Accessibility Statement
Last updated: 29 May 2026. We want everyone to be able to use this site comfortably. This page describes what we have built in, where we fall short, and how to tell us about problems.
On this page
Our commitment
Sustainable Living Simple is an independent, editorial website. We are a small operation, not a large organisation with a dedicated accessibility team, but we take usability seriously and believe that practical sustainability information should be readable and navigable by everyone — including people who use assistive technologies, people who navigate by keyboard, and people who need to adjust how content is displayed.
We aim to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 level AA across the site. We do not claim full or certified conformance — we are a self-assessed, independently run site — but WCAG 2.1 AA is our target standard and we use it as the benchmark when reviewing and improving pages.
Accessibility features in this site
The following features have been implemented in the current redesign of the site:
- Semantic HTML landmarks — pages use
<header>,<nav>,<main>, and<footer>elements so screen readers can jump directly to the section they need. - Skip-to-content link — a "Skip to content" link is the first focusable element on every page. It becomes visible when focused and lets keyboard users bypass repeated navigation.
- Keyboard-navigable menus — the primary navigation, dropdown menus, and mobile menu can all be opened, navigated, and closed using a keyboard. Dropdowns respond to Enter, Space, and Escape.
- Visible focus styles — interactive elements display a clear focus ring when navigated to by keyboard. We have not removed the browser's default outline without providing a visible replacement.
- Sufficient colour contrast — text and interactive elements are designed to meet at minimum a 4.5:1 contrast ratio against their backgrounds (WCAG AA). The dark green on light backgrounds used throughout the site exceeds this threshold.
- Text that scales with browser zoom — the site layout uses relative units (rem and em) so that zooming in up to 200% in any browser does not break the layout or cause horizontal scrolling.
- Respects "prefers-reduced-motion" — decorative animations and transitions are suppressed or reduced when the operating system or browser is set to prefer reduced motion.
- Descriptive link text — links are written to make sense without surrounding context. We avoid generic phrases like "click here" or "read more" without accompanying context.
- Alt text and aria-hidden on icons — informative images carry descriptive alt text. Purely decorative SVG icons use
aria-hidden="true"so screen readers skip them. The brand logo SVG includes anaria-labelon its parent link. - Logical heading hierarchy — each page has exactly one
<h1>, with subsequent headings in order (h2,h3) so that screen reader users navigating by heading levels get a coherent outline. - Language declared — the page language is declared as
lang="en"on the<html>element, helping screen readers choose the correct voice and pronunciation rules.
Known limitations
We want to be honest rather than over-promise. There are areas where accessibility is imperfect:
- Third-party advertising — ads served by Google AdSense and its partners are outside our direct control. We cannot guarantee that all ad creatives meet WCAG 2.1 AA. If an ad is causing a significant barrier (for example, an auto-playing audio ad), please let us know and we will report it to Google.
- Embedded third-party content — any widgets or embeds from external services (such as social sharing, maps, or video players) may not fully meet our accessibility standards. We try to avoid or minimise these where possible.
- Legacy content — older articles written before the current redesign may have inconsistencies such as missing alt text on images or less structured headings. We work through these progressively.
- PDF documents — we do not currently publish PDFs, but if we do in future they may not be fully accessible until reviewed.
If you encounter content that is hard to read, navigate, or understand, the quickest fix is often your browser or operating system's built-in accessibility settings — font size, zoom, high contrast, or your screen reader's verbosity settings. But please also tell us so we can improve the source.
Feedback and contact
If you encounter an accessibility barrier on this site — a page that is difficult to navigate with a keyboard, an image without useful alt text, a colour combination that is hard to read, or anything else — we genuinely want to hear about it.
Please email us at [email protected] with a short description of the problem and, if possible, the URL of the page where you found it. We aim to:
- Acknowledge your message within five business days.
- Investigate the issue and, where it is within our control, fix it in the next site update.
- Let you know what we have done or explain why a fix is not possible.
If you need the content of a specific page in a different format and cannot access it as presented, mention that in your message and we will do our best to help.
How we review accessibility
As a small independent site, we do not conduct formal external audits on a fixed schedule. Instead, we:
- Check pages against WCAG 2.1 AA criteria as part of new content and template work.
- Use browser-based tools (such as axe DevTools, Lighthouse, and the WAVE browser extension) to check for automated accessibility errors.
- Test keyboard navigation manually on new or revised page templates.
- Act on any accessibility feedback received from readers.
We intend to review this statement and the overall accessibility of the site at least once a year, and sooner if significant changes are made to the site's design or templates.
Related reading
We also cover the intersection of disability and sustainable living on our site. If you are interested in how accessibility and sustainability connect, you may find our guide Disability and Sustainability useful.