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Accessibility

The Debrief makes continual efforts to test and improve its accessibility. It does this through testing, feedback from screen-reader, and brief access audits.

As well as improving access to the Debrief itself, we have started to make contributions to improve accessibility on Ghost, the open source platform on which it runs.

While we have been able to fix a range of issues on the Debrief website itself, some limitations remain. Many of these are caused by access issues in the underlying software used: namely Ghost, the publishing platform, and Stripe, the payments provider.

This page describes the known issues. If there's something missing, or way that accessibility can be improved, please contact me (Peter).

Last updated: 20th April 2026

Contents

Information and content

The Disability Debrief newsletter is usually over 2,000 words. It is information-heavy, and discusses abstract or technical issues.

While effort is made to make those issues understandable to a general audience, there are many people for whom it will not be appropriate or easy.

Last year we did experiment in making Easy-Reads version of some newsletter editions. The trial showed it would be quite resource-intensive to produce these with the quality needed, so we've paused this experiment for now.

Navigating the newsletter. No-one is expected to read all of every newsletter! Each one starts by introducing the subject, so readers know whether they want to go forward. And articles are sectioned to help skim and find what interests you.

Language. Currently the Debrief is only published in English, although translations have been made of some specific articles into Spanish, Arabic, and Bahasa Indonesia.

Images. The Debrief newsletter always uses alt-text for the images in articles, but does not usually provide a separate image description.

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Testing website accessibility

We've tested the website in light and dark mode, using a screen reader, viewing at zoom and navigating by keyboard. The screen readers used to test were NVDA (using Chrome on Windows) and Voiceover (using Safari on iOS). I also did some automated tests with WAVE.

As well as fixing things while we were testing, we identified some things that don't have immediate fixes. Some of these gaps are caused by the services that host the website, and I've raised bugs or contacted them to see if they can improve things.

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Known issues on the website

Not all buttons or other features are properly labelled for function. Buttons should have clear information on their function so, for example, a screen reader can tell the user what it will do. This is missing in several cases:

  • At the bottom of each page there is a “subscribe” button, but its aria role is unspecified.
  • On the subscription management page, the monthly/yearly buttons are not clearly labelled – yearly is selected as a default view, and this is not communicated.

Keyboard navigation is possible, but not always clear. Through most of the site, it should be apparent where the keyboard focus is. There are a few areas where this is less clear or potentially confusing. In lists of posts the item selected by keyboard is not shown (it is on mouse-over). The site search feature works via keyboard, but is visually confusing about what element is selected.

Issues with subscribing and signing-in

Users who log into the site are advised by a welcome message, but this is not announced. And in some cases the message about needing to check your email is repeated at the wrong moment.

Errors and success messages are not announced to screen reader users. When submitting an empty form or entering a wrong verification code, are indicated visually next to the input fields, but the errors are not announced to screen reader users.

Issues with the comments section

There are a range of issues with making and displaying comments on the articles.

Some of the text in the comment field is lacking contrast against the background, the nesting of the comments is only communicated visually, and the text input is coded as a generic element rather than a text area. There is an unlabelled button that users click to potentially report a comment.

Furthermore, setting up a profile as a commenter has a pop-up that presents challenges for keyboard-only or screen-reader navigation.

Issues with payments

There are several accessibility issues with the Stripe checkout. The input fields lack accessible labels, and a hidden button and wrong price tag are announced by screen readers. The items can be focused and interacted with by keyboard, but lack accessible focus styling. For some items, the roles and interactions don't match the visuals.

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Known issues on the newsletter

Newsletters have some issues relating to mark-up and colour contrast:

  • The title is marked-up as regular text, when it should be a heading.
  • The email footer doesn't have enough colour contrast against white background.
  • The subscription confirmation email is marked up as a table.
  • The welcome email's footer is marked up as a table.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Sarah Fossheim for conducting mini-audits of accessibility in 2026, and to review and testing from Catherine Turner and Áine Kelly-Costello. Thanks to Cathy Sarisky of Spectral Web Services for making adjustments to the site.

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