Small choices that make a page easy to read

A page is only useful if the person in front of it can actually use it. Here are the small choices that make ipe.rest easier to read with a keyboard, a small screen or a right-to-left script, and the things we have not tested yet.

Last time we explained how the site can open without a connection. This entry is about reading itself. Everything below is something you can check yourself, with a key press or your browser’s own tools.

A way past the menu

Press Tab on any language page or journal page of the site and the first thing you reach is a link that says “Skip to content”. It stays out of sight until the keyboard lands on it, then it appears at the top of the page. Follow it and you go straight to the text, without tabbing through the header first.

You can always see where you are

When you move with the keyboard, the link or button you are on gets a two-pixel blue outline with a small gap around it. We did not just strip away the browser’s default outline; we swapped it for this clearer one, because a page you cannot follow with your eyes is a page you cannot use.

Big enough to touch, easy to enlarge

Links and buttons in the header, the footer and the language switcher are at least 44 pixels tall, so a thumb can hit them. Body text is 17 pixels on a desktop and 16 on a phone, with generous space between the lines, and long words and web addresses wrap instead of pushing the page sideways.

The page never switches off pinch-to-zoom, so you can enlarge it as far as your browser allows. And if your system asks for reduced motion, the site turns off its transitions and its smooth scrolling.

Contrast you can calculate

Body text is a dark navy on a near-white page, a contrast ratio of about 17 to 1. The grey used for secondary text is about 6 to 1, and the blue of the links is about 6.6 to 1. A common guideline asks for at least 4.5 to 1. These numbers come from the colours in our stylesheet, worked out with the standard formula, not measured with an audit tool.

Every language, in its own direction

Each page declares its language, and Arabic pages declare right-to-left. The layout uses start and end instead of left and right, so the skip link, the lists and the indents flip with the text. Browsers and assistive tools can use the language declaration to choose the right voice or font.

What we have not done

We have not run a formal accessibility audit, and we have not tested with every screen reader. The site has one light colour scheme and no dark one. If something gets in your way, tell us on the contact page and we will look at it.

ipe(); // read it the way that works for you

None of this is clever. It is a short list of defaults that we chose not to remove, and a page that stays calm for you is easier to read for everyone.