Written by Nick Kent.

It is International Museum Day today. As a leading Changing Places Toilet provider, we have worked with museums all over the UK and beyond, helping to make them more accessible. A recent project that had a personal impact was the installation next to the D-Day Story museum in Portsmouth.

It is important to say that thousands of families will feel a similar connection to the stories told at this museum, detailing the moving accounts of ordinary people doing extraordinary things during WWII. As such it is important that these institutions can be accessed by everyone, including people with a disability.

Museum accessibility ensures that the connection with our collective and individual past can be experienced by as many people as possible, including older people who may have a particularly personal connection to the stories told, but who may also have physical disabilities and be living with diseases such as dementia. That is why we are so pleased to be involved in the improvements to accessibility being made across the museum sector.

The D-Day Story museum tells the story of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. It holds over 10,000 items – preserving, researching and acquiring objects to share with the public through exhibitions, workshops and other activities.

My grandfather, Cpl Lionel Guy Southby (killed in action aged 31 on 01/08/44) was the commander of one of the first tanks to land on Le Hamel beach on H Hour, 7.30am as part of 82 Assault Squadron, Royal Engineers.

Lieutenant Birkin Haward was in the same attack squadron and being an architect who could pen his thoughts, depicted some very moving sketches of the intense action. I also have a letter from the commanding officer to my grandmother, and from the Normandy Veterans Association (see below).

Drawings by Lieutenant Birkin Haward