HUGE NEWS FOR INCLUSION AND EQUALITY
Today, Ofsted confirmed that its SEND policy team has circulated our legal opinion on accessible virtual tours to their internal Legal team for information.
This post was updated 19/08/2026 to reflect current guidance, research and developments in education and accessibility.
Why accessibility in education is not just a legal requirement, but makes good educational and business sense too
When this article was first written, the case for allowing pupils, students and their families to explore an unfamiliar school or college before they arrived was largely one of common sense.
Since then, the evidence has moved on considerably.
There is now peer-reviewed research specifically examining virtual school familiarisation, including work with special schools in the UK. Ofsted has publicly recognised the potential benefits of familiarising pupils, particularly those with SEND, with their school environment. Department for Education guidance places increasing emphasis on familiarity and clear information during transition. At the same time, the Equality Act 2010 continues to require education providers to consider reasonable adjustments for disabled pupils and students.
None of this means that every school, college or university is legally required to have a virtual tour.
It does mean that pre-arrival familiarisation deserves to be taken rather more seriously than simply as a marketing extra.
Why does familiarity matter?
Starting a new school, moving from primary to secondary, beginning college or university, changing site or even entering an unfamiliar building for the first time can create a great deal of uncertainty.
For some pupils and students that uncertainty is manageable. For others, including some autistic and neurodivergent learners, people with anxiety or other disabilities, and children with complex communication or learning needs, not knowing what a place looks like, where they will go or what will happen when they arrive can itself become a barrier.
Recent research increasingly supports the importance of familiarity.
An England-focused study published in Educational Psychology Review in July 2026 drew together existing research and discussions with 52 experts from education practice, policy and research. It identified physical, academic and social familiarity with the new school as important in reducing transition-related anxiety, alongside accurate information and realistic expectations.
The Department for Education’s own June 2026 guidance on communicating with parents about attendance makes a similar practical point. It describes moving-up or transition day as an opportunity for children to “get familiar with their new environment” and encourages schools to explain logistics and what pupils and families should expect.
A virtual tour is not prescribed by either source. It is, however, one practical way of making that familiarity repeatable and available before, between and after physical transition visits.
We now have research specifically involving virtual school tours
This is perhaps the biggest development since the original version of this article.
In 2025, researchers from the University of Southampton published work in the British Journal of Special Education following the co-creation of 360-degree virtual tours with two special schools.
The children involved had complex communication and learning needs. The tours were used to share real places, people, practices and information about the schools so that these could be explored before, between or after physical transition visits.
The researchers concluded that virtual tours could be a helpful transition tool to support children and families in becoming familiar with a new school site.
It was a pilot study rather than an outcomes trial, so it should not be used to claim that tours automatically improve attendance or reduce anxiety. What it does provide is direct UK SEND evidence that this form of virtual familiarisation has a credible role within transition planning.
A separate controlled study, published online in November 2025 and in the 2026 volume of Education and Information Technologies, went further.
The researchers studied 359 children starting school. Of these, 176 explored a 6 to 10 minute interactive 360-degree tour of their school before the school year began, while 183 children received no equivalent preparatory intervention.
Three weeks after starting school, children who had used the tour showed significantly lower teacher-rated school avoidance, greater school liking and greater cooperative participation. There was no statistically significant difference in self-directiveness.
Teachers also reported that children who had explored the school virtually appeared more familiar with their surroundings and adapted more readily.
Again, there are sensible limits to what can be concluded. The research concerned young children outside the UK and did not examine English SEND provision or persistent school absence. But it is controlled evidence that seeing and exploring the real environment in advance can affect aspects of early school adjustment.
That is considerably stronger evidence than existed when this article was first written.
The attendance picture makes transition support particularly relevant
The latest Department for Education accredited statistics, published on 6 August 2026, show that absence remains a substantial problem.
During autumn term 2025/26:
- overall absence was 6.47%
- persistent absence was 18.10%
- severe absence was 2.12%
- persistent absence in special schools was 35.09%
- severe absence in special schools was 6.55%
The disparity for pupils with identified special educational needs is particularly marked. Pupils with an EHC plan were almost eight times as likely to be severely absent as pupils with no identified SEN, while pupils receiving SEN support were almost four times as likely.
Those figures do not tell us why an individual child is absent. Health, unmet need, bullying, family circumstances, transport, placement suitability, sensory issues and many other factors may be involved.
Nor is there evidence that giving a pupil a virtual tour will, by itself, solve persistent absence.
What the figures do show is why relatively simple, scalable ways of improving transition, preparedness and familiarity deserve proper consideration as part of a wider attendance and inclusion toolkit.
