Accessibility
Accessibility is most of my day job, so this site should hold up to the same standard I ask of other teams. The target is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, Level AA.
What's built in
- A skip link to the main content, and a visible focus indicator on every link, button, and field.
- One main landmark per page and a heading order that follows the page outline.
- Images carry alt text written after looking at the image, plus a visible caption.
- Light and dark themes that follow your system setting.
- Comments load only when you ask for them. The comment widget adds its own main landmark, which gave every article two of them in a screen reader. I wrote about that in The Vendor's Bug Is Still Mine.
How I check it
I test with a keyboard alone and with VoiceOver on macOS, and I check contrast in both themes, against WCAG 2.2 ratios and APCA (the Accessible Perceptual Contrast Algorithm). Every text color measures APCA Lc 60 or better. Automated scans catch some problems, but most of the ones that matter only show up when you use the page the way a screen reader user would. The full results, criterion by criterion, are in the Accessibility Conformance Report.
I also reviewed the homepage and a case study against the Working Draft of WCAG 3.0. It's still a draft and will change, so this isn't a conformance claim. The review led to real fixes, now across every case study: abbreviations spelled out the first time they appear, dates marked up so assistive technology reads them correctly, row headers on case-study tables, and lighter muted text in dark mode.
Known limits
Older essays imported from Medium may have images or formatting I haven't fully reworked. Comments run on giscus, a third-party service I don't control once it loads.
Tell me what's broken
If something here doesn't work with how you browse, email steve@upstreamxd.com. I'd rather hear about it than not.
Last reviewed .