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’ve designed nms.ac.uk, afnms.org, and mathsweek.scot with accessibility in mind, but we know there may still be parts of the website that are not accessible to everyone. For example:

  • The main navigation presents barriers to keyboard only users
  • Some links do not show clear visible borders when receiving keyboard focus
  • Not all links or buttons meet the minimum target size requirements
  • You cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader on mathsweek.scot
  • Not all font sizes are scalable
  • Not all fonts colours and backgrounds meet the minimum contrast ratio. 

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 has been tested against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)  2.2 AAA standard. 

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 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 user interface controls contain SVGs that appear as unlabelled images. This fails to meet WCAG 2.2. success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content), 1.3.1 (info and relationships) and 4.1.2 (name, role, value).

We plan to resolve this by April 2026. 

Visible focus does not appear for every focusable element in all contexts. This fails WCAG 2.2. Success criterion 2.4.7 (focus visible). 

We plan to resolve this by August 2026. 

Some links have insufficient contrast. This fails to meet WCAG 2.2. Success criterion 1.4.11 (Non-text contrast).

We plan to resolve this by August 2026. 

The ‘search our collections’ and search fields do not have an explicit label. This fails to meet WCAG 2.2. Success criterion 2.5.3 (label in name), 1.3.1 (info and relationships) and 4.1.2 (name, role, value).

We plan to resolve this by April 2026. 

Not all fonts and background colours meet minimum contrast requirements. This fails to meet WCAG 2.2. Success criterion 1.4.3 (contrast minimum).

We plan to resolve this by August 2026. 

Some user interface components have a low contrast ratio between the background and foreground colours. This fails to meet WCAG 2.2. Success criterion 1.4.11 (contrast minimum).

We plan to resolve this by August 2026. 

Not all fonts can be increased by up to 200% without breaking the website or becoming truncated. This fails to meet WCAG 2.2. Success criterion 1.4.4 (resize text).

We plan to resolve this by August 2026. 

Aria labels cannot be applied to non-semantic elements without assigning a role. This fails to meet WCAG 2.2. Success criterion 4.1.2 (Name, role, value).

We plan to resolve this by August 2026. 

Links must have an accessible name. In some cases icons have been assigned without appropriate labels. This fails to meet WCAG 2.2. Success criterion 2.4.4 (link purpose in context).

We plan to resolve this by August 2026. 

 

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. 

 

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We are currently redeveloping the Search our collections section, which will resolve a number of the non-compliances outlined earlier. 

 

Preparation of this accessibility statement 

This statement was prepared on 3 August 2021. It was last reviewed on 27 January 2026. 

This website was last tested on 2 October 2024 against the WCAG 2.2 AAA standard.

The test was carried out by Accessible by Design. We used a combination of automated testing and manual assessment, checking a representative sample of pages from across the websites.