Accessibility on the Ghost publishing platform
This website is published using Ghost, an open-source platform.
The platform allows use of custom themes, so there is a wide scope for customisation. But some functionality of the platform can't be changed through a theme.
Ghost has some accessibility issues within core features, and new features are released without their accessibility being ensured. (And basic themes available to users have not been made fully accessible.)
These comments don't imply Ghost is less accessible than the alternatives. My limited experience suggests that popular alternatives to Ghost aren't providing fully accessible products either. And in fact the degree of customisation possible through custom themes means that on Ghost, unlike on some of those alternatives, many access issues can be solved through an accessible theme or fixed by a user with technical knowledge or support.
This page is by Peter Torres Fremlin and was last updated 21st April 2026.
Making Ghost more accessible
While there are lots of things to love about Ghost, it unfortunately doesn't seem to have a systematic approach to ensuring accessibility on the underlying platform. In my view this lets down both publishers that use Ghost as well as the readers of our work.
Disability Debrief has started to submit changes to the open source code on which Ghost runs, so that access can be improved for all of its users. In some areas it wasn't clear the Ghost team would merge more complex changes. We solved some things through workarounds on our theme, but other issues remain unaddressed.
Alongside technical fixes, I think that Ghost should take a more conscious approach to integrating accessibility within themes and its core product. This could start by a call to its community to help, documenting where it's going, and ultimately could compete with the standards Wordpress sets and their best practices for themes.
If you're part of the Ghost community, or thinking of hosting with them, please help me raise these issues.
Ongoing issues
For the latest issues we identified with Ghost, see the Debrief accessibility statement for ongoing issues with web accessibility on Ghost (see the known issues on the website and newsletter).
Previously raised issues
See issues raised in 2022: