Beyond Access

Museums shape public understandings of disability, yet the social model that dominates UK museum practice carries structural limitations that have received insufficient critical attention. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork at the National Gallery, London, and the Hastings Museum & Art Gallery, combining participant observation, interviews with six visitors and practitioners, and document analysis, this article identifies two interconnected gaps. The first is an information and communication gap: accessibility information proved consequential yet unstable, and provision favored one-way input over dialogue, undermining disabled visitors’ confidence in welcome. The second is a representational gap: even accomplished co-produced practice narrated disability as a standalone category, while participants’ own lives exceeded that single axis, locating the intersectional deficit on the institutional side. The article argues for a complementary integration of the social and human rights models, operating through institutional policy, to move museums beyond access provision toward more equitable, intersectional, and rights-based disability representation.