Getting around this site

Plain HTML, one stylesheet, one small script. That is a decision rather than a shortcut, and it is why most of the following is true without much effort.

• Every page works with the keyboard alone, and focus is always visible as an outline in the sky blue.
• A link at the very start of the tab order skips the masthead and lands in the reading.
• Headings step down one level at a time, so the outline a screen reader announces matches the one you see.
• Every photograph carries alternative text describing what is in the frame rather than a list of keywords.
• Real labels are bound to real fields in the letter form. When something fails validation the explanation is printed beside that field, in words rather than in a colour.
• No carousel, no modal, no video, no animation that starts by itself. The page is still when you arrive and stays still while you read.
• Body text is 17 pixels at a line height of 1.64 and survives being enlarged to 200 per cent without overlap.
• Colour contrast was checked against WCAG 2.2 level AA. The brick red on paper and the ink on paper both clear it.
• If your system asks for reduced motion, the small fade on scroll does not run at all.

What is still awkward here

• The contents rail on the front page sits below the essay on a narrow screen rather than beside it. That is the right order to read in, but it does mean the newest walk is a scroll away on a phone.
• Some tables need a sideways scroll on a narrow screen. Columns of measurements resist every alternative we tried, so the prose around each table repeats the numbers in sentences.
• The masthead is large by design. On a small phone it takes real estate before the reading starts, which the skip link exists to solve.

Tell us about anything else at [email protected]. It is read by a person and answered inside two working days.

Getting along the ground

This is the part a walking journal can genuinely help with, so every piece states it.

• Surface is named: brick, gravel, mud, cracked pavement, packed earth, boardwalk.
• Stairs are counted where they matter, and any route that cannot be done without them says so in its opening lines rather than in the middle.
• Gradient is described in words a person can use: flat, a long shallow pull, a short steep block.
• Benches and shade get a mention when a stretch is long without either.
• Surfaces after rain are flagged, because the towpath and the creek paths change character completely.

If a piece leaves out something you needed, that is a fault in the piece. Write in and it gets added, and the correction is printed with its date like any other.

The standard

WCAG 2.2 level AA. Our own testing says the site clears it. Our own testing is also not an audit, nobody independent has been paid to look, and this page claims no certificate that the journal has not been given.