Access for all

Download the Good Access Guide and Map as a PDF

Blind and partially sighted visitors

  • The Trust provides audio companion tours developed for the use of blind and partially sighted visitors. Pre-booking advised.
  • Guide and assistance dogs are welcome.
  • A sighted assistant is recommended for your visit.
  • Sighted assistants have FREE admission to Brunel’s ss Great Britain.
  • Ask at the Visitor Centre to use a tactile model of the ss Great Britain.

Deaf and hard of hearing visitors

  • Brunel’s ss Great Britain provides British Sign Language (BSL) hand-held interactive video tours to help explain the museum and ship.
  • There is a BSL video tour for children and a tour for adults. Pre-booking advised.
  • Assistants for Deaf and hard of hearing visitors have FREE admission to Brunel’s ss Great Britain.

Assistance for visitors with limited mobility and wheelchair users

  • The ss Great Britain, Dockyard Museum and the Dry Dock are fully accessible for wheelchair users.
  • A few of the cabins are too narrow for standard wheelchairs (see below).  The Trust can provide on request special wheelchairs that will fit through the cabin doors.  Please ask at the Ticket Office or the Gift Shop.
  • Dedicated wheelchair assistants have FREE admission to Brunel’s ss Great Britain.
  • Cobblestones through the main gates are uneven.  There is an alternative entrance through the shop (see site plan in the Good Access Guide). Please purchase your ticket from the Ticket Office first

Cabin and lift dimensions

  • The Promenade Deck has the narrowest cabin entrance: 59cm (width)
  • Dimensions for the narrowist parts of the lifts/ lifting platforms:
  • Dry Dock: 90cm (width), 140cm (length)
  • Dockyard Museum: 96cm (width), 140cm (length)
  • On board ship in the funnel lift: 97cm (width), 136cm (length)

Website access

The design of our website includes a number of accessibility features including:

  • The ability to adjust text sizes.
  • Alternative texts for images.
  • The use of cascading style sheets.
  • The ability to remove images for screen readers.

On every page there is a shortcut to increase the text size (see the four As on the top left of the screen), or alternatively select ‘text only’ to remove all images from the site (see image below).

You can change the text size by using your Internet browser menu (NB the default size for most browsers is "medium" or " 100%"). Please see instructions below.

Internet Explorer:

   1. Select the ‘Page’ menu.

   2. Select ‘Text Size’.

   3. Select ‘Largest’, ‘Larger’, ‘Medium’, ‘Smaller’, or ‘Smallest’ text size.

Firefox:

   1. Select the ‘View’ menu.

   2. Select the ‘Text Size’ option.

   3. Select ‘Increase’ or ‘Decrease’ to select your desired text size.

   4. Alternatively, select and hold the 'Ctrl' button on your keyboard and use ' + ' to increase the text size or ' - ' to decrease the text size. 'Ctrl' and '0' returns the text to the default size.

Safari:

   1. Select the ‘View’ menu on your browser.

   2. Scroll to ‘Text Zoom’.

   3. Select the desired text size.

Alternative texts for images

If you hover the cursor over an image on this website, you will see a text description. 

This is to provide further detail about an image, enhance access, and to provide information if you are surfing the web with the graphics turned off, or with text-only browsers.

The use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 

CSS allows a website to display information in a number of different ways, enhancing the accessibility of the content. 

It allows content to be displayed for different reading methods, such as on-screen, in print, by voice (when read out by a speech-based browser or screen reader) and on Braille-based, tactile devices.

This website provides the following style sheets:

  • Style sheet for standard web browsers.
  • A text-only style sheet, which is easier to view on small screens e.g. PDAs & mobile phones.
  • A print style sheet that presents the pages in a printer-friendly version.