Helping science become accessible

The Science Museum Group (SMG) welcomes over five million guests every year and works tirelessly to promote STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) to those who experience inequality in wider society, including disabled people, through their museums, events and online.

The challenge

Since 2018, the SMG has also been in the midst of a project to create a new purpose built home to thousands of items which aren’t currently on display at a 545-acre former RAF airfield in Swindon.

The SMG appointed System Concepts to carry out an exciting accessibility project to support their aims to make STEM and their workplaces accessible to the broadest range of people possible.

What we did

Our work for this project included:

• Developing a detailed project plan with defined audit criteria and methodology.
• Engaging with employees to gather feedback on known barriers to access.
• Completing an audit of physical, sensory and intellectual accessibility of public galleries and employee back of house areas in London and Swindon.
• Reviewing future re-development plans to take account of accessibility.
• Completing a digital access audit of their website against Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
• Reviewing the employee onboarding and reasonable adjustment experience.
• Completing an appraisal of visitor accessibility related information.
• Reviewing accessibility design toolkits to ensure they referenced relevant Building Regulations and British Standards.
• Advising what needs to be done to remove barriers to access for employees and visitors alike.

Due to the age, listed status, construction and expanse of SMG sites, System Concepts had to consider opportunities to remove barriers to access while taking these into account.

Benefits

We concluded the project on time and on budget. We delivered a number of reports including a Senior Management briefing, and full prioritised, costed recommendations to allow the SMG to implement improvements to make their sites and STEM more accessible.