Circle Acts
Accessibility
We want anyone to be able to read this research, including people using a screen reader, a keyboard, magnification or a small phone.
Last updated 2026-09-21
The standard we aim for
We target WCAG 2.2 Level AA. This statement describes the site as it actually is, including the parts that do not meet that bar yet. It has not been independently audited.
What the site does
- Colour contrast. Every text and background pair in the design was measured against the 4.5:1 minimum, in both light and dark mode. The brand coral is used for borders and fills but never for small text, because at 3.3:1 on white it would fail.
- Light and dark mode. The site follows your system setting and offers a switch in the header. Both themes were contrast-checked independently.
- Keyboard. Everything works without a mouse. There is a skip-to-content link, a visible focus outline on every interactive element, and cards highlight when something inside them is focused.
- Screen readers. Pages use real headings in order, landmark regions, breadcrumbs, and machine-readable dates. Links that open a new tab say so.
- Motion. If your system asks for reduced motion, transitions and smooth scrolling are switched off.
- Higher contrast. If your system asks for more contrast, borders and text darken automatically.
- Zoom and small screens. Text is sized in relative units and the layout works down to 320px with no horizontal scrolling.
- Cover images. All 180 of 180 article cover images have alt text.
Where we fall short
Known problems, stated plainly:
- 48 images inside articles have no alt text, spread across 21 of our 189 articles, out of 83 in-article images in total. These came across from our old website without descriptions. A screen reader will skip them. Our volunteers are working through the list.
- Some older articles use vague link text such as "here" or "read more", which is unhelpful out of context. We fix these as we revisit each article.
- Some images hosted by other organizations are embedded in older articles. If they move or delete them, the image breaks and we may not notice immediately.
- Our French and Chinese articles are machine translated from the English and are not proofread sentence by sentence. Each article says so at the top.
- This statement has not been externally audited. We are a volunteer team and test with browser tooling and keyboard navigation rather than a paid assessment.
Third-party content
A few articles embed a YouTube video. That player is Google's and we do not control its accessibility. Links out to charities lead to websites we do not control, and their accessibility varies.
Tell us about a problem
If something on this site is hard or impossible to use, we want to know. Please contact us and include the page address and what went wrong, along with the browser or assistive technology you were using if you can.
We will acknowledge your message and tell you what we can fix and when. If you need an article in a different format, ask and we will send it to you.