[DISCUSSION] New Accessibility Policy

Summary:

For a more accessible wiki.

[DISCUSSION] New Accessibility Policy

wackdog 13 Jan 2026 13:35

o4 Mirror: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/forum/t-17563026/discussion-new-accessibility-policy

What is This:

An update to the current accessibility guidelines on the Wiki.

Why is this an issue?

The current accessibility outline is tucked into the CSS policy, and is quite undetailed. This has led to inconsistent enforcement and application. Many existing themes have a large variety of accessibility issues.

Solution

To address this issue, I have created a new policy/guide, to clearly outline accessibility requirements for the site. The guide also has explanations on each specific policy, and information on how to apply them in their components, themes and general pages.

The draft of this new policy can be found here: https://scp-sandbox-3.wikidot.com/accessibility

There will also be an audit of all existing site themes and components to bring them up to this standard.

Benefits/Concerns

This will help make the site and its content available to everyone, regardless of their accessibility requirements. It will also strengthen the approvals process for themes and components.

A concern that has been raised is that certain accessibility requirements would impede on artistic intent and style choices. To help address this we are allowing "accessibility mode" versions of individual pages using an offset as a method of meeting policy guidelines.

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Discussion will run for 7 days:

Last edited on 13 Jan 2026 13:53 by wackdog Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] New Accessibility Policy

BAD_DATA 13 Jan 2026 13:57

Always happy to see more moves towards accessibility on the wiki, completely support this. A few additional notes/questions:

• Could we count fixing certain accessibility issues to be treated the same as making SPaG edits to articles that a user isn't an author of? For example, using ++ rather than big bold text?
• How does this affect art pages? If a page is solely an image, how would you go about creating alt text? What about music and transcriptions?
• Does wikidot have ARIA support? I'm sure theres one or two use cases where that should be applied, although very sparingly of course. If so, maybe ARIA should get a mention in the policy?

Again, any moves to making the wiki more accessible are greatly appreciated, so complete support for this project

Re: [DISCUSSION] New Accessibility Policy

aismallard 13 Jan 2026 15:28

1. It depends on the accessibility issue, I think. Some are on the same tier as SPaG, but others are more involved and should be done with more Tech Team oversight.
2. I am unsure what the convention for pages like that is elsewhere on the web.
3. Wikidot does not have ARIA support, so we will just have to make do with what we have.

Re: [DISCUSSION] New Accessibility Policy

Ethagon 15 Jan 2026 19:33

Overall, happy about this existing. Two things:

• Does 1.4.1 only refer to colour or also to shades? (Aka would having black and grey text to convey information be acceptable were red and green text would not, or would they fall under the same rule)
• I don't think 2.3.2 (link purpose is clear from link context) fits the wiki, unless it is only restricted to themes and components. While it's a good guideline to follow where possible, it doesn't reflect how a lot of crosslinks are used on the wiki as part of the storytelling. Tales that use crosslinks for instance don't necessarily have the space to explain what a crosslink links to in an independent context. I'd rather have this requirement be cut out.

Re: [DISCUSSION] New Accessibility Policy

wackdog 15 Jan 2026 19:56

Does 1.4.1 only refer to colour or also to shades?

It also refers to shades

I don't think 2.3.2 (link purpose is clear from link context) fits the wiki, unless it is only restricted to themes and components.

It would mainly be applied to Themes and Components yes, and links that are actually referring to something, such as documentation. I am happy to make an exception for narrative crosslinks used for storytelling, such as the use-case you have presented.