Museum group improves web accessibility

National Museum of Science and Industry calls on non-for-profit IT group

Museum users will have more interactive experience

The National Museum of Science and Industry (NMSI) is upgrading its web sites to improve accessibility and interactivity.

NMSI, the organisation behind the Science Museum, National Railway Museum and the National Media Museum, has partnered with Eduserv, a not-for-profit IT services group to redesign all its museum web sites in line with the requirements of the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative.

Phase one of the project saw NMSI launch a new interactive web site for the Science Museum last month, powered by vendor Sitecore’s content management system (CMS), giving visitors access to over 2,500 objects from the museum’s collections.

The NMSI’s extranet and its organisation-wide intranet will also be delivered as part of the content management project.

Once this phase is complete, phase two will include work to integrate the other museum sites.

Mel Burns, chief information officer of NMSI, said: ‘NMSI offers visitors the opportunity to explore science, technology and innovation in a fun and engaging way. To do this, we need to have the right technology platforms in place.'

'Eduserv has delivered a content management system that we hope will help us to enhance the visitor experience and allow our staff to author approve and upload content faster without duplicating effort.’

'Sitecore will allow non-technical staff to quickly and easily create and load content which will help us to achieve our aim.’