Accessibility

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An access ramp in a modern structure with large sloping glass windows to the left admitting plenty of light on a sunny day.
An access ramp at Glasgow Queen Street Station. The ramp offers an alternative way to get up to or down from platform level for anyone who needs it. It is an alternate way into or out of the station for wheelchair users, people with mobility issues, people pushing prams or bicycles or – as in the picture – pushing a wheeled suitcase.

Last updated

Accessibility is a practice, not a project.

It’s never done, and can always be improved.

Whenever we identify, or are told about, an issue with this website, or any other we operate, we try to fix it as soon as we can.

If you have any problems using this site for any reason you can email us at CustomerResearch@scotent.co.uk and we’ll look into it.

Known issues

What we’ve done

Author avatar images do not have alt attributes

The plugin we use to create short author biographies after each article did not populate the alt attribute on the author’s avatar image, even if alt text was provided for the media item. This was particlarly unhelpful when the image was also a link.

So we have added a short script to add some alternate text which screen readers will announce.

  • Fixed: 26 July 2024

Headings are not properly sequenced on the home and author pages

  • When an author publishes a post, the title becomes the <h1> then other headings are marked up as <h2>, <h3> and so on.
  • But when an excerpt from the post is used on the front page, our CMS converts the <h1> to <h3>. which makes sense and maintains a proper heirarchical structure.
  • But, other headings included in the excerpt were not being ‘downsized’ in the same way.
  • Which meant we had a headings structure like:
    • h1
      • h2
        • h3
        • h3
          • h2
        • h3
          • h2
          • h2
        • h3

Which is not ideal.

  • Solution:
    • A script was deployed to remediate the headings structure
      • Headings order is now appropriate to the context
    • The script works on the home, authors, and category pages
    • Fixed on: 25 January 2024
  • Addendum: This script inadvertently and inapproriately changed our Subscribe h2 in the sidebar to an h4
    • It’s an h3 now, which fits nicely below the Recent posts h2 in the reading order
    • Fixed on: 12 July 2024

Post dates link to posts from the homepage

  • Dates in the post metadata on the excerpt from the homepage formed a link to the post
    • This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense out of (or even in) context
      • A link with the anchor text “15 January 2024” does not provide any meaningful link scent for a post entitled “Card sorting to improve information architecture “
      • There were a total of 3 links to each post from:
        • The date
        • The post title
        • The “Continue reading” link
          • This was … excessive redundancy
  • Solution:
    • We’ve amended
      • Post dates are no longer links to individual articles
    • Thanks to @mikemccaffrey@a11y.social for the heads-up
    • Fixed on: 21 February 2024
    • And again on 30 January 2025

No site-wide link to this accessibility policy

  • The only link to this accesssibility policy was from our About page
    • It was not therefore always easy to find accessibility information
  • Solution:
    • We’ve added a link to the site footer so that this page is directly linked to from every page on the site
    • Fixed on: 17 February 2025

Links around comments boxes were not underlined

  • This makes links difficult to identify
  • Solution:
    • We have altered our styles so these links are underlined
    • Fixed on: 26 February 2025

Added styles to make reading easier

Fixed heading levels on posts

  • Heading levels have been revised
  • Post authors now get a mere <div> in the markup
    • Sorry, authors
      • Your SEO just dropped
  • On the positive side, heading structure should be greatly improved
A screenshot from the web developer extension showing that the heading order in a randomly-chosen pot has a logical structure.

Fixed broken links on this page

Added styles to colourise code

  • We don’t often publish code samples here. but from time to time we do
    • Code is design too
      • Or, rather, the rendering of design intent. This is what we make your computer do
  • Standard bocks were, by default, just black text on a grey background
  • Which is fine but distinguishing variables, constants, functions and so on – and delimiting opening and closing brackets, braces, and all that gubbins – makes it much easier to read for visual readers
  • So they’ll look more like this now.
A code block showing syntax highlighting for a short, 30-line snippet of javascript.

Everything in our toolbox will follow this pattern soon.

CSS bug makes link text white (on a white background) on :hover

  • This issue only affected desktop/mouse users, as :hover states cannot be triggered any other way
  • It was caused by a CSS rule incorrectly overriding specificity, and has been addressed now

Improvements to our 404 page

  • Not strictly an accessibility feature, more a usability improvement – but in many ways they are overlapping ideas.
  • We’ve updated it so that we pre-populate the search box with the name of the page you were trying to find based on the URL requested.
  • Try it out
  • We’ve added a breadcrumb at the top of each page that is more than two levels deep in the site architecture
  • While not strictly an accessibility issue, this will aid orientation and navigation for all users, especially screenreader users

Fixed some broken links on this page

  • Embarrassingly, some of the internal links on this page were broken
  • We’ve sorted that out now

Image expansion buttons have no accessible name

  • Some images on this website can be expanded to full width by clicking on them, or tapping the space bar on enter key when the <button> element that activates this functionality is focused
  • But the buttons had no accessible name, so screenreaders didn’t know what to announce
  • We’ve deployed a script to add an aria-label attribute to these buttons

Possibly related

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