Accessibility

We aim for the website and the reader controls to meet WCAG 2.2 level AA.

What we do

Pages use headings, landmarks and labelled controls; everything can be reached and operated with a keyboard, and keyboard focus is always visible.

Text can be enlarged with browser zoom to 200% and beyond without losing content. In the EPUB reader you can also change the font, text size, line spacing, margins and colours, including a high-contrast theme.

Animations are kept minimal and are switched off when your system asks for reduced motion.

Each page and each book declares its language and text direction so that screen readers choose the right voice.

The website and the books are different things

An accessible reader does not make every book accessible. EPUB editions are generally readable with a screen reader, but their internal structure (headings, image descriptions) depends on how the source publication was made.

PDF editions keep the page layout of print. A PDF that is a scan without a text layer is a set of images: it cannot be searched, selected or read by a screen reader, even though the viewer around it is accessible. Edition pages say so when we know it.

Known limitations

Highlighting text in the reader requires a pointer or touch selection; notes can also be added to a bookmark from the keyboard.

We have tested with automated tools and with keyboard-only use in current desktop browsers. Testing with assistive technology on physical phones and tablets is still limited.

Tell us about a problem

If something does not work for you, please use the contact form and choose “Accessibility problem”. Tell us the page, your browser and any assistive technology you use.