Kwacha News aims to be accessible to every reader — including those using screen readers, keyboard navigation, magnification or alternative input devices. The target standard is WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
What works today
- Semantic HTML throughout — articles use
<article>, sections are properly headed, navigation uses <nav>. - Keyboard-only navigation across the nav, search overlay (Esc to close), dropdowns and forms.
- Skip-to-content target for screen-reader users.
- Image cover credits are linked text, not images.
- Colour contrast tested against the AA 4.5:1 threshold for body text and 3:1 for large text and UI components.
- Headline ticker auto-rotates on a 5.5-second interval and respects
prefers-reduced-motion.
What we are improving
- Alt text on inline article images — currently inherited from the cover; per-image alt is a planned addition.
- Full keyboard support inside the block editor (admin) — partial today.
- Captions and transcripts on the podcast feed — transcripts ship with each episode; captioning of historical episodes is in progress.
Report a barrier
If you hit an accessibility barrier on kwachanews.com — broken keyboard flow, unreadable contrast, missing alt text, screen-reader confusion — write to accessibility@kwachanews.com. Please include the page URL and what you were trying to do. We aim to respond within two business days and to fix high-impact barriers within a week.
