Can I use Readeroom with my assistive technology?

The standard, and our claim against it

The standard we are measured against is EN 301 549, the European accessibility standard, which incorporates WCAG 2.1 Level AA. We design to the newer WCAG 2.2 Level AA, which adds six requirements on top: focus that is never hidden behind other content, an alternative to every dragging movement, controls at least 24 by 24 pixels, help in the same place on every page, not asking you to type the same thing twice, and signing in without a memory puzzle.

We will not publish a claim of full conformance until an audit covering keyboard operation, two screen-reader stacks, forced-colours mode and 400% zoom has actually been carried out. Saying “fully accessible” without that is a marketing claim wearing a standard’s name. So, surface by surface:

Scope: readeroom.com and everything behind sign-in. Automated checks last passed: 5 November 2026 — that date is written by the build, not by a person: a version of this site is only built once its contrast, control-size, motion and navigation checks pass, so it is the date those checks last passed for the page you are reading. The people-checked parts are dated in the table of barriers below.

What already works

• Colour contrast is checked automatically. A check runs on every change and fails the build if any of a named list of 82 foreground/background pairings drops below its required ratio, in the light, dark and night themes. It is the one part of this page that is machine-verified rather than reviewed by a person — but it covers the pairings we have listed, not every pairing that can occur, and in September 2026 a colour we had not listed was found in the reader at 4.22:1 where 4.5:1 was required. It was fixed and the pairing added. We would rather say that than let “automatically” do work it cannot do.
• Reading text is held to a stricter ratio than the standard requires, in both themes, because it is read for long stretches.
• Controls meet the 24 by 24 pixel minimum of WCAG 2.2 SC 2.5.8, and the main buttons are 44 by 44. Every control shows a visible focus ring at the same weight and offset throughout. This page previously said every control was 44 by 44; in September 2026 four standalone controls were found between 16 and 23 pixels tall, including the highlight-colour swatches in the notebook. They were corrected, and a check now fails the build when a control's styling cancels its own height. Links that sit inside a sentence are deliberately left alone — the standard exempts them, and padding one out stops the sentence wrapping around it.
• You decide how much moves. Settings → Appearance offers Full, Reduced and Still, and the choice follows your account to every device. Every animated element ships its settled end state first — that frame is what the server renders and what you get with Reduced or Still. Nothing in the product moves in order to be understood.
• Nothing navigates on a timer. There is no auto-redirect anywhere; you move on when you choose to.
• Meaning is never carried by colour alone. Pass and fail states, plan states and progress states all carry words as well.
• Form fields have real labels, not placeholder text, and errors are announced rather than only shown.
• The reading modes are controllable. Anything that plays has a visible pause control, always present regardless of your motion preference.
• You can skip the navigation. The first thing focus reaches on every page is a link straight to the content, and it moves focus there rather than only scrolling. This was missing until September 2026 — a signed-in page put twelve tab stops between the top of the document and what you came for, and the reading room put fifteen between it and the first word of the book. WCAG 2.4.1 is a Level A requirement, which makes it the most serious thing this page has had to correct.
• Progress opens as a plain list. The ladder — fifteen rows, ordinary headings, top of the page — is what loads; the scrolling illustration is a choice you make, not the default you have to escape. This was listed as a barrier here after it had already been fixed, which is its own kind of inaccuracy: a list of known problems is only useful if the things on it are still problems.

Barriers we know about

Each of these is a real thing that will make the product harder or impossible to use for someone. Each carries the date it was listed and what is being done about it.

Tell us about a barrier

If something here does not work for you, please write to help@readeroom.com. It helps to include the page, what you were trying to do, and what you use to browse — but a one-line message is welcome and far better than nothing.

What we commit to:

• A reply from a person within five working days.
• Either a fix, or a dated plan, within twenty working days.
• Adding it to the table above in the meantime, so the next person reading this page knows about it too.

If you need something from the product that you cannot get at because of a barrier — your data, your reading history, a cancellation — say so and we will do it for you rather than making you fight the interface for it.

If we do not put it right

If our reply does not resolve it, you can take it further, and we would rather you did than gave up: In Australia, the Australian Human Rights Commission, which hears complaints under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992. In the European Union, the authority that enforces the European Accessibility Act in the country you live in.