Accessibility statement
The site has to live by its purpose.
Fewer Barriers aims to make this website and its tools usable by as many people as practical, with WCAG 2.2 Level AA as the minimum target—not a marketing badge.
This statement covers FewerBarriers.com and the four tools hosted here: Read at your pace, Keep the Thread, Step by Step, and Help Me Ask. Freedom From Clutter, Ben Franklin Close, and Ensnarled are separate project sites and publish their own accessibility information.
Our commitment
The target is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at Level AA. Where a simple improvement can materially help, we intend to go beyond that baseline. WCAG covers many needs, but no checklist can represent every person or every disability.
Measures built into this version
- Semantic page structure and plain-language labels
- Keyboard-operable controls with strongly visible focus
- Responsive reflow and touch targets designed for small screens
- Color-independent states and high-contrast reading choices
- User-controlled text size, line spacing, letter spacing, and word spacing
- Reduced-motion support and print-friendly large text
- ARIA used to clarify status and controls where native HTML is not enough
- Fieldsets, legends, progress, status messages, and print alternatives for guided tools
How it has been assessed so far
Development testing has included automated build, route, functional, and output checks. The original reader also received direct desktop inspection and interaction at a 390-pixel mobile viewport. Automated checks cover the logic used by the newer instruction, call-sheet, and request tools.
Automated checks are useful but do not prove accessibility. A broader real-screen-reader matrix, assistive-technology review, and testing with disabled users remain important future work.
Known limitations
- Device speech voices and keyboard behavior can vary across browser and operating-system combinations. Some voices may use an external online service.
- The exact-detail finder uses local pattern matching. It may miss a detail or identify ordinary text as a date, time, amount, phone number, or email address.
- Step by Step uses browser sentence boundaries or line breaks. It may separate an abbreviation or unusually punctuated sentence in an unhelpful place. The original text remains available for review.
- The call sheet and request builder arrange only the entries a user provides. They cannot detect an omission or misunderstanding.
- Printed size, margins, and page breaks vary by browser and printer settings.
- This release has not yet completed a formal independent audit or a broad test across real screen readers and other assistive technologies.
Technical approach
The site relies on current HTML, CSS, and JavaScript standards. The interactive tools require JavaScript; the informational pages remain ordinary structured documents. We prefer native controls and add WAI-ARIA only where it supplies information native HTML cannot express clearly.
Tell us about a barrier
If something is difficult to use, email CiaranPaulRoche@gmail.com. If you can, include the page, what you were trying to do, your browser or device, and any assistive technology involved. Do not include private letter text.
Accessibility feedback is treated as product work, not as an inconvenience.