What works, and what does not yet.

Last updated 27 August 2026

What we aim for

We hold this site to WCAG 2.2, level AA. That is a target we work towards, not a certificate we hold: parts of the site meet it today and parts do not, and the two lists below say which is which.

What works today

Each of these was measured, not assumed.

• Keyboard. Every page outside the map can be used without a mouse, and the focus outline is never removed.
• Skip to content. The first thing a keyboard reaches on every page, and it steps over announcement bars rather than landing on them.
• Contrast. Text was measured against its own background across the site and the map chrome, in both the light and the dark map theme, and the failures were fixed.
• Touch targets. Every control we draw clears the 24px minimum, checked on a phone rather than in a browser window made narrow.
• Zoom. Text can be enlarged to 200% without anything being cut off or needing sideways scrolling.
• No motion you did not ask for. Nothing autoplays, nothing flashes, and there is no carousel.

What does not work yet

These are real and we are not hiding them.

• The map is not usable with a screen reader. It is a drawing on a canvas, and panning and zooming a picture has no meaning without sight. This is the biggest gap on the site and we have no quick fix for it. See below for what to use instead.
• Some map controls are not ours. The zoom buttons and the attribution toggle come from the map library. They clear the minimum but they are smaller than we would draw them, and we cannot restyle them without forking it.
• Nobody outside has audited this. Everything above was measured by the people who built the site, which is not the same as being tested by someone who uses a screen reader every day.
• Translations lag behind English. New wording appears in English first, so a page in another language can briefly show a mix.

What to use instead of the map

Everything the map draws also exists as text or as data. The region pages list what has been found in each place, as ordinary headings and lists. The open API serves the same data to any tool you prefer. Neither is a full replacement, and we know it.

Where we stand legally

We are not claiming compliance with the European Accessibility Act, because it is not clear that it applies to us. The Act names particular consumer services, a free open map is not obviously one of them, and micro-enterprises providing services are exempt in any case. We would rather say that plainly than imply a duty we may not have. We hold ourselves to WCAG because it is the right thing to do, not because somebody made us.

How this was checked

By hand, in a real browser, on a real phone: keyboard walkthroughs, contrast measured against the actual rendered background, and touch targets measured in place rather than guessed from the stylesheet. Some of it is pinned by automated tests so it cannot quietly regress. None of it involved an accessibility overlay, and it never will: those make a site worse for the people they claim to help.