Accessibility Statement.

Where we stand

We build against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA. The site has not yet been independently audited, so we do not claim that it conforms to WCAG 2.1 AA. We check our own pages with automated tools and by hand, and we fix what we find.

A formal accessibility audit and a published VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) are planned. Until then, schools and libraries evaluating Loom can ask us for our current list of known issues via the Contact page.

What we have done

Text alternatives to the scans. Public-domain books and newspapers have a plain-text page made from the OCR text of the scan, maps have a page listing the words read off the sheet, and many books also have an EPUB edition built from the text, which works with screen readers and lets you change the text size.

Loom canvas by keyboard. The cards in an investigation can be reached and worked without a mouse: Tab enters the canvas, the arrow keys move from card to card, Shift with an arrow moves a card, Enter opens one, Space selects, L lists a card’s links and the reasoning written on them, Delete unpins (with undo), and Esc returns to the toolbar. Press ? in an investigation for the full list.

Loom for screen readers. Each card has a spoken name that includes what it is and, for a claim, how many sources are for it and how much is against it. Moves and selections are announced. The Outline view presents a whole investigation as a navigable tree, and the Reading view presents it as a single column; a "Skip to outline" link is the first stop in every investigation.

Links on Loom do not rely on colour. Each type of link (Supports, Refutes, Qualifies and the others) also has its own line style and end shape.

Contrast, focus and names. Text and labels on the Loom canvas and in its Reading view pass WCAG AA contrast in our automated checks, keyboard focus on the canvas is shown with a visible outline, toolbar buttons have accessible names, and investigation cards on the public wall are ordinary links. Movement on the canvas respects your system’s reduced-motion setting.

Pages are served with their content and language set, so assistive technology and search engines read the page before any script runs.

Known limitations

Scanned pages are images. In the PDF reader a page is a picture of the original, and a screen reader cannot read it. The plain-text page and the EPUB edition are the accessible alternatives. Both come from OCR, which can misread old typefaces, damaged pages, tables and non-English text, so they may contain errors that the scan does not.

Some scans have no OCR text yet, and works submitted by living authors do not have a public text page; for those, the text alternative may be missing.

On the Loom canvas, moving a card into or out of a frame, resizing a card or frame, and drawing a selection box still need a pointer. Moving cards with the keyboard does not change which frame they are in. Frames can be read and edited from the Outline view and the card panel.

Images and maps pinned to an investigation use the title they were catalogued with as their text alternative; most do not yet have a fuller description.

Some secondary text is still below AA contrast — in Loom’s Outline view, on the Loom introduction page and in the site footer — and across the wider site some pages still lack a main landmark or have links that are told apart from the text around them by colour alone. We are working through these.

Report a problem

If something on the site is hard or impossible to use with the way you browse, tell us via the Contact page or email contact@templeseven.com. Please include the page address, what you were trying to do, and, if you can, the browser and any assistive technology you use. Every report is read by a person, and if you need a text you cannot reach, we will help you get it another way.