How Do We Produce a Visual Story for Potential Visitors?

What is this advice about?

This advice is for anyone who wants to make their site or event more accessible.

A visual story is a visual guide that potential visitors or participants can see before their visit to help them prepare for it.

On this page, we outline what and who visual stories can be helpful for and what to include when you make your own.

What are the key points?

What is a visual story and what might it be used for?

A visual story is a short, illustrated series of descriptions that help prepare someone for something or help them know what to expect by breaking an experience down into clear and simple steps.

Some heritage sites, museums and other cultural venues make visual stories available on their website to help people prepare for their visits.

Visual stories are typically aimed at autistic people, but as with most accessibility tools, they can be helpful to everyone of all ages and abilities, including:

• People with dementia or memory loss
• People with anxiety
• Learning Disabled people
• Other neurodivergent people
• People with mobility issues who need to plan ahead or plan a route with rest breaks
• Those who might need to consider access to particular facilities like toilets or lifts
• People with sensitivities to light or sound (you might want to also think about producing a sensory map)

Some visual stories look a bit like a comic strip, with drawings and symbols. Others might feature photographs or a combination of both. They should all have a clear narrative and a flow of information that is easy to follow.

A visual story can be used to:

• Prepare potential visitors for their visits to a heritage site
• Let visitors know what to expect from their visit and help them to plan
• Help manage anxiety
• Prepare people for social situations or an unfamiliar situation
• Help people understand what is expected of them in a particular situation or why others might behave in a particular way. For example, “when the room gets darker, that means the performance is about to start, and everyone will stop talking so they can hear the performers”
• Help visitors to cope with a change of routine
• To understand not just what will happen but why it will happen. For example, “the archive is very cold compared to the rest of the building because the collection in the archive is very old and fragile, and keeping it cool makes sure it lasts for longer”
• Allow people to make up their own minds about how accessible the site is

The Heritage Access 2022 report, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and produced by VocalEyes and partners Autism in Museums, Centre for Accessible Environments, and Stagetext, found that in 2022 only 9% of museums and heritage sites from a sample of over 2000 provided visual stories online.

While not having a visual story might not stop people from coming, it might be what convinces someone to visit or attend your site or event, as it signifies that you are accessibility aware. It makes inclusion and welcome explicit and demonstrates an understanding of the needs of potential visitors.

What information should a visual story include?

All visual stories will (and should) look different, tailored to the specifics of a place or event. There are no hard and fast rules about what a visual story should include.

However, here are some things you might want to consider (not all will be relevant to your site or event):

• Visual stories are primarily a visual format, with an image and a short text description. Ensure your visual story contains lots of images: this could be photographs of your site, illustrations, symbols and graphics, or it might be appropriate to use a combination
• Your visual story should follow a clear route around the site or address moments throughout an event in order. If there are multiple routes visitors can follow around your site, these should all be covered by your visual stories
• Your visual story might begin with transport options. For example, how to use the car park and the journey to the entrance, or the route to take from the nearest bus or train station
• Your visual story should be written in plain English, avoiding jargon and unnecessarily complicated language. Plain English is about communicating in a way that is clear, concise and easily understood by as many audiences as possible. You can find free guides about writing in plain English on the Plain English Campaign website
• Clarify how to find and access key facilities such as toilets, baby changing facilities, cafes, picnic areas, lifts, and prayer rooms
• Clarify where to find staff for help and assistance. You might want to describe the staff uniform (or provide an image if you have one)
• Clarify the places or moments where a visitor might experience a change to their sensory experience, such as a noisy or hot area or somewhere with strong smells or flashing lights
• Explain immersive experiences and technology
• For temporary features such as artworks, stalls or exhibitions, identify anything that might have changed since someone's last visit. It is a good idea to have separate visual stories for large temporary exhibitions
• Describe areas where there are most likely to be crowds. You might also want to flag especially busy times, such as when school groups visit or when people might gather to eat lunch
• Provide information about regular fire drills or alarm testing, what time to expect these (or times to avoid) and where to assemble or what to do when alarms sound
• Provide information about the terrain. For example, ground that is steep, uneven or slippery in bad weather, what kind of surface paths are made from, the number and height of any steps, and the width of doorways
• Explain which parts of the visit are indoors and outdoors
• Explain anything that might be challenging or distressing for both a first-time or repeat visitor

As with all accessibility tools, your visual story should be reviewed and updated regularly. You should build reviews into any plans for building work, furniture moves, new exhibitions or artwork installations. Schedule regular reviews even if there haven't been any changes. You could also ask for feedback on the visual story from invited groups or visitors you know use them.

