Accessibility Statement

A rectangular painting with red, blue and yellow squares and oblongs with 5 black lines in between on a white background.

Bart van der Leck, Composition © DACS, 2019


This accessibility statement applies to www.tate.org.uk, shop.tate.org.uk and www.tate.org.uk/kids

This website is run by The Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery. We are committed to making our websites and mobile applications accessible, in accordance with The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 No.952. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • Change colours, contrast levels and fonts via browser or plug in
  • Zoom in up to 200% without the text spilling off the screen
  • Navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
  • 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 know some parts of this website aren’t fully accessible:

  • Images of artworks in Tate’s Collection don’t have alt-text descriptions so they can’t be read by a screen reader
  • You can’t modify the line height or spacing of text
  • Most older PDF documents aren’t fully accessible to screen reader software

What to do if you can’t access parts of this website

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print we will do our best to support you:

Email: information@tate.org.uk
Call: +44 (0)20 7887 8888

We’ll look into your request and get back to you within 7 days.

Reporting website accessibility issues

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact: information@tate.org.uk

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).

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

Each of Tate’s physical spaces are different and so access provision is different for each gallery. You can find the details in the accessibility section on each of the gallery pages:

We also have a general accessibility page that includes information about communication cards and audio description films for artworks in our collection.

Technical information about our website’s accessibility

Tate is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Non accessible content

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Non compliance with the accessibility regulations

Principle 1: Perceivable

  • Some videos lack captions, so the information in them isn’t available to people using a screen reader. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content). When we publish new film content we will ensure there are captions, subtitles or transcripts added.
  • We plan to add text alternatives to all images going forward. When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.
  • Some audio lacks transcriptions. These are mainly podcast content. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content). When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of audio meets accessibility standards.

Disproportionate burden
Descriptions and transcriptions of artwork and archive items

  • There’s no alt text on our artwork images (for example on the image of Matisse’s The Snail). This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (Non-text Content)
  • There are no transcriptions for the audio in the Audio Arts Collection. This is an archive collection of audio originally recorded on cassettes.This doesn’t meet 2.1 success criterion 1.2.1 Audio-only and Video-only (Prerecorded).

Interactive tools and transactions

We’ve assessed the cost and resources needed to fix the issues above. We believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations.

When choosing new suppliers and agencies we will ensure all new tools will be compliant.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

PDFs and other documents

  • Many of our older PDFs and Word documents don’t meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents. We are working to create accessible HTML pages instead of uploading documents going forward.

The accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. For example, we don’t plan to fix the spreadsheet listing of Collection Care Technique and Condition texts as these are accessible on the individual artwork pages.

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

How we tested this website

This website was last tested on 17/09/21. The test was carried out by AbilityNet.

As we have over 100,000 pages we decided to test the components and modules that are then assembled up each page. We tested the a sample of templates which then covered all of our current design components.

We tested:

If you would like to view the full accessibility report please email information@tate.org.uk

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

In Digital we are committed to Inclusive Design. This means that each new component that we make will be built to the highest WCAG standards we can. We also continue our commitment to testing our new designs and product with a broad and diverse range of audiences.

If you would like to be involved as a participant please contact information@tate.org.uk.

This statement was first prepared on 20 September 2019. The websites were last monitored by GDS and EHRC in June - September 2021. The accessibility statement was last updated on 14 September 2022 after the monitoring deemed the sites compliant.

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