Reasonable adjustments for exhibitions and events: how can mediation support inclusive, feasible and visitor-centred solutions?
When planning an exhibition or event, accessibility can involve difficult decisions.
What does an inclusive visitor experience look like? What reasonable adjustments could remove barriers? What happens when an adjustment requested by one group creates practical, financial, conservation or operational challenges?
And, importantly, what happens when the organisation and the people affected cannot agree?
These questions have recently been brought into focus by legal action concerning the British Museum's forthcoming exhibition of the Bayeux Tapestry.
According to a press release from law firm Leigh Day, registered blind visitor Dr Yusuf Ali Osman has launched legal action after being told that live audio-described tours would not form part of the Museum's current programme for the exhibition. Dr Osman argues that this places him at a substantial disadvantage compared with sighted visitors and that the Museum has failed to comply with its duty to make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act. The Museum's reported position is that strict limits on the Tapestry's permitted light exposure restrict gallery capacity, leading it to prioritise self-guided visits over programmed tours and events. The claim is ongoing, and no court has determined whether the Museum has acted unlawfully.
The case raises a much wider question for museums, galleries, heritage attractions and event organisers:
How do we find inclusive and proportionate solutions when legitimate access needs meet genuine practical constraints?
Accessibility is about the experience, not simply getting through the door
When we talk about accessibility at exhibitions and events, it can be tempting to focus primarily on physical access.
Can someone enter the building? Is there a step-free route? Are accessible toilets available?
These things matter enormously.
But access to a building is not necessarily the same as access to the experience within it.
For a blind or partially sighted visitor, being physically present at a predominantly visual exhibition does not automatically provide meaningful access to its content.
Audio description, tactile interpretation and accessible digital information can all provide different ways of experiencing visual material.
Other visitors may require captions, BSL interpretation, quiet sessions, seating, sensory information or adjustments to how an event is delivered.
Thinking inclusively therefore means asking not only "Can people get in?" but "Can people meaningfully participate once they are here?"
When reasonable adjustments meet real-world constraints
Providing access does not happen in a vacuum.
An exhibition may be operating within a listed building where physical alterations are restricted.
A fragile historic object may need carefully controlled environmental conditions.
Visitor numbers may be limited.
An event may have restrictions around space, staffing, safety or timing.
Budgets are rarely unlimited.
There may also be competing access requirements between different visitors.
The British Museum dispute illustrates one version of this tension. The Museum has reportedly cited limits on the Bayeux Tapestry's exposure to light as a reason for restricting programmed tours, while the claimant argues that the absence of audio description disadvantages blind visitors.
That does not mean inclusion and conservation must inevitably sit on opposite sides of the table.
It means a conversation is needed about what outcome is required, what constraints genuinely exist, and what alternatives might be possible.
Reasonable does not necessarily mean perfect
Accessibility conversations can become difficult when the discussion is reduced to two positions.
"This adjustment must be provided."
Against:
"We cannot provide it."
Once those positions become entrenched, opportunities for creative problem-solving can disappear.
A more useful conversation asks different questions.
What barrier is the visitor experiencing?
What would the proposed adjustment allow them to do?
What prevents that particular solution from being implemented?
Are those constraints fixed, or could they be managed differently?
Could another adjustment provide a comparable outcome?
The aim is not necessarily to create a perfect solution for every visitor in every circumstance.
It is to explore what is practical, inclusive and proportionate.
Different visitors may need different things.
There is another important complexity for exhibition and event organisers: disabled visitors are not a single user group.
One visitor may need audio description. Another may need tactile interpretation.
Someone with hearing loss may require captions or hearing enhancement systems, while another visitor may need reduced noise and sensory stimulation.
A person with limited mobility may benefit from additional seating and shorter routes.
Some of those requirements can coexist easily. Others may require different approaches or designated sessions.
This is why meaningful user engagement is so valuable.
Instead of assuming what an "accessible exhibition" should look like, organisations can involve different users early enough for their experiences to influence planning.
The earlier those conversations happen, the more options are usually still available.
Could early facilitation prevent accessibility disputes?
This is where the skills used within mediation become relevant long before formal mediation is required.
Facilitative mediation is built around listening, questioning, understanding underlying interests, and helping people explore possible solutions without imposing an answer.
Those same skills can support exhibition planning and user engagement.
Imagine an organisation planning a major heritage exhibition.
Access users identify a need for audio description and tactile interpretation. Curators raise conservation concerns. Operations teams identify limitations around visitor capacity. Designers have spatial constraints. The organisation has a fixed budget.
Rather than each group defending its own position, a facilitated conversation can explore the problem collectively.
What are we trying to achieve?
Which constraints are genuinely immovable?
Where is there flexibility?
What matters most to visitors?
Could the experience be delivered differently?
What can reasonably be achieved?
These conversations do not guarantee agreement. But they can identify tensions before decisions are finalised and before someone feels that their needs have simply been overlooked.
What happens when a dispute has already developed?
Sometimes those early conversations do not happen.
A visitor requests an adjustment. An organisation declines it. Correspondence follows. Both sides become increasingly certain of their position.
At this point, mediation can provide a different route.
A facilitative mediator does not determine whether an adjustment is legally reasonable, decide whether discrimination has occurred or impose an outcome.
Instead, mediation creates a structured and impartial environment in which the parties can understand each other's positions, identify what is driving the disagreement and explore possible solutions.
The individual can explain the practical impact of the barrier.
The organisation can explain the constraints it is working within.
Both can explore whether there are alternatives that have not previously been considered.
That can be particularly valuable where the relationship matters or where the organisation needs to think beyond one complaint to the experience of future visitors.
Inclusion, conservation and feasibility do not have to be opponents
Museums, galleries, heritage attractions and event organisers frequently operate within constraints.
Acknowledging those constraints is not inherently incompatible with accessibility.
Equally, the existence of operational, financial or conservation challenges should not automatically end the accessibility conversation.
The most productive question is often not whether accessibility or feasibility should take priority.
It is how both can be considered together.
At Yates Mediation, our approach combines facilitative mediation with experience of accessibility, the built environment, heritage settings and Equality Act issues.
That means looking beyond fixed positions and creating space to understand what people actually need, what organisations can realistically deliver and where proportionate solutions might exist.
And ideally, those conversations should happen before a dispute begins.
Because the best time to discuss reasonable adjustments is not after somebody has been excluded from an experience. It is while there is still an opportunity to design that experience with them in mind.