There’s no point creating a website that people find hard to use! And as someone with a disability myself, I’m keen to ensure that this site can be used with accessible technologies.
PDFs
PDFs aren’t particularly accessible, but they’re the best way to display transcriptions, short of using Excel documents (which not everyone can open). On a Windows PC, you can find a word in a PDF by pressing control and F at the same time. A search box will appear. On an Android device using a Chrome browser, tap “More” and select “Find in page.”
Parish registers
All of the parish register transcriptions on this website can be searched for at FreeREG, so if the PDFs are a problem, you will be able to find the same information at FreeREG.
Wills
In the past, I transcribed all the information available in a will and typed them up into Word, converting them into a PDF. I will at some point be getting rid of these PDFs and putting simplified transcriptions of wills directly onto webpages as text.
Videos and closed captions
There are very few videos on this website. Some, such as book trailers, only have music on them so don’t need captions. The Poison Panic videos contain information which is in the book Poison Panic, so are in a sense an alternative format. The accent videos are very difficult to caption because they are about the sound of people’s speech, which is difficult to articulate in closed captions. As I have hearing loss myself, it is very difficult for me to provide transcriptions for these videos.
Headers, layouts etc
This website is built using WordPress, which should be accessible. I use headers in the right order on pages so that you can find your way around more easily.