Sensory map

A sensory map plots a building by how it feels rather than by where things are. It marks the loud rooms and the quiet ones, hand dryers and other sudden noises, bright or flickering lighting, strong smells, crowded pinch points, and the routes that avoid them. It is used most by autistic visitors and people with sensory processing differences, and also by anyone with anxiety, migraine, PTSD, dementia or a hearing aid that turns a hard-floored atrium into an ordeal. A level building with an unbearable acoustic is not an accessible building.

A good sensory map is specific enough to plan with. It says which gallery has the interactive with the loop of sound effects, which corridor the dryers are in, where the seating is, where the lighting drops, and how to reach the exit without crossing the busiest hall. A weak one colours the whole floor plan amber and says the museum can be busy. The difference matters because the purpose is not to warn people off but to let them route through the building on their own terms and stay longer than they otherwise would.

Quiet hours are the scheduled counterpart. A venue picks a slot, usually early in the day, and reduces the stimulus: lights down, background music off, interactives muted, hand dryers switched off where possible, and admissions capped so the building does not fill. Some run them monthly and some weekly. The details are worth checking before travelling, because a quiet hour that only dims the lights in one wing is a different proposition from one that changes the whole building, and the schedule is often the first thing cancelled for a school visit.

A low-stimulus room, sometimes called a quiet room or sensory room, is a dedicated space to withdraw to at any time: dim, soft-furnished, away from the circulation route, and available without booking or explanation. It works best when it is signposted from inside the galleries rather than mentioned only on a webpage, and when front-of-house staff know where it is. Ear defenders kept at the desk, available to borrow without a deposit or a conversation, are the cheapest sensory measure a venue can offer and one of the most used.

We record sensory provision as separate attributes rather than as one heading: published sensory map, scheduled quiet hours, low-stimulus room, ear defenders, staff autism awareness training. Lighting and sustained noise are described qualitatively rather than given a decibel figure, because a single reading taken on a quiet Tuesday would misrepresent how a room actually behaves on a Saturday. What is published, and how detailed it is, tells you a good deal about how seriously a venue has thought about this.