Accessibility Statement

Our Commitment

These works exist so that people can read rules that affect them. A page someone cannot read defeats the entire purpose, so accessibility here is not a compliance exercise bolted on at the end.

We target Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA, and treat 2.2 Level AA as the direction of travel.

1. Conformance Status

Partially conformant with WCAG 2.1 Level AA. "Partially conformant" is the honest label: it means most of the site meets the standard and we know of specific items that are unverified. Sites that claim full conformance are usually claiming more than they have tested.

Last reviewed August 29, 2026.

2. How the Site Is Built

The pages are plain HTML and CSS. That is a design decision with accessibility consequences, most of them good:

• Every page begins with a "Skip to main content" link.
• Headings are properly nested, with one h1 per page and no skipped levels.
• Every page declares its language.
• Landmarks (header, nav, main, footer) are marked up as such, and each navigation region is labelled.
• Every image carries alternative text, and decorative furniture is hidden from assistive technology rather than described.
• Every link has discernible text. There is no "click here."
• Focus is visible: a two-pixel outline in the accent colour of the page you are on, offset from the element.
• There is no JavaScript requirement for reading. Content is present in the HTML, so it works with scripting disabled and degrades to plain text cleanly.
• The pages are set in the type already on your device and download no font files, so text renders immediately, at whatever size and family your own settings call for, and no third party learns that you read it.
• Text reflows to narrow viewports and at increased zoom without a horizontal scrollbar.

3. What We Tested, and What We Found

On August 26, 2026 we checked every page on the site programmatically for the failure types that account for the large majority of real-world accessibility errors: missing image alternatives, missing page language, empty links and buttons, missing or badly ordered headings, and text contrast below the AA threshold.

Found and fixed, in two passes. The muted grey used for small labels and captions sat at 3.93:1 against the page background, below the 4.5:1 that Level AA requires for text at that size. Darkening it to 4.67:1 cleared the page background but not the slightly darker background used behind the footer and behind index rows on hover, where the same grey measured 4.24:1 and still failed. The first pass had been checked against one surface rather than all three. It is now #6E6353, which measures 5.6:1, 5.1:1, and 4.6:1 against the three background tones the site uses, and passes on every one.

Verified passing: body text at 15.3:1, secondary text at 7.2:1, and link red at 6.0:1 against the page background — all comfortably above 4.5:1. No missing alternative text, no empty links or buttons, no missing page language, no skipped heading levels, and no non-descriptive link text anywhere on the site.

Re-checked August 29, 2026, after the home page was rebuilt. The home page now uses the dark ground the reference works use, so its colour pairs were measured again from scratch: body text 15.4:1, secondary text 7.2:1 (6.8:1 on the raised band behind the register), and links 8.5:1 — every text pair above 4.5:1 on every ground the page paints. Three structural items were found and fixed in the same pass: the two register group labels were styled as headings without being marked as headings, the list of works was not marked as a list, and footer links were distinguished from the text around them by a hairline underline alone rather than by colour as well. Heading order runs h1 to h4 with no level skipped, and the ordinal numbers beside each work are hidden from assistive technology as decoration, because the list already conveys the order.

4. Known Limitations

Recorded rather than omitted, because a statement that lists no limitations has usually not looked:

• Screen reader testing is not yet systematic. Automated checking finds perhaps a third of real barriers. We have not completed a structured pass with NVDA, JAWS, or VoiceOver across the whole site, so any claim about how it sounds in practice would be an assumption. This is the most significant open item.
• Hairline rules between sections sit between 1.5:1 and 1.7:1 against the background. They are decorative separators carrying no information that is not also conveyed by headings and spacing, so we read WCAG 1.4.11 as not requiring 3:1 here. Recorded because it is a judgment call rather than a clear pass.
• Documents on institutions' own sites, which our pages link to, are outside our control and are frequently scanned PDFs with no text layer. Where we can, we quote the relevant passage on our page so the substance is readable without opening the original.

5. Why There Is No Accessibility Widget

This site deliberately does not use an accessibility overlay or toolbar — the floating button that offers to change contrast or read the page aloud.

Overlays sit on top of a page and attempt to repair it in the browser. They do not fix the underlying markup, they frequently interfere with the screen readers and browser settings people already use and prefer, and the disability community has objected to them consistently and publicly. In April 2025 the Federal Trade Commission entered an order against an overlay vendor over its conformance claims.

The alternative to an overlay is building the page correctly, which is what the section above describes.

6. Feedback

If any part of this site is difficult or impossible for you to use, please tell us at [email protected]. It is genuinely useful, and it is the fastest route to a fix.

Tell us the page, what you were trying to do, and what happened. Your browser and any assistive technology you use help but are not required.

We aim to acknowledge within 5 business days and to tell you either that it is fixed or what the timeline is. If a fix will take a while, we will offer the content another way in the meantime.

7. Formal Complaints

If you have raised something with us and are not satisfied with the response, you may contact the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, which enforces the Americans with Disabilities Act, at ada.gov. Your state may also have an agency that handles disability access complaints.

We would rather hear from you first and fix it.