I want Sh'elah to work for people who use a keyboard, a screen reader, zoom or other assistive technology. This page says what is in place, what is not yet, and how to tell me about a problem.
1. The standard
Sh'elah is built to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA. That is a target, not a certification. The list of known limitations below shows where it falls short.
2. What is in place
- A 'skip to main content' link on every page, for keyboard and screen-reader users
- Menus, the reader settings panel and dialogs work from the keyboard, with a visible focus indicator
- ARIA roles, labels and live-region announcements on interactive controls, including menus, toggles and the AI answer panel
- Text and control contrast checked against WCAG AA (4.5:1 for text, 3:1 for controls) in both the light and dark themes
- Hebrew pages are mirrored right to left, not only set in a right-to-left text direction
- Text size, font and line spacing can be changed in the reader settings
- Animations are reduced or removed when your operating system's 'reduce motion' setting is on
- Buttons and links are at least 44×44 px on touch devices
- Status is shown with text or an icon as well as color
-
An automated WCAG 2.1 AA check (
pa11y) runs on every push against the home page, the legal and info pages and the Tanakh page, in both themes. A failure stops the build.
3. Known limitations
Not every part of Sh'elah meets the standard yet:
- Two third-party components, the sign-in widget and the calendar, follow their vendors' own accessibility work, which I do not control
- AI answers are long prose. Their structure, such as heading levels inside an answer, may not suit screen-reader navigation
- Some historical source texts, such as scanned or OCR'd Hebrew manuscripts, arrive as-is from the source libraries and can have inconsistent markup
These are open items, not permanent exceptions. I fix them as I find them.
4. Browsers and screen readers
Sh'elah is built for current versions of Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge, and is meant to work with screen readers such as VoiceOver, NVDA and JAWS. The automated checks run in Chrome only.
5. Tell me about a problem
If something on Sh'elah is hard or impossible to use, write to me. Say which page it was, what you were trying to do and, if it matters, which assistive technology you use. I will do my best to reply promptly and fix real barriers.
Contact: Akiva Yevdayev
Email: contact@shelah.org
See also the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy.