This site is meant to work for everyone, including people who use a screen reader, a keyboard only, large text, or a phone with a cracked screen. Here is what has been done, what has not, and how to tell me about a barrier.
What is in place
- Plain language, short sentences, headings in order, one idea per section.
- Every text colour is at least 4.5 to 1 against its background, in the light and the dark look (checked by calculation on 3 November 2026; prices and rates use a darker gold ink for that reason).
- Keyboard: a “Skip to content” link is the first thing on every page, and the thing that has focus always shows a visible ring.
- Dark and light follow your system setting; the small button in the header overrides it and remembers your choice on this device only.
- Text can be enlarged to 200 percent without anything being cut off; the layout is one column on a phone.
- No motion starts on its own; the only animation is the colour of a button under the pointer, and it is off when your system asks for reduced motion.
- Images carry alt text; the county map is an SVG with a title, and the list beside it names the same places.
- No trackers, no cookies, no third-party fonts or scripts, so nothing on this site depends on another company’s accessibility.
What is not done yet
- A full pass with a screen reader (NVDA and Orca) is planned and has not happened yet; when it has, this line will say so, with the date.
- The older posts, 2013 to 2024, were written in an earlier theme; some of their images may lack alt text and some tables may not read well. They are being checked post by post.
Tell me about a barrier
If something here does not work for you, write to [email protected] or call (530) 798‑4099. If I am not at the phone, my assistant Familiar at (530) 994‑6656 takes the message and it reaches me within minutes. Say which page and what happened; I will fix it and tell you.
Accessibility is also the work: I build Candela, an open-source audiobook player with a neural voice, and I sat down with people whose devices did not work for them long before this site existed.