This World Autism Awareness Day, we wanted to share some of the ways we're trying to make our museums more accessible to autistic people.
We try to make all our visitors feel welcome and at ease when they visit and to help with that we have some guides to what to expect from the museum that can be viewed before arriving. These can be found on the pages for Verulamium and for St Albans Museum + Gallery under Facilities + Access on the right hand side bar. We've also pulled out some of the key information below:
Verulamium Museum
Verulamium Museum is listed on the AccessAble website
We also have a visual story and a practical guide to visiting.
We offer relaxed sessions for our learning programme.
We worked with students from Oaklands College to create a video showing you what a visit to Verulamium can be like:
St Albans Museum + Gallery
St Albans Museum + Gallery is listed on the AccessAble website.
We have a 360 view of the inside of our building that can help you to see what to expect from your visit.
There are spaces within the museum that are quieter than others - the local history area on the first floor has a couple of seats to sit quietly and browse some history books.
Our museum access statement and policy can be found here: https://www.stalbansmuseums.org.uk/accessibility
We also collaborate with an Access Advisory Group on how to improve our visitors' experience. If you have any feedback or suggestions in terms of accessibility, please do get in touch, we'd love to hear from you.