What does the Equality Act actually require?
This is an area where precision matters. Schools and other education providers have duties under the Equality Act 2010 to make reasonable adjustments for disabled pupils and students so that they are not placed at a substantial disadvantage.
For schools, that duty is anticipatory. In other words, schools should not simply wait for a disabled pupil to encounter a barrier before considering what reasonable adjustments might be needed.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s updated technical guidance for schools in England, published for consultation in June 2026, describes auxiliary aids and services as potentially including equipment, staff support, accessible information and accessible computer software. It also makes the useful point that the reasonable-adjustment duty is continuing and that schools should consider whether advances in technology create new potential adjustments.
That document is currently consultation guidance rather than a new statutory Code, but it reflects an important and longstanding feature of the Equality Act: reasonable adjustments are about the disadvantage experienced and what it is reasonable to do about it. There is no fixed statutory list of technologies that must be provided.
Ocean 3D also holds a written legal opinion from Louise Mankau of Doughty Street Chambers, dated 4 June 2021. Her opinion supports the proposition that a virtual familiarisation tour may, depending on the circumstances, amount to an auxiliary aid and may be a reasonable adjustment where it helps address substantial disadvantage associated with an unfamiliar environment.
That is counsel’s opinion. It is not a court judgment and it does not mean every education provider is automatically obliged to commission a virtual tour. The practical question for a school or college is better expressed like this:
If a pupil or group of pupils is disadvantaged by uncertainty about an unfamiliar environment, could accurate, accessible pre-arrival familiarisation be a reasonable and effective way of reducing that disadvantage?
In some circumstances, the answer may well be yes.
Ofsted has also recognised the potential value of familiarisation
In July 2025, Claire Stewart, Ofsted’s Deputy Director for Inclusive Education, wrote to Ocean 3D after reviewing our work.
Ofsted described the initiative as “commendable and thought-provoking” and recognised the potential benefits of enabling pupils, particularly those with SEND, to familiarise themselves with their school environment. The letter went on to say that facilitating such opportunities may improve accessibility and support, contributing to a more inclusive educational experience.
That is not an Ofsted endorsement of Ocean 3D, nor does having a virtual tour affect an inspection grade. It is, however, useful independent recognition from the education inspectorate that familiarisation of this kind has potential value for SEND and inclusion.
From September 2026, Ofsted’s updated inspection materials will also place further emphasis on inclusion, including leaders’ engagement with pupils with SEND and their families.
What about WCAG and digital accessibility?
A virtual tour intended as an accessibility resource should itself be designed and implemented accessibly. WCAG 2.2 is the current internationally recognised Web Content Accessibility Guidelines standard. For public-sector websites and mobile applications that fall within the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations, level AA is the applicable technical benchmark.
There is an important qualification for education. Primary and secondary schools and nurseries have a partial exemption from those regulations, except in relation to website or app content that people need in order to use their services. Other public-sector education organisations may fall more fully within the regulations.
More importantly, adding an accessibility control or a piece of accessibility code does not automatically make an entire virtual tour, embed or website WCAG compliant.
Accessibility depends on the complete experience, including navigation, keyboard operation, labels, descriptions, colour and contrast, multimedia, captions, screen-reader behaviour, the surrounding web page and the accuracy and accessibility of the information being presented.
Ocean 3D works with AVA Inclusivity to add accessibility-focused functionality to appropriate tours, but accessibility should be tested and described accurately rather than assumed.
Does clinical research tell us anything?
There is an interesting wider evidence base around virtual familiarisation and preparation in healthcare, although it should not be confused with school-transition research.
A randomised controlled trial published in 2025 studied 107 children aged 6 to 12 and their guardians before ambulatory surgery. Children given VR-based instruction about the perioperative environment and workflow showed significantly lower measures of pre-operative anxiety than those receiving standard preparation, with similar findings among guardians.
An earlier and larger randomised trial produced a different result. In that study, children explored a realistic virtual operating theatre in advance so that they could become accustomed to the environment and procedures. Among 191 children analysed, the intervention did not significantly reduce anxiety during anaesthetic induction or improve several other measured outcomes.
This is important, because research should not be cherry-picked simply because it supports a proposition. The clinical evidence suggests that virtual preparation can be useful in some circumstances, but intervention design, population, timing and context all matter.
For education, the strongest evidence remains the education research itself: familiarity matters, virtual school tours can extend familiarisation, and controlled research now suggests benefits in several aspects of school adjustment.
