Accessibility

The novel at the centre of this site is about a deaf young man. Access is not an afterthought here. This page sets out what the site does, what it does not do yet, and how to tell us when something gets in your way.

Reading preferences

The accessibility button sits at the end of the navigation bar, and opens with Alt + A (Option + A on a Mac). It lets you change:

• Text size in five steps, line height, letter, word and paragraph spacing.
• Font: the site face, Atkinson Hyperlegible, or OpenDyslexic. Both are served from this site and only downloaded when chosen.
• Left alignment instead of justified text.
• Light or dark theme, high contrast, monochrome, inverted colour, saturation.
• Highlighted links, including a marker on links that open a new tab.
• Reduced motion, paused animation, a stronger focus ring, larger cursors.
• A reading guide bar, a reading mask, hidden images.
• Read aloud for a selected passage, where the browser supports speech.

Choices are stored on your device only, in your browser. Nothing about them is sent anywhere. If your system already asks for reduced motion or more contrast, the site starts that way.

Built into every page

• A skip link to the main content as the first thing you reach with the keyboard.
• One main landmark per page, and headings in order.
• Every interactive element is reachable and operable by keyboard alone.
• Focus is always visible.
• Images carry descriptive alternative text; decorative images carry none.
• Motion is minimal and stops entirely when reduced motion is set.

Known gaps

• Atkinson Hyperlegible and OpenDyslexic cover Latin characters only. Greek text falls back to the site font.
• Read aloud depends on the voices your browser and device provide.
• Retailer pages linked from here are run by other companies and are outside our control.
• The site has not been tested with every screen reader and browser combination.

Tell us

If something here is hard to use, write to author@costalagoudakis.com or use the contact page. Say which page and what happened, and it will be looked at.