Website accessibility

Accessibility statement for National Museums Scotland

This accessibility statement applies to the following websites:  

These websites are run by National Museums Scotland. We want as many people as possible to be able to use these websites. That means you should be able to: 

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts using browser or device settings 
  • zoom in up to 400% without the text spilling off the screen 
  • navigate most of the website using a keyboard or speech recognition software 
  • listen to most of the website 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. 

 

How accessible this website is 

We have recently rebuilt www.nms.ac.uk and www.afnms.org. 

During the design and development of these websites, we consulted with accessibility specialists at each stage of the process.  

We have also conducted an inclusive usability study involving members from our access group. Participants who took part had a diverse range of access needs. We invited feedback from each of these participants and have been working to implement the recommendations from this study.  

The sites were relaunched in August 2024. We are now in the process of conducting an accessibility assessment. This involves reviewing a representative sample of pages from our new website against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 and best practices.  

We will be conducting separate accessibility assessments for blog.nms.ac.uk, shop.nms.ac.uk, and mathsweek.scot. This involves reviewing a representative sample of pages from each site against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 and best practices. 

 

Feedback and contact information 

If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact:  

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in no more than 5 working days in line with our standards of service. 

 

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 

National Museums Scotland 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 

The website is being tested against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)  2.2 AA standard. 

We have just completed the development of the new www.nms.ac.uk and www.afnms.org. We’re assessing their accessibility through an audit and will publish their compliance status by February 2024. 

We are assessing the accessibility of blog.nms.ac.uk, shop.nms.ac.uk, and mathsweek.scot separately and will publish new accessibility statements for each by February 2024. 

 

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

PDFs and other documents 

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if 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 3 August 2021 . It was last reviewed on 5 December 2024. 

This website is currently being tested against the WCAG 2.2. Level AAA standard. 

The testing is being carried out by Accessible by Design. We are manually assessing a sample of pages representing the key user journeys on the website.  

Pages out-of-scope for manual assessment will be tested using the automated testing platform, Sortsite. The results from the automated testing will be checked for false positives and verified.