Everyone gets to see the work

We build Luscerna to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at level AA. That is the standard courts and regulators point to under the Americans with Disabilities Act in the United States, and the one the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act requires here at home.

We are not claiming a perfect score. Nobody honest does. We are claiming that this is the target we design against, that we test as we go, and that we fix what gets reported.

• Keyboard access throughout. Every link, button, form field and image viewer can be reached and operated with Tab, Enter, Escape and the arrow keys. No part of the site needs a mouse.
• A visible focus ring. When you move by keyboard, a clear outline shows where you are. We never hide it to make a page look tidier.
• A skip link. The first Tab on any page offers to jump straight past the header to the main content.
• Zoom and reflow. Pinch zoom is never disabled, and the layout reflows to a single readable column at 200 percent and beyond, so nothing gets cut off.
• Reduced motion respected. If your device asks for less animation, transitions and fades are switched off rather than merely shortened.
• Light and dark, both checked for contrast. The theme follows your system setting, and body text and controls are measured against the 4.5 to 1 contrast ratio the guidelines ask for.
• Touch targets you can hit. Interactive elements are at least 44 pixels tall, which matters for anyone with a tremor or limited fine motor control.
• Structure a screen reader can follow. Real headings in order, labelled form fields, landmarks for the header, navigation, main content and footer, and spoken status messages when something is loading or has failed.

These are known gaps, written down rather than quietly hoped over. We are working on each of them.

• Drawings carry meaning we cannot read out. A plan, a section or a render is an image. An automatic description such as “page 3” tells a screen reader user almost nothing about what is on it.
• Uploaded PDFs are shown as pictures. To render every page at full resolution we draw the PDF to a canvas, which means the text inside a presentation board is not selectable and cannot be read by assistive software.
• Descriptions vary. The written part of a project is up to the student who uploaded it. Some are thorough, some are a single line, and we cannot promise the words account for everything in the drawings.

If you need a project explained and the page does not do it, write to us. We will ask the student, or describe it ourselves, and send you the answer.

Your classmates and future employers include people who use screen readers, people who cannot tell certain colours apart, and people reading on a phone at 200 percent zoom. Two habits make a real difference:

• Write a description that says what the drawings show, not only what the concept was. A sentence per key drawing is enough.
• Do not let colour alone carry meaning in a diagram. Add a label, a hatch, or a different line weight as well.

The publishing guidelines cover the rest of presenting work well.

If any part of this site stops you doing something, we want to hear about it, and you do not need to know the technical words for it. Tell us which page you were on, what you were trying to do, and what happened instead. If you use assistive technology, naming it and your browser helps us reproduce the problem faster.

We reply within five working days, and tell you either that it is fixed or when it will be. If that answer is not good enough, say so and it goes to the person who runs the site.

If a page will not work for you, we will get you the content another way: a plain text or large print version of a project description, a described walkthrough of a set of drawings, or help publishing your own work over email if the upload form is the barrier. There is no charge and no form to fill in. Just ask.

We test with keyboard only navigation, with browser zoom at 200 and 400 percent, with a screen reader on both desktop and phone, and with automated checks against each page template. Whatever we find is either fixed or listed above. This page is reviewed whenever the site changes in a way that touches how it is used.

The terms of service and the privacy policy cover the rest of the relationship.