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Futurisca A computational laboratory for the future
Accessibility

What works, and what does not

A statement worth reading is one that says where the product falls short, so this one starts there.

Where it falls short

The map is a canvas

A canvas has no structure for a screen reader to walk. The monitor tab carries the same data as a real sortable table, and the country panels are ordinary markup, so nothing on the map is only on the map. That is a mitigation rather than a fix.

Colour carries meaning on the choropleth

Every ramp is also a legend with numbers, and every country is readable as a row in the monitor, but the map itself does lean on colour. The ranked reading exists partly for this reason: it compresses an extreme spread into a scale that survives most kinds of colour vision.

Some panels are dense

The causes and chain views pack a lot into a small area. They are keyboard reachable and they read in order, but they are not restful.

What is in place

01

Motion is optional

Everything that moves respects the reduced motion setting in your operating system. With it on, the reveals, the transitions and the map animations all stand down and the content simply appears.

02

Two themes, both real

Light and dark are two designs rather than one inverted. Contrast was checked in both, and the choice is remembered in your own browser.

03

Keyboard throughout

Every control is reachable, the palette reaches everything else, and focus is visible rather than suppressed.

04

Labelled controls

Switches carry a role and a state, selects carry a label, and the icon buttons carry names rather than symbols alone.

05

A skip link

First thing in the tab order on every page.

06

Text that scales

The layout is built in relative units and survives being zoomed to twice the size without anything being cut off.

Where it is genuinely hard, and what is done about it

A map is a picture

A choropleth cannot be read by a screen reader, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. Everything the map shows is also in the monitor as a sortable table with the same figures, and every country has a profile page with its readings in text. The table is not a fallback, it is the same data by another route.

Colour carries meaning on the map

It has to: that is what a layer is. So no reading is ever colour alone. The inspector names the figure, the legend gives the scale in numbers, hovering prints the value, and the monitor has the whole column. A person who cannot separate two shades can still get every number.

Motion is used throughout

Panes arrive, rules draw, figures count up, the page dims as you leave it. All of it stands down completely under the reduced motion setting, including the count on the figures, which then simply show their final value.

Some panels are dense

Forty eight columns, thirteen hundred commands, forty four levers. The answer is not to remove them but to make them reachable: the command palette finds anything by name from the keyboard, the column chooser hides what you are not reading, and both side panels close.

Charts are canvas

A canvas element has no internal structure for assistive software to walk. Every chart on a pane is accompanied by the figures it draws, either in the key and value list beside it or in the table beneath it, so the reading never depends on seeing the line.

The claim is honest, not complete

This has not been through a formal audit. What is written here is what has been built and tested deliberately, not a conformance statement, and anywhere it falls short is a defect rather than a limitation.

If something is in your way

Tell us what you were trying to do and what happened instead. Accessibility reports are the one kind of message that gets answered first, because they are the one kind where the product is definitely wrong.

The contact page goes to a real inbox on this site.

Company 04 / 07