Accessibility

Our target is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 at Level AA. That is a target we work to, not a certificate we hold: no third party has audited this site, and we make no claim of formal conformance. What follows is a description of the build and an honest list of gaps.

What the site does

Semantic HTML

Pages are marked up with the element that matches the content: one <h1> per page with headings nested in order, real <nav>, <main>, <header>, and <footer> landmarks, lists as lists, tables with header cells, quotations as <blockquote>, images and their captions as <figure> and <figcaption>, and object metadata as description lists. There are no <div> elements standing in for buttons or links. The document language is declared. Screen reader users get a page whose structure can be navigated by heading and landmark.

Keyboard navigation

Everything on the site can be reached and operated with a keyboard alone, because everything on the site is a link, a form field, or text. There is no custom widget to trap focus, no scripted menu, no modal, no carousel, and no scroll-jacking. Tab order follows the reading order of the source. A "Skip to content" link is the first focusable element on every page and jumps to <main>. Nothing on the site requires a mouse, a hover, a drag, a pinch, or a multi-finger gesture.

Visible focus

Focused elements get a visible outline offset from the element so it does not disappear against adjacent text or a border. We do not remove the browser's focus ring and leave nothing in its place. If you navigate by keyboard, you can always see where you are.

Contrast and type

Our target is the WCAG 2.1 AA contrast ratios: 4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text and meaningful non-text elements. Against the warm paper background used throughout, body text measures about 16:1, secondary body text about 9:1, and links about 8:1 — well clear of the threshold. The faintest gray, used for captions, credits, breadcrumbs and form hints, measures about 5.9:1 on the page background and 5.3:1 on the header and footer panels, so every text style on the site clears AA for normal text. Text is real text, never words baked into a picture, so it reflows and resizes. Pages reflow to a single column on narrow viewports without horizontal scrolling, and wide tables scroll inside their own container rather than pushing the page sideways.

Text alternatives for images

Every plate, drawing, map, photograph, and instrument image carries an alt attribute written for the purpose the image serves in that page. Purely decorative images would carry an empty alt so assistive technology skips them — in practice we use almost no decorative imagery, because every picture here is an object worth describing.

No motion, no autoplay

Nothing on this site moves. There is no animation, no parallax, no auto-advancing content, no video or audio that starts on its own, no flashing, and no page element that changes while you are reading it. Nothing times out. Nothing interrupts. If you are sensitive to motion, or you simply want to read without being nudged, this site will leave you alone.

Color is never the only signal

Links are underlined, not merely tinted. Emphasis is carried by real emphasis elements and by wording. Where a status or category is shown, it is shown in words. No instruction on the site asks you to identify something by its color, and nothing is conveyed by color alone.

Predictability

Navigation appears in the same place with the same wording on every page. Link text describes its destination — no bare "click here" or "read more" without context. Form fields have real <label> elements associated with them, and instructions sit next to the field they concern. Pages have unique, descriptive titles. Opening a page never opens a new window unexpectedly.

No third-party code

The site loads no scripts, webfonts, embeds, or resources from other hosts, and sets no cookies. This matters for access as well as privacy: there is no overlay, consent dialog, chat widget, or "accessibility button" that can steal focus, obstruct your own assistive technology, or override your browser and operating system settings. Your zoom, your fonts, your color choices, and your reader are in charge.

Known limitations

Some of these are real constraints; one is a defect we know about. We would rather name them than imply the site is finished.

Historical plates cannot always be fully described in alt text. A single seventeenth-century engraving may hold a dozen numbered figures, an ornamental border, hand-lettered annotation, and a plate signature. An alt attribute long enough to carry all of that stops functioning as an alternative and becomes an obstacle — it is read as one unbroken block, with no headings, no structure, and no way to skim or leave. So we do this instead: the alt attribute gives a concise, useful description of what the image is and shows; the fuller description — figure by figure, with the lettering transcribed and the technique noted — is given in the visible caption beneath the image, where it is available to everyone, can be structured, and can be navigated at your own pace. If a plate matters to an essay's argument, the argument is also made in the running text, so nothing essential exists only inside a picture.

Some source scans are of limited quality. We reproduce what the holding institution published. Where a scan is dark, low-resolution, or foxed, we cannot improve it without altering the object, which our editorial standards forbid. In those cases the caption carries a longer written description, and the record links to the institution's own copy, which may offer a higher-resolution or deep-zoom view.

Transcriptions are partial. Long stretches of early modern printed text visible in a plate are usually summarized rather than transcribed in full. Where a passage is quoted in an essay, it is transcribed exactly.

Our testing is not exhaustive. Our practice is to check pages by keyboard, at 200% zoom, and against contrast ratios and markup validity before publishing. Even done thoroughly, that is not the same as testing every combination of browser, operating system, and assistive technology, and it is no substitute for testing with disabled users. We have not commissioned a third-party audit, we hold no certification, and we do not claim formal conformance with WCAG 2.1 AA — only that it is what we build toward and measure against.

Tell us when something blocks you

If any part of this site is difficult or impossible for you to use, write to lumingrade@gmail.com with "Accessibility" in the subject line. It helps to know the page, what you were trying to do, and what happened — and, if you are willing to say, the browser and assistive technology you were using. You do not need to diagnose the problem for us.

Access problems are treated as defects, not feature requests. If you need something on this site in another form — a plate described in more detail, a page as plain text, a transcription of a passage — ask, and we will send it.

This page is reviewed whenever the site's markup or stylesheet changes materially. Last reviewed 29 July 2026.