Accessibility

Effective August 4, 2026. This page describes the actual state of the site, including the parts that are not good enough yet, because an accessibility statement listing only successes is worth nothing.

The target

The site aims at the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2, level AA. It has been built to that standard and checked against it, but it has not been audited by an outside specialist, so this is a statement of intent and effort rather than a certification.

What has been done

Structure. Every page has one first level heading and a heading order that steps down by one level at a time, so a screen reader outline matches what a sighted reader sees. Landmarks are used properly, and a skip link to the text is the first thing a keyboard reaches.

Keyboard. Everything usable with a mouse is usable with a keyboard alone: the navigation, the section index, the questions, the forms and the storage card. Focus is visible everywhere as a clay coloured outline, deliberately thick, and focus order follows the reading order.

Contrast. Body text, headings, labels and links meet or exceed the AA contrast ratio against their backgrounds. The pale kicker labels were darkened during the build for exactly this reason.

Text size and zoom. Text scales with the browser setting rather than being pinned in place, and the layout holds together at 200 percent zoom without horizontal scrolling or overlapping.

Images. Every photograph carries alternative text describing what is actually in the frame rather than repeating the caption. Decorative marks are hidden from assistive technology instead of being announced as meaningless graphics.

Motion. The only movement on the site is a gentle fade as sections come into view, and it is disabled entirely for anyone whose system asks for reduced motion. Nothing flashes, nothing autoplays, nothing moves on its own.

Forms. Every field has a real label, errors are announced in text rather than by colour alone, and the status line is a live region so a screen reader hears the result of a submission.

Weight. Pages are small, typefaces are served from this site rather than from an outside company, and the whole site works on a slow connection. Nothing depends on a script to be readable: with scripts disabled, every page still renders and every link still works.

What is still weak

The photographs carry meaning that text cannot fully replace. This is a publication about light, and alternative text can describe a scene without conveying what the light was doing. Descriptions are written as carefully as possible and are still a poorer version of the thing.

The search panel is this publication's own work, and what follows it is not. The panel on the front page is built here: its labels are real labels, its suggestion lists are reachable with the arrow keys and Enter, its errors are announced, and a fault in it is this desk's fault to fix. What opens after the search button is pressed belongs to an outside booking service, and its markup, focus handling and contrast are set by that service and can change without notice here. Where that falls short, the desk can pass a report along but cannot fix it directly. Nothing else on the site depends on any of it.

No outside audit has been done. Testing has been keyboard use, screen reader checks, zoom and contrast measurement by the publisher. That catches a great deal and it is not the same as an audit by someone who does this professionally.

Long pages have no in page navigation. The legal pages and the questions page are long, and there is no jump list at the top of them. That is on the list to fix.

Telling the desk about a problem

If something here shuts you out, that is a fault worth reporting and it will be treated as one.

Write to [email protected] with the page, what you were trying to do, and what happened instead. Say what you use, if you are willing to, because a report naming a browser and a screen reader is far easier to act on than a general one. Reports are read on working afternoons, Monday through Friday, 1:00 pm to 5:30 pm Eastern Time, and are answered within two working days.

If a fix is straightforward it is usually done the same week. If it is not, you will be told what the obstacle is and what the plan is, rather than being thanked and forgotten.

If a page will not work for you at all

Ask for the text. Any piece on this site can be sent as plain text or as a simple document by email, at no charge and without conditions. That includes the legal pages. Write to [email protected] and say which one.