30 May 2019

The Postal Museum, London

The Postal Museum – transforming their visitor experience

Customer: The Postal Museum 

Services provided by A2i: Braille, Large Print, tactile maps, and Large Print maps. 

Hannah Smith, Community Learning Officer, at The Postal Museum, comments:
“A2i gave us useful advice and were helpful in producing large print and braille guides specifically tailored to both our visitors and our unique site. Production and delivery were quick and efficient too.”

About the Museum

London’s newest attraction, The Postal Museum brings five centuries of Britain’s postal heritage to life. There are interactive galleries, inspiring exhibitions, 100-year-old miniature train tunnels with train rides available, and a wide-range of learning activities.

Images courtesy of The Postal Museum

The Organisation’s goals

When this new, exciting museum opened they worked hard to ensure accessibility for all visitors. They not only considered the physical building and how people might navigate around it but also their written information. The Museum wants everyone to be able to enjoy their visit.

The Museum had quite complex requirements and spent some time looking around for the best company to help. A2i stood out as we offer all-encompassing transcription services in-house, and we are happy to be flexible. We worked closely with the Postal Museum throughout the transcription process to deliver a product that best reflected the Museum whilst still being accessible to visually impaired people. This included detailed discussion before the project was started, and revisions to draft documents to make sure all expectations were met.

Image courtesy of The Postal Museum

Our solution

To enable the Postal Museum to offer a fun and informative day to as many people as possible A2i transcribed their Visitor Guide. We provided individual transcribed documents for each of the 5 zones in the museum in:

Braille – including print titles at the start of each section to aid navigation for sighted staff, and clear protective covers to improve the aesthetic appeal and extend the lifetime of the Braille documents.

Large Print – with full colour images that are accessible, whilst still meeting the Museums specific layout requirements. The Museum requested Large Print on white paper and again we included clear protective covers to extend the lifetime of the large print documents.

A2i also produced maps of the Museums rail depot platforms. These are not provided for sighted visitors, but the Museum was eager for visually impaired visitors to be able move around the exhibits and platform area independently and safely. A2i produced:

Tactile maps – simplified maps that can read by fingertip, including full annotation in Braille so visitors who are Blind can independently navigate around and enjoy the exhibition.

Large Print map – a simplified, enlarged map that helps visually impaired people understand the layout of the exhibition and interact with it.

Remarkable results

The Postal Museum has had an incredible first couple of years. 198,000 visitors poured through the doors in their first year alone. The museum has enjoyed rave reviews and was also a finalist in the Museum of the Year 2018 competition. One deciding factor for this award was ‘Audience engagement, diversity or access initiatives that have greatly broadened participation, and creative use of technology or digital media’ – an area that their accessible documents will certainly have contributed towards.

With A2i’s help the Museum can now welcome more visitors, knowing they can fully enjoy the museum and everything is offers.

More info about accessibility at the museum can be found on their website

Get in touch with A2i for information about how to make your venue accessible.