Policy
Accessibility
This site should work for you whether you use a keyboard, a screen reader, zoom, high contrast or reduced motion. This page says what we tested, what we fixed, what is still wrong, and how to tell us.
Written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast, from an automated audit of the live pages and the fixes made that day. Our AI policy.
Our target is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA. We do not claim full conformance yet. On September 29, 2026 an automated check found 940 serious problems on 34 of our 47 main pages. After that day’s fixes, the same check finds none. Automated tools only catch some problems, so if something gets in your way, tell us and we will treat it as a bug.
1. What we tested
We ran axe-core 4.13, an open-source accessibility checker, in a real browser on every page listed in our sitemap: 47 pages, each at desktop width (1440 pixels) and phone width (390 pixels).
| Problem found | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Text too faint to read against its background (contrast under 4.5 to 1) | 888 on 32 pages | 0 |
| Hidden duplicate links that a keyboard still lands on | 46 on 7 pages | 0 |
| Scrolling tables a keyboard can’t reach | 6 on 4 pages | 0 |
| Pages without a “Skip to content” link | All of them | 0 |
| Main pages without exactly one top-level heading | 2 (the homepage and KONG New York) | 0 |
The counts treat the desktop and phone checks separately, so one faint line of text on one page counts twice. No automated tool can judge whether an image description is useful or whether a page makes sense read aloud. We have not yet tested with people who use screen readers every day.
2. What we fixed on September 29, 2026
- A “Skip to content” link on every page. Press Tab once when a page opens and it appears in the top left. It takes you past the header and the scrolling bands straight to the page itself.
- A visible focus ring. Wherever you are with the keyboard, the thing you are on has a red outline.
- Readable text. Dates, bylines, captions, labels and small red text on the black background were lightened until they pass the WCAG AA contrast ratio of 4.5 to 1.
- No invisible stops. Scrolling bands repeat their content so the loop looks seamless. The hidden copies no longer take keyboard focus, so you don’t tab onto links you can’t see.
- Wide tables in the Lab can now be focused and scrolled with the arrow keys.
- Headings. The homepage and KONG New York now have one main heading each, so a screen reader’s heading list starts in the right place.
- Reduced motion. If your device is set to reduce motion, the scrolling bands and looping animations now hold still.
Added later the same day:
- Captions on seven films. Crowned in Thorns, Hurt Has a Sound, Prophecies Fail, Purpose Doesn’t, Scarlet Beast (Revelation 17:22), Dominate Fear. Surrender to Love., the Scarlet College film and the Scarlet Beast film teaser now have English captions. Press the CC button in the player to turn them on. The words come from the lyrics or script each film was made from, not from a machine’s guess at what was sung. A speech-recognition tool was used only to line up the timing, and instrumental stretches are marked [Music].
3. Built into your device
The site does not have its own text-size or contrast buttons, because your browser’s tools work better and follow you everywhere:
- Zoom: Ctrl and + (Command and + on a Mac), or pinch on a phone.
- Reduce motion: on iPhone, Settings › Accessibility › Motion › Reduce Motion. On Android, Settings › Accessibility › Remove animations. On Windows, Settings › Accessibility › Visual effects › Animation effects off. On a Mac, System Settings › Accessibility › Display › Reduce motion.
- Read aloud: VoiceOver on Apple devices, TalkBack on Android and Narrator on Windows are built in. NVDA is a free screen reader for Windows.
4. Known problems
These are the things we know are still wrong. We list them so you don’t have to find them the hard way.
- Some films still have no captions. The New Jersey, New Jerusalem walk and aerial films on the press page, the Two Thirds Consciousness résumé film, the Scarlet film (on the homepage and in the essay Stop asking for thirty seconds), the film on the donate page and the films in the homepage slideshow have no caption track yet. We only caption from the written words a film was made from, and we haven’t found those for these films. Films we publish on YouTube depend on YouTube’s captions, and we have not checked each one.
- Scrolling bands have no pause button. If your device isn’t set to reduce motion, the bands at the top of each page keep moving. Some of them pause when you hover over them, but not all.
- Older archive pages were not checked one by one. About 240 pages from the site’s WordPress years, many of them image attachment pages, got the skip link, the focus ring and the reduced-motion fix, but not a full audit.
- Smaller issues remain on the main pages. Some content sits outside the page’s labelled regions, four pages skip a heading level, and some images repeat the text beside them in their description.
- Other companies’ players and tools (YouTube and SoundCloud) have their own accessibility, which we don’t control.
5. Tell us what gets in your way
Email [email protected] with the word “Accessibility” in the subject. It helps to say which page, what you were trying to do, and what you use (a screen reader, keyboard only, zoom, a phone). You don’t need to know any technical terms. We read every message. We are a small organization and can’t promise a reply time, but a problem you report goes on our list and stays there until it is fixed.
If what you need is on a page you can’t use, ask us and we will send it another way, such as plain text by email.