Accessibility

This page states one target, one date, and one address. It does not claim a certificate, because there is no certificate to claim.

The target

Charterbend is built to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, version 2.1, level AA.

That standard was chosen rather than imposed. The Department of Justice rule of April 2024 on web accessibility sets WCAG 2.1 level AA as the technical standard for state and local government entities under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and an interim rule of April 20, 2026 extended the compliance dates to April 26, 2027 for entities serving a population of 50,000 or more, and to April 26, 2028 for the rest. That rule does not reach a private publication, and no technical standard has been adopted for private sites. The target here is therefore a choice, made because it is the right way to build and because it is the standard the government picked when it had to pick one.

What is claimed, and what is not

Not claimed: full compliance, conformance with any level of the guidelines, or certification of any kind. No third-party audit has been carried out, and no outside reviewer has seen this site. No badge from an automated checker is displayed, and no accessibility overlay is installed — an overlay would be a claim standing in for the work rather than the work.

Claimed: the site was built to the target above, and on the date below it was checked against that target by the people who built it. That is a smaller statement, and it is the one that is true.

The self-check of September 22, 2026

Every page of the site was walked by hand in a browser, with the keyboard, against the palette values rather than against screenshots. What follows is what was checked.

• Keyboard. Every page walked from the first tab stop to the last with no pointing device. The skip link is the first stop on every page and becomes visible when it takes focus. Focus is visible on every interactive element as a two-pixel outline set off from the element. No keyboard trap was found, and nothing is reachable by pointer that is not reachable by keyboard.
• Structure. One first-level heading per page, heading levels descending without a skipped level, one main landmark carrying the target of the skip link, and a name on every navigation region and every table region.
• Tables and diagrams. A table too wide for the screen scrolls inside its own wrapper instead of scrolling the page. The wrapper takes focus, carries a region role, and takes its name from the caption, so the columns beyond the edge can be reached from the keyboard rather than only by dragging. A diagram is handled the same way and for a plainer reason: shrinking a drawing to the width of a telephone leaves its labels at four pixels, which is legible to nobody, so the drawing keeps its size and the screen moves across it. Every diagram also carries a text alternative that states its content in full, so nothing in it depends on being able to pan.
• Forms. Every field has a visible label bound to it, help text is bound with a described-by reference, error text sits under the field it belongs to, and the boundary of every control is a full one-pixel border rather than a hairline. Controls are at least 44 px high. The consent box is never pre-checked.
• Contrast, measured rather than estimated. Body text on the page ground 14.08:1; body text on a laid sheet 15.62:1; muted metadata on the ground 5.24:1; the link and focus color on the ground 8.73:1 and on a sheet 9.68:1; white on the filled button 10.32:1. The floors are 4.5:1 for text and 3:1 for the boundaries of controls, and every pair clears them.
• The faint hairline between table rows is 1.37:1, and that is on purpose. Success criterion 1.4.11 addresses the boundaries of user-interface components and graphics needed to understand the content; a decorative rule between two rows is neither, and removing it loses no cell. Anything a person actually operates — a field, a toggle, a button — takes the darker boundary color instead, which measures 5.24:1.
• Color alone carries nothing. A superseded or withdrawn document is marked by a monospaced [SUPERSEDED] label and a strikethrough, never by a color change.
• Width and text size. Every page read at 320 CSS pixels with no horizontal scrolling of the page itself, and read again at 200 percent text size with nothing clipped and nothing overlapping.
• Motion. There is no animation anywhere. A single 120 ms transition is the only movement in the stylesheet, and it is switched off where a reduced-motion preference is set.
• Without JavaScript. Every page is fully readable and every form still posts. Nothing in the layout is built by a script.
• Images. Every image carries a text alternative and a caption: the diagrams drawn here in SVG, and the two photographs of museum objects. A diagram’s alternative states its content in full rather than naming it, so nothing in it depends on seeing the drawing. The ornament along the top of each page is decorative and is hidden from assistive software. The full list is on the image credits page.

The tools were a browser, a keyboard, and a contrast calculator run against the color values in the stylesheet. No paid audit tool was used, and none of this was outsourced.

Known limits

• A wide table on a small screen still scrolls sideways inside its wrapper. That keeps the page itself from scrolling, which is the better trade, but it remains a two-step way to read a table, and the same is true of a diagram at that width.
• The filter above the source register needs JavaScript. Without it the toggles never appear and every row is visible instead. That is the intended fallback rather than a repair, and the register is complete either way.
• The site has not been tested against every combination of screen reader, browser, and operating system. A report from any combination that behaves badly is genuinely useful and will be acted on.
• The documents this site links to are published by other organizations, and their accessibility is outside this publication’s control. Where a document is hard to use at its own address, the figure taken from it is set out here in text and in a table.

Reporting a barrier

A barrier on this site goes to accessibility@charterbend.digital, and it is answered within five business days. By post: Charterbend Publishing, LLC, P.O. Box 55104, Birmingham, AL 35255. Three things make a report quick to act on: the page it happened on, what was being attempted, and the browser and assistive technology in use.

A barrier that can be fixed is fixed, and the verification date in the band at the top of that page moves when it is. One that cannot be fixed quickly gets a plain answer saying so and saying when. A fix that is refused would get a reason, in writing, rather than silence — and that has not happened yet, because no report has been received.