An audio tour is, by its nature, an accessibility tool. A great deal of a museum's meaning is locked away in small printed labels — hard to read for a visitor with low vision, for someone who finds dense text difficult, for a child still learning to read, or simply for anyone in a dim gallery without their glasses. Spoken word reaches all of them. This page sets out how we lean into that, how the app itself is built for accessibility, and the honest limits where the museum's own building, not us, sets the constraints.
Before any app feature, the simple fact of being audio rather than text makes a tour reach people that labels miss. Here is who benefits most.
A visitor who cannot easily read a small wall label can listen instead, hearing the same — and usually far richer — information spoken clearly. For many blind and low-vision visitors, audio is the difference between a museum that speaks to them and one that does not.
For visitors with dyslexia or other reading difficulties, and for those reading in a second language, hearing the story told is far easier and more enjoyable than wading through blocks of printed text in a dim gallery.
Even for visitors with no particular need, listening is gentler than reading dozens of labels while standing — less tiring on the eyes and the legs, and it lets you keep looking at the object rather than down at the text.
An audio app is no use to a visitor who cannot operate it, so the app is built with accessibility in mind throughout. It works fully with the screen readers built into phones, so a blind visitor can navigate the tours and controls by voice and touch; the controls are large and clearly labelled for visitors with limited dexterity or low vision; the text in the app meets contrast standards and respects your phone's text-size setting, so it enlarges when you need it to. Playback speed can be slowed for anyone who prefers a gentler pace, and the app does not rely on quick gestures or fine taps that some visitors find hard.
The website you are reading is likewise built to WCAG AA — keyboard-navigable, screen-reader-friendly, high-contrast, and respectful of reduced-motion settings. We treat accessibility as part of doing the job properly rather than an add-on, because the whole promise of an audio guide is to open a museum to more people, and an inaccessible app would betray that promise at the first step.
Yes. The app is built to work with the screen readers built into iOS and Android, so a blind or low-vision visitor can find, download and play tours and operate the controls by voice and touch. If you hit any difficulty, tell us — we treat screen-reader issues as urgent.
Yes — the app lets you adjust playback speed, slower or faster, so you can take the tour at the pace that suits you. This helps anyone who prefers a gentler delivery, including some visitors processing a second language.
That is the museum's own provision — step-free routes, lifts, seating — and varies building to building, so we cannot speak for it. We would gently suggest checking with the museum directly before you visit. Our part is making sure the audio tour itself is open to as many visitors as possible, and we are always glad to advise on what we know of a museum's own access if you ask before you go.
Download the app and hear how much more a tour reaches than a wall of labels.
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