We want this site to be usable by everyone, including people using a screen reader, a keyboard rather than a mouse, magnification, or a browser set to reduce motion. This page says what we have done, and — more usefully — what we know is not yet right.
What has been done
- Colour contrast. Body text, meta text and links are checked against WCAG 2.1 AA. The brass accent colour does not meet AA for body text, so it is used only for hairlines, rules and small marks, never for anything you need to read.
- Keyboard. Every link, button and form field can be reached and operated with a keyboard, and every one of them shows a visible focus outline. A skip link at the top of each page jumps past the navigation.
- Alt text. Every photograph carries a description written for somebody who cannot see it, describing what is in the room rather than repeating the headline.
- Reduced motion. The site has very little animation, and what there is stops entirely if your device is set to reduce motion.
- Structure. Pages use real headings in a logical order, real landmarks, and real lists, so a screen reader can navigate by structure rather than reading everything top to bottom.
- Text size. The layout is fluid and text can be enlarged to 200% without content being lost or overlapping.
What we know is imperfect
Third-party embedded content — anything from another service — is outside our control and may not meet the same standard. Some older images may have alt text that is accurate but less descriptive than we would now write. Where advertising is running, we do not control the markup of individual adverts.
We would rather list these than claim full conformance we cannot guarantee. This site aims to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA and we believe it substantially does; we are not claiming a formal audit has been carried out.
Tell us when something does not work
If you hit something on this site that you cannot use, that is a bug and we want to hear about it. Tell us the page and what happened, and we will fix it and reply. Write via the contact page.