Home/Accessibility
Accessibility
This site is built to be usable by everyone who wants to follow the International Institution of Sound — on a phone, with a keyboard, with a screen reader, or with the page turned up as large as it needs to go.
What we build to
WCAG 2.1,
Level AA
Every page on this site is tested against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 at Level AA — the standard most public institutions in the United States are measured by. The most recent automated pass covered all pages of the site at desktop and phone widths with no outstanding failures.
Keyboard
- Every link, button, form field and card is reachable with Tab and Shift+Tab
- A “Skip to main content” link is the first thing you reach on each page
- The menu and the photo viewer keep focus inside while open, and hand it back when closed
- Escape closes the menu, the photo viewer and the accessibility panel
- The legacy timeline scrolls with the arrow keys once focused
Screen readers
- One page title per page, and headings that run in order
- Alt text on every photograph; decorative marks are hidden from the reading order
- Links that open a new tab say so
- Menus and scrolling regions are announced with names, not as bare containers
Sight and motion
- Body text meets at least a 4.5:1 contrast ratio; large display type meets 3:1
- Keyboard focus is a gold ring paired with a navy one, so it stays visible on both the dark and the light sections
- The site honours your system “reduce motion” setting and drops the animation
- Layouts reflow down to a 320px screen without side-to-side scrolling
On every page
Set the Page
the Way You Need It
The circular button at the bottom-left corner of every page opens a panel of controls. Your choices are remembered on this device and applied before the next page draws, so nothing flashes back to the default. These sit on top of a site that should already work without them.
Size
- Text size — 100%, 115%, 130% or 150%, without breaking the layout
- Magnify page — 100%, 110%, 125% or 150%; the page reflows rather than clipping
Colour and type
- Invert colours — flips the page while leaving photographs true
- Boost contrast — pushes the separation between text and background
- Underline links — puts a line under every link, so colour is never the only cue
- Readable font — swaps the condensed display type for a plain face and opens up the letter spacing
Motion
- Stop animation — halts every transition, scroll effect and the scrolling marquee
- If your device is already set to reduce motion, the site follows that on its own
Where we are not finished
Known Gaps
Automated testing catches roughly a third of accessibility problems. Listing what is still open is part of meeting the standard honestly.
Still to do
- A full manual pass with VoiceOver and NVDA has not been completed
- The contact and media-team forms open your email program rather than submitting to a server
- A small number of archive photographs are only available at low resolution
Outside this site
- Ticketing, giving and university pages are run by Johnson C. Smith University or its vendors, and are covered by their own accessibility policies
- Video hosted on third-party platforms carries whatever captions the platform provides
Tell us
Hit a Barrier?
If something on this site blocked you, we want to know which page it was and what happened. Reports about this website reach the band office directly.