Accessibility

Community Media Voices is a public archive. We want the site to work for researchers, contributors, and family members using keyboards, screen readers, zoom, and reduced-motion settings — not only for mouse and touch users on fast connections.

Our goal

We aim to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA across the main site and the live connections map. This page describes what we have tested and improved; it is not a formal third-party audit or certification.

What we have done

• Skip link to main content, visible keyboard focus on primary navigation and form controls.
• Semantic page structure, labeled forms on contact and submission flows, and descriptive text for decorative homepage illustration vs the live archive map.
• Connections map ( Family tree): keyboard navigation (arrow keys, Home/End, Enter/Space to open, Escape to clear), screen-reader instructions, live region announcements, filter controls with pressed state, and a sortable connection list on person profiles when many relationships are documented.
• Reduced-motion support: scroll-reveal animations respect prefers-reduced-motion; the homepage decorative network illustration does not auto-rotate when that setting is on.

Known limitations

• The connections map is a canvas inside an iframe. You need to Tab into the map frame before keyboard controls apply; the iframe title describes this.
• Some archive search typeaheads use listbox patterns with arrow-key highlighting and Enter to select.
• Color is used to distinguish node categories on the map; labels and the category key provide non-color cues.
• Person profile heroes include a decorative connection illustration (not interactive); use the full connections map or the profile connection list for exploration.
• We have not run automated contrast checks in CI; if something is hard to read, tell us.

Request help or report a barrier

If you cannot complete a task on this site — finding a person, reading a profile, using the map, or submitting a memory — please contact us. Choose “General or archive question” or “Press or partnership” if those fit, and describe the page, what you tried, and your browser or assistive technology if you know it. We treat accessibility reports as priority feedback.

Technical reference

A focused internal audit with pass / partial / gap notes for each area lives in docs/ACCESSIBILITY.md in the project repository for contributors.