How do I create a visual story?

Initial planning

When planning the process for designing and creating your visual story, consider the following:

• If you have the budget, commission experts to create your visual story for you
• If you don't have the budget, ensure you consult widely with visitors and potential visitors, especially with those who may find visual stories most useful, as neurotypical people will often not recognise things that should be included
• Test a draft with users, share with focus groups, ask teachers or teaching assistants who work with autistic children or young people as well as adults with learning disabilities for feedback
• Do a walk-through with your visual story in hand to make sure you haven't overlooked anything. Do this a few times at different times of the day, in different weather, and with different colleagues. You might be surprised by what you overlook or miss

Creating a visual story

When thinking about how to design and make your visual story:

• Simplicity is key. Make sure your story isn't too busy. A simple image-text-image-text format should be sufficient
• Take a look at other visual stories online to see how they look. We have suggested some you might want to view at the end of this article
• Think about your audience for the visual story. It should be accessible to everyone, but you might want to make separate stories for children and adults. Make decisions depending on this. For example, you might want to use illustrations and symbols for children and photographs for adults
• If taking photographs, make sure they are functional rather than artistic. They should be well-lit and clearly illustrate the text
• Consider commissioning an artist or designer with a good understanding of accessibility to create bespoke graphics if you're using icons, symbols or clip art. Alternatively, there are lots of freely available icons, symbols or clip art available online or included in word-processing software
• Use freely available word processing or presentation software to create the visual story, or have it as a simple page on your website. You might also want to make it available as a tagged, accessible PDF for people to download
• Add alt text to images or symbols. Alt (or alternative) text enables blind and visually impaired readers to understand images using screen readers and assistive technologies, which voice the alt text and describe what can be seen

Producing a visual story for your site or event might highlight its inaccessibility. It's important to be transparent about what is not accessible rather than choosing not to share it. Visitors will appreciate your honesty and might still decide to visit. An honest approach can also help you shape future plans to improve accessibility.

Also, try to be objective about potential barriers to access. Give measurements, details, and clear photos, as people with different access requirements are experts in judging their own needs. Remember that there are degrees of difference in how people can access sites, and you should not make assumptions based on disability.

How should we make our visual story available?

Once you have designed, created and tested your visual story, the next step is to make sure it can be easily found and viewed by people before their visit.

• Make it available on your website, alongside any accessibility pages and safeguarding information. This should be really easy to find from the homepage, where many teachers and parents, guardians or carers of young neurodivergent children will actively look for this information
• Consider having some physical copies at the entrance of your site or event, but it is more important to allow people the chance to review it when planning their visit
• Consider whether to present your visual story as a webpage, or as a downloadable document. Either way, make sure it is compatible with smart devices
• Consider having a presentation version, such as a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. This is especially useful for school groups or community groups that are visiting who might want to prepare for their visit in a lesson or a workshop
• Ensure you have a general visual story for the site if your site has temporary or pop-up exhibitions. Consider additional visual stories for spaces that change more regularly
• Consider making an audio version with audio descriptions of images as well. This should always be in addition to, not instead of, a text and image visual story. You should make a transcript available, too
• You might also want to include a video, or a short video within each section. Most smartphones are able to produce good quality videos. If the videos have audio or sound, they should include captions as well. Many video uploading sites can autogenerate captions but always double-check that these are accurate before publishing. The best practice is to include audio-described captions as well as BSL captioning of any video content (though this can be expensive, so set a realistic budget and timeframe for this work and inform potential visitors if it is not yet available)
• If budget allows, you might want to develop 360 virtual tours. These let people visit remotely and help visitors prepare and manage their expectations

Examples of visual stories

• The Beaney House of Art & Knowledge: SEND at The Beaney (Website)
• National Trust: Castle Drogo Visual Story (PDF)
• Hillsborough Castles and Gardens Visual Guide (PDF)
• Watching the Route: Horniman Museum and Gardens short access videos (YouTube)
• Jersey Heritage: Hamptonne Visual Story (Website)
• London Transport Museum Visual Story (PDF)
• The Norris Museum Visual Guide (PDF)
• Science Museum Visual Story (Website)
• National Trust: Stourhead Visual Story (PDF)
• York Castle Museum Visual Story (PDF)