan our existing websites once a month. New website developments are manually tested by specialist agencies.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

The Science Museum Group runs many websites that were developed at different times using different technologies. We are committed to providing websites that are accessible to all and we are working hard to achieve that, but it will take some time due to the scale and complexity of the task.

We are also:

rolling out accessibility training to staff who create web content
raising general accessibility awareness across the organisation
investigating how we can fix our PDF documents and videos
updating our procurement policies and contracts
writing new guidelines for external developers

Using Science Museum Group websites

How accessible are our websites

Contacting us about our websites

Accessing the collection

Contacting us about physical visits

Science Museum

Science and Industry Museum

National Science and Media Museum

National Railway Museum

Locomotion