Accessibility

Our target

This site is built to meet WCAG 2.2 level AA. That means it can be read and used with a keyboard alone, with a screen reader, at high magnification, in either the night or the day theme, and with every animation switched off.

How we get there

• Every page starts with a skip link and a single, labelled main region.
• Colour is never the only way information is carried; text and icons carry it too.
• Night, day and calm modes are all checked for contrast. Text meets 4.5:1, and large text and interface elements meet 3:1.
• Calm mode in the header turns off movement, parallax and animation. The site also respects your system's reduced-motion setting automatically.
• The pioneers table is a real table with real headers. On a small screen it becomes a stacked list, and each cell keeps its label.
• Photographs carry a text alternative; the placeholder tiles say so in words.
• The site works without JavaScript. Filters, the search index and the animated views are enhancements; the list, the person pages, the sources and the references all work without them.

Known limitations

• The manual screen-reader pass across NVDA, VoiceOver and TalkBack is still to be carried out by a person. Automated checks catch structure, contrast and names; they do not replace a screen-reader user.
• Some historical photographs are low resolution. They are not sharpened or enhanced, because altering an archival image would misrepresent it.
• The placeholder tiles for the two people whose source image is not a portrait of them use initials. The initials are announced, but there is no photograph to describe.

Tell us when something is wrong

If you cannot reach something on this site, or a page does not work with the technology you use, please write through the contact page and say which page and what happened. Reports are treated as corrections, not as suggestions.

Date of this statement

This statement was written while the site was being built, before its public launch. It is updated whenever the site changes in a way that affects how it can be used.