Accessibility

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).

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. The October 2026 checks

Between the first check and October 3 the sitemap grew from 47 pages to 230, most of them free tools and their Spanish versions. We ran axe-core 4.13 again on every one of the 230, at the same two widths (460 checks), using its rules for WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 at levels A and AA. 223 pages had nothing to report. This is what the other 7 had:

As before, the desktop and phone checks are counted separately. This check ran on a copy of the site, on each page as it first opens. It did not press buttons, so the later steps of a tool, messages that appear after you type, and the search results were not checked this way. The two pages added on October 3 after the check, this statement in Spanish and the AI policy in Spanish, were checked the same way on their own and had nothing to report.

October 4, 2026. One day later the sitemap had 300 pages. We ran axe-core 4.13 on every one of them at the same two widths (600 checks), with the same WCAG rules and, for the first time, the checker’s “best practice” rules as well. These go past what WCAG requires: they look at whether everything on a page sits inside a named region, whether heading levels go in order, and whether a picture’s description repeats the words next to it. No page failed a WCAG rule. This is what the best-practice rules found:

After the fixes we ran all 600 checks again: 292 pages have nothing to report under any of these rules, and the other 8 have only the “Sign in” button, which is listed under Known problems. The limits are the same as on October 3: a copy of the site, each page as it first opens, no buttons pressed. The first counts in this table were taken with outside services switched off and the last ones with them on, so the two columns are not a perfect like-for-like comparison.

October 5, 2026: past the first screen. Until now the checker only looked at each page as it first opens. Most of our free tools show more once you press something: the next step, a list to tick, a filled-in letter. So we wrote a small program that opens a tool, types a few test words into the empty boxes, presses up to 48 of its buttons, tick boxes and tabs one after another, and runs axe-core 4.13 on the page after every sixth press and at the end. It ran on the 242 pages behind the 121 entries on our tools page, in English and Spanish, each at desktop width (1440 pixels) and phone width (390 pixels). That made 484 runs, 11,834 presses and 2,751 checks. The program did not press buttons that erase, print, download, share, copy or read aloud.

Two kinds of report are not real faults, and we say why so you can judge. The header of this site stays at the top of the window while you scroll. When the program had scrolled a tool, the header was lying over whatever was passing beneath it, and the checker reported those buttons as partly covered. When we checked the fixed pages again we recorded what was doing the covering, and in all 227 reports it was the header. In the first run we did not record that, so for those 390 we go by the same wording of the report. The five contrast reports were taken in the fraction of a second while a hint was fading in or a button was changing colour; at rest those colours pass.

The limits of this check: it ran on a copy of the site, in one browser (Chromium). The program presses buttons in the order they appear and stops at 48, so it did not reach every screen of every tool, and 981 of its presses did not land because the button had moved or gone. It does not use a tool the way a person would. The bigger tick boxes were only added to the 48 pages where a small one was found, so another tool may still have small ones on a screen the program never reached.

October 5, 2026: where the Tab key lands. Two bars stay fixed to the top of the window on this site: the header, which slides back in whenever the page moves up, and a thin announcement bar. Together they cover about 160 pixels. When you move through a page with the Tab key, the browser brings the next link or box into the window, but it did not know about the bars, so the thing you had just reached could be sitting behind them, where you could not see it. We had listed this as a known problem without measuring it. Now we have measured it, and fixed it on the free tools and guides. A program opened each of the 262 tool and guide pages (English and Spanish) at desktop width and in a phone-sized window, moved the focus to up to 120 links, buttons and boxes on each page, forward and then backward, and each time looked at 25 points across the thing in focus to see whether a fixed bar was drawn over it. That is 46,222 moves at each width.

The fix is small. Each tool and guide page now measures the bars and tells the browser to keep that much room clear at the top, so a link reached with Tab or Shift+Tab stops below the bars and not behind them. On four guides with a “Leave quickly” button (When home isn’t safe and After sexual assault, in English and Spanish) the last links of the footer sat under that button at the very end of the page; those pages now leave room below the footer. The last row of the table is a different thing, and the change did not help it: the counts there are higher after than before.

The limits of this check: it ran on a copy of the site, in one browser (Chromium), with animations and smooth scrolling switched off, and for the count above the program moved the focus itself and did not press the key. So we also pressed the real Tab and Shift+Tab keys 419 times on six pages at each width, with the animations on, and looked 0.8 seconds after each press. Before the change, 44 of 419 landed partly or completely behind a bar at desktop width and 76 of 419 at phone width. After it, 1 and 3. One of those 3 was completely behind the header; when we repeated that page it did not happen again, so we think we looked while the page was still moving, but we cannot be sure. Pages with more than 120 links and boxes were sampled evenly, not checked in full. The header’s own menus were not checked. The fix needs JavaScript. It is on the 262 tool and guide pages only; see Known problems for the rest. No person who uses a keyboard to get around has tried it yet.

October 12, 2026: the site at 607 pages. In eight days the sitemap grew from 300 pages to 607, nearly all of the new ones free tools and guides in English and Spanish, and most of them had never been through the checker. So we ran all three checks again. First, axe-core 4.13 on every one of the 607 pages as it first opens, at desktop and phone width (1,214 checks), with its rules for WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 at levels A and AA: no page failed a rule. Second, the same 1,214 checks with the “best practice” rules: 600 pages had nothing to report, and the other 7 had only the floating “Sign in” button. Third, the program that presses buttons, on the 268 tool and guide pages added since October 5, at both widths: 536 runs, 10,402 presses and 2,552 checks. That third check is the one that found something.

