Celebrating the Paralympic history of nations, disability sports organisations and museum collections

Welcome to National Paralympic Heritage Trust's Global Virtual Museum. This is a place where you can explore the history of the Paralympic Games from its birthplace in Stoke Mandeville and interact with inspirational Paralympic stories from around the world. 

For the best visitor experience, as you enter each virtual space, turn to the left to the introduction panel and move clockwise around the room. Enjoy your visit!

Contents

• Navigation menu and tools
  • Keyboard controls
• Accessibility
  • Guided tour and screen readable options
• Feedback
• Resources

Navigation menu and tools

Click the yellow arrows on the floor to enter a new gallery or foyer space or go back to the Guttmann Gallery, where entrance into all areas of the museum can be found.

Click on the neon yellow circles on the floor to navigate around the galleries, they will place you directly in front of text, objects and images to explore.

The yellow circles on the walls have a variety of purposes integrating some access tools including: enlarging images; providing text and audio versions of text; participant reflections; and in some cases audio descriptions.

The white circles with black letters 'AD' provide audio description only and, in most cases, co-created audio description. These are observations that are often speculative.

The black circle with the white box in the middle provides access to the objects that have been scanned for viewing in 3D.

Keyboard controls

Keyboard shortcut and description

 look left      look right

  look up       look down       zoom in        zoom out

Accessibility

There are audio descriptions of images and 3D models throughout the gallery and we are working on adding more of these in the future. In some of the galleries, the audio descriptions are combined with the rest of the text information. On some of the audio clips pronunciation of names may not be perfect.

There are limitations on these virtual platforms and we will continue to strive to overcome these. We have included screen readable documents for each of the galleries below. 

This museum has been researched and co-created with people who have lived experience of disability and many with Paralympic or disability sport backgrounds. Disabled young people from our traineeship and work placement schemes have been a key part of the project, learning new skills including curation, 3D scanning and oral history.

Guided tours and screen readable options

For visitors who wish to be navigated around the space, please find our guided tours and screen readable pages below.

The screen readable webpages and documents contain the text displayed on the wall panels and audio descriptions for the 3D models in each gallery. Some of the audio descriptions have been co-created, interpreted as part of Workshop for Inclusive Co-created Audio Description (W-ICAD) sessions, with a group of blind, partially blind and non-blind participants. It includes people’s reflections and speculations about how the object might have been used.

Museum entrance foyer page

Guttmann Gallery page

Buckinghamshire Museums Gallery page

Hampshire Gallery page

British Blind Sport Gallery page

Cerebral Palsy Sport Gallery page

Japan Gallery page

Italy Gallery page

Global Virtual Museum feedback

We'd love to receive your feedback about the museum and what elements you enjoyed the most. Please complete this short survey. All responses are confidential and can be anonymous.

Resources

Have a go at the activities for the whole family including trails and Widgit sheets.

Guttmann Gallery activities

Click here to view or download the trail or the Widgit spellings

 

British Blind Sport gallery activities

Click here to view or download the trail the Widgit sequencing or sports activity.

 

Buckinghamshire Museums Gallery activities

Click here to view or download the trail or the Widgit spellings.

 

Japan Gallery activities

Click here to view or download the trail or the Widgit image match.

 

Thank you

Thank you to all who collaborated with us to develop the museum including our partners, funders and volunteers. Find out more about the Global Virtual Museum project here.

Funders

Arts Council England, Wolfson Foundation, National Lottery Heritage Fund, Rothschild Foundation, Mitsubishi Corporation London Branch and Heart of Bucks.