Reading This Site With Assistive Technology

The decision the rest follows from

Nothing on this site appears because a script decided it should, and nothing is hidden until a script permits it. The two scripts here fade sections in as they arrive, hold the storage card, validate the letter form and run the search field. Turn them off and every section is already visible, the card never appears, and the letter form submits the ordinary way.

There is also no menu button. The navigation is two flat rows of links that wrap on a narrow screen, so nothing has to be opened to reach anything.

Structure

One first level heading per page, descending without skipping a level, so navigating by heading gives a real outline. The catalogue is a list of links, each card a single link with the name, the earlier name or language, one line of description, the layer and the year read in that order.

The four facts on each name entry are a description list, so a screen reader announces the label with its value rather than reading two disconnected columns. Landmarks are ordinary: a masthead, two navigation lists, one main region, a footer. A skip link is the first thing in the tab order.

Text and magnification

All type is sized in relative units, so raising the browser's own text size enlarges the page rather than clipping it. The layout is a single centered measure and reflows to one column on a narrow viewport, holding together at 200 percent zoom without the page scrolling sideways. Wide material, which here means the tables, sits in its own scrolling region so the table scrolls and the page does not.

Long strings break rather than push the page wide. There is no fixed or floating element on this site, so nothing follows a reader down a magnified page and nothing covers the text at high zoom.

Color and contrast

Body text on the paper, the small print, the layer tags and the years all sit above the ratio ordinarily required for their size. Color is never the only carrier of meaning: the layer of each entry is printed as a word in the tag, not signalled by a tint, and the current layer in the navigation is marked by a filled square as well as by color.

Links inside a paragraph are underlined, not merely colored. Focus is shown with a visible outline that is not removed anywhere, including on the buttons and the fields of the fare lookup.

Keyboard

Everything can be reached and operated from a keyboard. The one component worth describing is the place field on the fare lookup: it announces itself as a combo box, offers a list once two letters are typed, moves with the up and down arrows, accepts with Enter and closes with Escape. The highlighted option is announced as it is reached, and a chosen place is written into the field as its code followed by its name, so the choice is confirmed in text and not only by highlight.

Motion

Sections arrive with a short fade the first time they come into view, and that is the only movement here. No carousel, no autoplaying video, no parallax. A reader whose system asks for reduced motion gets no fade at all: the rule is honored in the stylesheet rather than simulated in a script. If a script fails to load, a failsafe reveals everything after a moment, so nothing can be left invisible.

Images and forms

Every image carries a description written for somebody who will not see it, describing what is in the frame rather than repeating the caption beside it. No image on this site carries information that exists nowhere else on the page, so nothing is lost by skipping them.

Every field in both forms has a real label joined to it, not a placeholder standing in for one. When the letter form rejects something, the explanation appears next to the field it belongs to, the field is marked invalid, and focus moves to the first one needing attention.

What was tested

Read with a screen reader on macOS, navigated by heading and by landmark, and operated from the keyboard alone with the pointer unplugged. Contrast measured rather than eyeballed. Read at 200 percent zoom and with the browser's minimum font size raised. Every page read once with scripts disabled entirely.

The two things known to fall short

No test on a real handheld device. The narrow layout was exercised by resizing a desktop browser, which is not a phone in a hand with a screen reader running. The layout branch is the same one a phone gets, so the risk is small, but it was verified by proxy rather than directly.

The fare lookup's other side is not this publication's work. Once a search leaves this site it arrives at a booking service run by somebody else, and that service's accessibility is its own. This site can promise its own form is operable and announced correctly. It cannot promise anything about what happens next, and will not pretend otherwise.

If something here is unreadable

That is a defect, not a suggestion. Write to plats@rowanlogbook.com or telephone +1 (904) 296-5137 during posted hours, Tuesday to Friday, 9:30 am to 3:30 pm Eastern. Naming the page and what happened is enough; a reader does not need to diagnose the cause. Reports about reading this site are answered ahead of other correspondence and the fix is dated on corrections.