If something on this site does not work for you, please email us and tell us what happened and what you were using. We will fix it, and we would rather hear about it than not.
We are not claiming a conformance level
You will often see a line like “this site conforms to WCAG 2.2 level AA”. We have not run a formal audit, so we are not going to say that. Claiming a level nobody has tested against is exactly the kind of confident-sounding statement this whole rebuild existed to get rid of.
What follows instead is a list of the things we actually did, and for each one, how we know. That is less impressive and more useful.
How to read the two labels
Every claim below is marked one of two ways, and the difference matters.
- Measured means something independent would have caught us. A program checks it every time the site is built, and if the claim were false the site would refuse to publish.
- Checked by hand means a person read it carefully and believes it is right. That is worth something. It is not the same thing, and pretending otherwise is how a site ends up confidently wrong.
Measured
Every image has alt text, and none of it is a filename
How we know: images can only reach a page through one component, which refuses to build the site if alt text is missing, looks like a filename, or opens with “image of”. A second program re-checks the finished pages afterwards, in case anyone bypasses the component. Both were deliberately broken in September 2026 to confirm they still notice; both did.
Nothing is hidden behind hovering or clicking
How we know: all 18 region names and all 18 location descriptions are present as ordinary text in the page, and a program confirms it on every build. The same program fails the build if any text on any page is hidden by CSS and revealed only when someone hovers, clicks or selects something.
Crisis phone numbers say what they dial
Every crisis number's label matches the number it dials — the label and the link come from one source, so they cannot disagree.
How we know: every phone number on this site is written in one file, and both the words you read and the number your phone dials are generated from it — they cannot disagree. A separate program checks the finished pages for any link whose visible text contradicts where it goes, and it will not let the site publish if it finds one.
Meaningful images are never background decoration
An image placed as a CSS background cannot carry a description, so it is invisible to a screen reader with no way to fix it. The site does not use any, and the build fails if one appears.
Every page renders before anything is published
How we know: a program counts the pages that should exist and the pages that do, including every essay, and stops the publish if a single one is missing. It was added after a partial build was nearly published without anyone noticing.
Contrast, focus, layout and a broad accessibility scan are checked by a program
How we know: four more programs render the finished pages in a real browser and check them automatically. One measures the actual color contrast of text, controls, and their hover states against WCAG’s thresholds. One confirms every keyboard focus outline is visible and has enough contrast. One checks that no page overflows sideways, from a 320-pixel phone up to a wide desktop. And one runs axe-core, a general accessibility scanner, across the main page types. These run automatically on every change before it can be merged. (They run alongside the build rather than inside the deploy itself, because they each have to launch a browser.)
Checked by hand
These are real work and we stand behind them. They are in this section because no program can confirm them, so they rest on a person having been careful.
Whether the alt text is any good
A program can tell that alt text exists and that it is not a filename. It cannot tell whether it describes the right thing.
No person has reviewed the alt text on this site. An earlier version of this page said every description was “reviewed in a single list before any of it went live”. That was not true. The descriptions were drafted during the rebuild and are marked as drafts awaiting sign-off in the site’s own records; the sign-off has not happened. We are saying so here rather than leaving a claim standing on nobody, because a page whose whole purpose is separating what was measured from what is merely asserted cannot carry an assertion with no one behind it.
Headings, reading order and plain language
A program checks that heading levels do not skip and that no heading is long enough to really be a paragraph. Whether the headings describe the right things, and whether the writing is clear, has not been reviewed by anyone independent of the person who wrote them. Treat it as unchecked.
Color is never the only signal
Colors are defined once, as a small set of named values. Nothing on the site uses color alone to tell you something: every state that has a color also has a shape, a label or an underline. (The contrast of those colors is now measured automatically, described above — so that part is no longer a hand check.)
Keyboard use and screen readers
Interactive things work with a keyboard and have a visible focus outline, and that outline’s visibility is now checked automatically (above). The site has not been through a full screen-reader audit with an actual screen-reader user, which is the test that would matter most, and we would like to arrange one.
What is not finished
This section exists because a statement that admits its gaps is worth more than one that does not — and because whoever works on this next needs to know where to pick up.
- Images are still being restored. 280 images are catalogued and most are not back on the site yet. Many never will be: some are stock photographs whose license did not transfer, and some are photographs of private individuals we will not republish without their consent.
- 40 images are the kind where the picture is the information — a brain scan, a diagram. A one-line description is not enough for those; they need the finding written out in prose, on the page, for everyone. Most are held off the site until that is written. Where one is already on the site it carries detailed alt text, but that alt text has not been reviewed, and a full written equivalent for everyone is still owed.
- No screen-reader audit with a screen-reader user. The most valuable test we have not done.
- No formal WCAG audit. Which is why there is no badge at the top of this page.
We do not track you
This site collects nothing about you. No analytics, no cookies, no pixels, no visitor counter, no third-party scripts of any kind. Nobody — including us — can see which pages you read.
That is a deliberate decision rather than an oversight, and the reason is specific to a site like this one. On most websites a record of which pages someone visited is dull. Here it is not: the page you are reading says something about which condition you, or someone you love, may be living with. That is not a thing to log about a person who never agreed to produce it, and it is not a thing to leave sitting in an account that will one day belong to somebody else.
Our hosting provider offers analytics that would switch on with a click. It is off. A program checks every build and refuses to publish the site if a tracking script appears in it.
Things that are deliberate
- The navigation is a plain list of links at every screen size. Nothing collapses into a menu and nothing opens on hover.
- Decorative images carry no description. That is correct, not an oversight: reading out a description of a background pattern costs a screen-reader user time and tells them nothing.
- Nothing moves, flashes or plays by itself.
- The crisis link is in the same place on every page, including this one.
Tell us
If you hit something that does not work — a page that will not read properly, a control you cannot reach with a keyboard, text you cannot enlarge, anything — email us. Tell us what you were using if you can. We will fix it and we will say so here.
Sources
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 — the guidelines themselves, which informed the work described above. We have not audited against them and claim no conformance level.
- The programs described on this page are in
scripts/checks/in the site's source, and what each one does not cover is written down beside it.