Accessibility is not the only reason to do this
There is also a straightforward organisational case. The same accurate virtual representation can help:
- pupils and students preparing for transition
- parents and carers understand a setting before visiting
- SENDCOs and transition teams discuss unfamiliar spaces or routes
- prospective students make a more informed decision before an open day
- admissions teams answer common questions visually
- prospective employees prepare for an interview or first day
- staff understand buildings and facilities
- estates teams communicate changes to a site
For an education provider, that means a well-designed virtual familiarisation resource need not sit in a forgotten corner of the marketing website.
It can become a shared resource across inclusion, transition, admissions, marketing, recruitment, estates and communications.
There is also a simple commercial point. If a family is choosing between schools, colleges or universities, giving them useful and accurate information before they visit may help them make a more informed choice and may make the institution feel better prepared and more welcoming.
What we cannot currently say is that a tour will generate a particular percentage increase in enrolment or funding. That needs to be measured institution by institution rather than assumed.
Safeguarding and security matter too
Particularly in schools and specialist settings, publishing a virtual representation of a building needs careful thought.
Children, personal information, confidential material, identifiable timetables, safeguarding information, access-control details or other sensitive material should not simply appear because they happened to be present when a building was captured.
What is photographed, what is removed, which spaces are published, who approves publication and how the resource is kept current all need to form part of the project.
An accessibility resource should reduce barriers without creating unnecessary safeguarding, privacy or security risks.
A virtual tour is not the answer to every accessibility problem
Nor should it replace physical transition visits, reasonable adjustments, accessible buildings, good communication or human support. For some pupils, visiting a school physically several times will remain the best preparation. Others may benefit from photographs, social stories, video, written information or individual support. Some may find a virtual tour particularly useful because they can explore privately, repeatedly and at their own pace.
The point is not that every learner needs the same solution.
It is that, where unfamiliarity itself is part of the barrier, providing a reliable way to “know before you go” is increasingly difficult to dismiss as merely a marketing novelty.
For some pupils and students, knowing where the entrance is, what reception looks like, where the toilets are, how the classroom is laid out or what route they will take may seem like small pieces of information.
For the person worried about arriving somewhere they have never been before, they may be anything but small.
Chris Wood
Director
Ocean 3D Ltd
Sources and further reading
Department for Education, Pupil absence in schools in England: autumn term 2025/26, published 6 August 2026:
https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/pupil-absence-in-schools-in-england/2025-26-autumn-term
Department for Education, Communicating with parents about school attendance, published 9 June 2026:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/communicating-with-parents-about-school-attendance
Department for Education, A guide for schools on communicating with parents about attendance:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/communicating-with-parents-about-school-attendance/a-guide-for-schools-on-communicating-with-parents-about-attendance-accessible-version
Department for Education, Every child achieving and thriving, published 23 February 2026 and updated 27 April 2026:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/every-child-achieving-and-thriving
Equality and Human Rights Commission, Schools in England technical guidance consultation, Chapter 7: Reasonable adjustments for disabled pupils, published 10 June 2026:
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/guidance/technical-guidance-schools-consultation/schools-england-technical-guidance-consultation-6
GOV.UK, Disability rights: education:
https://www.gov.uk/rights-disabled-person/education-rights
Ofsted, Inspection materials updated ahead of September 2026, published 12 June 2026:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/inspection-materials-updated-ahead-of-september-2026
Parsons, S., Ward, A., Ward, B. and Kovshoff, H., “Supporting transitions to special school: co-constructing virtual tours to share important knowledge about school sites and practices”, British Journal of Special Education, 2025:
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8578.70059
University of Southampton repository copy and abstract:
https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/506011/
Kotaman, H., Balci, A., Aydin Kilic, Z.N. and Tutkun, C., “The effect of virtual school tour on preschool children’s school adjustment”, Education and Information Technologies, volume 31, 2026, pp. 823–846:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-025-13846-5
Bagnall, C. L. et al., “A Mixed-methods Study of How to Improve Primary-secondary Transitions in England: Combining Academic Research with Policy and Practice Consultation”, Educational Psychology Review, 2026:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-026-10174-z
GOV.UK, Understanding accessibility requirements for public sector bodies:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/accessibility-requirements-for-public-sector-websites-and-apps
W3C, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2:
https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/
Amaya, S. et al., “Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy and Patient Education for Preoperative Anxiety in Pediatrics: Randomized Controlled Trial”, JMIR Perioperative Medicine, 2025:
https://doi.org/10.2196/73392
Eijlers, R. et al., “Virtual reality exposure before elective day care surgery to reduce anxiety and pain in children: A randomised controlled trial”, European Journal of Anaesthesiology, 2019:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6738544/
Ocean 3D’s legal opinion referred to above was prepared by Louise Mankau of Doughty Street Chambers and is dated 4 June 2021.