Have you ever tried to explain a comic strip to someone who cannot see the panels? The Bayeux Tapestry is, at heart, exactly that: a 70-metre (230-foot) embroidered picture story of the events leading up to the Norman Conquest of 1066, all cavalry charges and longships and stitched Latin captions. It is on loan from France and on display at the British Museum until 11 July 2027. In July, a man from Croydon who has no sight in either eye asked whether anyone could describe it to him. The Museum’s first answer was no.
Light Rationed, Access Rationed
Dr Yusuf Ali Osman, represented by Kate Egerton of Leigh Day, asked whether audio-described tours would be available. He was told, as his solicitors record it, that they would not form part of the programme because hours were “restricted by light exposure” to the tapestry, and that self-guided visits would be prioritised. The Museum’s reasoning, as the BBC reports it, is that there are limits on how many hours of light the fragile textile can bear, which in turn caps visitor numbers.
A pre-action protocol letter followed on 24 September. Dr Osman seeks damages, a declaration that he was discriminated against, an order changing the Museum’s policies, and disability awareness training for relevant staff. By Wednesday, 30 September, the Museum had conceded ground: an in-person audio-described tour would run during the exhibition, and an audio-described tour was being explored for the exhibition app.
What the Equality Act Actually Asks
Section 29(7) of the Equality Act 2010 places the duty to make reasonable adjustments on any “service-provider”, paid or free. Under section 20(3), where a “provision, criterion or practice” puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage compared with non-disabled people, the provider must take “such steps as it is reasonable to have to take to avoid the disadvantage.” Section 20(5) separately requires reasonable steps to provide an auxiliary aid, and an audio description is, arguably, a textbook one.
The Museum’s policy of prioritising self-guided visits is the practice at issue. For a sighted visitor, self-guided means seeing the whole story. For Dr Osman, it means standing in front of cloth. As Ms Egerton puts it, “The Equality Act places obligations on service providers to anticipate the needs of disabled people and take reasonable steps to avoid substantial disadvantage.”
The conservation defence is real but narrower than it sounds. Light limits how many hours the lamps burn. It does not obviously limit how many words can be spoken, or recorded, in those hours. The Museum’s own concession on Wednesday, an in-person tour plus a possible app version, suggests the adjustment was available inside the same constraint. That is my reading of the facts as reported, not a finding, but it will matter when reasonableness is argued.
What Courts Have Already Said
Two earlier decisions frame the fight. In FirstGroup plc v Paulley [2017] UKSC 4, decided on 18 January 2017, the Supreme Court held that a bus company’s policy of merely asking other passengers to vacate the wheelchair space fell short of the reasonable-adjustments duty. The operator’s convenience did not end the inquiry. It was only the start of it.
In September 2021, in Reynolds and others v Live in the UK Ltd, the County Court found that a concert promoter discriminated against three Deaf mothers by failing to provide British Sign Language interpretation for an entire Little Mix concert. The judge treated the cost as under one-two-hundredth of the event’s budget and awarded £5,000 each for injury to feelings. The promoter, the judge found, had imposed its own solutions “in a rather high-handed manner and in a vacuum of ignorance and understanding.” A County Court judgment binds no one, but its logic travels: access for an experience means the whole experience.
Across the Atlantic, the pattern is the same under a different statute. In January 2015, the US Justice Department settled with the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, DC, requiring audio descriptions, audio-described tours with tactile experiences, and materials in alternate formats. “This agreement ensures that people with disabilities will be able to enjoy the fascinating elements of the history of crime and law enforcement together with their friends and family just like other patrons,” said then Acting Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta.
What Happens Now
The concession does not erase the claim. Under section 119, a county court can award damages that include compensation for injured feelings, and a declaration of discrimination need not turn on what the Museum does next. Under section 118, claims must generally be brought within six months of the act complained of, a window a July refusal meets if proceedings follow promptly. What the concession does do is shrink the case for an injunction and strengthen Dr Osman’s broader point: the adjustment was always feasible, and it took a solicitor’s letter to produce it.
Lessons for India
India’s own statute speaks the same language. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 defines reasonable accommodation as “necessary and appropriate modification and adjustments, without imposing a disproportionate or undue burden in a particular case,” to ensure that disabled persons enjoy their rights “equally with others.” The Supreme Court has since pushed accessibility from aspiration towards obligation. In Rajive Raturi v Union of India (2024 INSC 858), decided in November 2024, the Court held that Rule 15(1) of the 2017 Rules, whose accessibility guidelines were merely recommendatory, contravened the legislative intent of the Act, and directed the Union to frame mandatory rules within three months. “Accessibility is a right that requires ‘progressive realization’,” the Court said, “this cannot mean that there is no base level of non-negotiable rules that must be adhered to.”
Indian museums are now hosting, and will increasingly host, major loans and returned antiquities with their own fragile-conservation constraints. The British Museum episode is a template for what not to do. Access must be designed into the exhibition when the lighting plan and the ticketing plan are drawn, not retrofitted after a pre-action letter.
Dr Osman’s own words are the right test: “I want to be able to visit the Bayeux Tapestry and experience it for myself.” Conservation decides how long the lights stay on. It has never decided who gets to be told what is in them.