Accessibility

Our commitment

We want ctzn.pub usable by everyone, including people using screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, or magnification. We target WCAG 2.1 Level AA across the site and treat accessibility bugs as real bugs, not polish.

Current status

An automated audit (axe-core) of the homepage, an essay, an atlas, the chat tool, and the viz gallery found zero critical violations — no missing alt text, form labels, or landmark issues were flagged. The one systemic issue found was insufficient color contrast on a few small text elements (theme-wide tokens, not one-off mistakes), which we fixed across the site rather than page by page.

This audit was automated only. It does not substitute for manual keyboard and screen-reader testing, which we have not yet completed — see “What we haven't checked” below.

Known issues

• Chart accessible names. Interactive chart SVGs (in essays, atlases, and the viz gallery) have not been audited for screen-reader-accessible names and descriptions. We expect gaps here.
• Keyboard navigation. Not yet manually tested end-to-end across the chat tool, the compute/analysis builders, and the studio authoring surfaces.

Recently fixed

• Low color-contrast text found on the homepage, an essay, an atlas, the chat tool, and the viz gallery — three theme tokens (a tertiary text color on dark backgrounds, a logo accent color, and a badge/count color rendered at reduced opacity) all fell short of the 4.5:1 minimum for normal text. Fixed at the token level so every page using them is covered, not just the pages the scan happened to sample.

What we haven't checked

Manual screen-reader testing (VoiceOver/NVDA), full keyboard-only navigation testing, and a focused audit of chart accessible-name coverage. These are next on our list, not indefinitely deferred.

Tell us about a problem

If you hit an accessibility barrier anywhere on the site, please tell us — we'll fix it. Email info@ctzn.pub with the page and what happened.