The “partly covered” reports are the same thing as on October 5: the header stays at the top of the window, and the program had scrolled a button underneath it. This time we recorded what was doing the covering from the start, and all 169 reports name a part of the header or of the thin bar above it. The “Sign in” button was reported on 7 pages and not 8: it was not reported on Book of Babalon this time, and we have not looked into why.

The limits of this check are the limits of the earlier ones: a copy of the site, one browser (Chromium), desktop width and a phone-sized window, not a real phone. The first two checks look at a page as it first opens. The third presses buttons in the order they appear and stops at 48, so it did not reach every screen, and 876 of its presses did not land because the button had moved or gone. It ran only on the 268 newer pages; the 242 pages checked on October 5 were not pressed again. A checker like this finds only part of what can get in a person’s way. No one who uses a screen reader every day has tried these pages.

3. 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].
• A pause button for everything that moves on its own. The Markets bar near the top of every page now ends in a Pause motion button (on a phone it is the small ❚❚ button at the right end). It stops the scrolling bands, the pulsing and glowing effects and the silent films that loop behind some sections. The site remembers your choice on every page, in this browser, until you press the button again (it then reads Resume motion). Films you start yourself keep their own play and pause buttons. If your device is already set to reduce motion, the site holds still on its own and the button is hidden. You can also use the button here:
  Pause motionThe choice is kept only in your browser. Nothing is sent to us.

On October 3, 2026:

• The “From the song” lines under quoted lyrics in five essays were lightened until they pass the 4.5 to 1 contrast ratio.
• The two National Hunger Hotline numbers on the New York homeless resources guide, in both languages, now have more room around them, so each is easier to tap.
• This statement and the AI policy are now in Spanish, and the Spanish pages link to the Spanish versions.

On October 4, 2026:

• Every part of the page now sits in a named region on 292 of the 300 pages. The closing section above the footer is announced by its own heading, the old music bar is “Music announcements”, and the line under the homepage films is “Now playing”. A screen reader’s list of regions no longer leaves these out.
• The logo is no longer read twice. The link around it already says “Scarlet Beast home”, so the picture inside it is now marked as decoration.
• Heading levels go in order on the homepage, the Library, Book of Babalon and the Lab’s Homeostat page. The headings look the same; only the level a screen reader announces changed.
• Regions with the same name now differ. The film section of the homepage is “Scarlet Beast, the film”, and a second or third wide table on a Lab page is “Scrollable table 2” or “3”.
• The Rising. The wall of videos is a group of buttons, each named by its video’s title, and no longer claims to be a list.

On October 5, 2026:

• Bigger tick boxes, option buttons and sliders on 48 tool pages: at least 24 by 24 pixels, up from 13 by 13 on most of them.
• A darker green on the “Finished” button of My day, in English and Spanish, so the white words on it are easier to read.

On October 12, 2026:

• Bigger tick boxes on the emergency-planning tools (Emergency plan, Fire escape plan, Power outage plan, Ready for less and Disability emergency plan, in English and Spanish): at least 24 by 24 pixels, up from 22 by 22 or 18 by 18.
• The Visual timer’s disc always has a description. With no time set, a screen reader now hears “An empty disc. No time is set.” where before it heard a picture with no name.

4. 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.

5. 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.
• The homepage entrance still moves. Before you press Enter on the homepage, the drifting sparks and smoke behind the name keep moving, and the pause button isn’t on screen yet. Press Enter, or Enter silently, and the rest of the site can be paused.
• 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.
• A floating “Sign in” button on 8 older pages is not built as a real button. It sits in the top right corner of Book of Babalon, Join Now, KONG New York, the New York homeless resources guide in English and in Spanish, the Library, Poker AI and The Rising. It is outside every named region, it is not marked as a button, and the Tab key does not stop on it. It belongs to the sign-in system, which the automated caretaker of this site is not allowed to change, so it is on the owner’s list.
• The free tools are only partly checked past their first screen. On October 5 and October 12, 2026 a program pressed up to 48 buttons on each tool and checked what appeared, but it did not reach every screen, and it only ran in one browser (Chromium), at desktop width and in a phone-sized window, not on a real phone. None of the tools has been tested with a screen reader by someone who uses one every day.
• Away from the tools and guides, the header can still cover what the Tab key lands on. The fix of October 5, 2026 is on the 262 free tool and guide pages. The homepage, the essays, the music, press and library pages, the two New York homeless resources guides and the older archive pages do not have it yet: there, mostly when going backwards with Shift+Tab, the link you land on can sit partly or fully behind the header. On the tools, a tall writing box or a button in a sideways-scrolling row can still land partly past the edge of the window.
• One small link on the New York homeless resources guide (English and Spanish) measures 86 by 21 pixels, under the 24 pixels WCAG 2.2 asks for.
• On Spanish pages, the header, the menu and the footer are still in English. They are marked as English in the code, so a screen reader should switch voice for them, but the words themselves are not translated. Some Spanish pages also link to pages that exist only in English, and say so next to the link.
• The Spanish pages were translated with AI and have not been reviewed by a native speaker. If a sentence is unclear or wrong, that is a barrier too, and we want to hear about it.
• Other companies’ players and tools (YouTube and SoundCloud) have their own accessibility, which we don’t control.

6. 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.

Privacy Policy →