Accessibility

Reelio aims to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2, Level AA. This page says what that means in practice, what we have actually built, and where we currently fall short.

Everything below is checkable against the site. If a claim here does not match what you experience, that is a bug and we want to hear about it: hi@itsreelio.com. We reply within 3 business days.

What is built

Semantic HTML, and the whole page in the first response. Headings are real headings in order, lists are lists, tables have header cells with scopes, and the article body arrives complete in the server's response. Turning JavaScript off leaves the site readable, because almost nothing here depends on JavaScript to begin with.

One exception, stated because this page is meant to be checkable: search needs JavaScript, and the search page says so and points you at the section links instead. Everything else, including every contact address, is in the page the server sends.

Keyboard access. Every link, button, form field and control is reachable and operable with a keyboard alone. There are no keyboard traps. A "skip to main content" link is the first thing in the tab order on every page.

Visible focus. Focused elements get a high-contrast outline with an offset, in both light and dark appearance. We never remove focus outlines without replacing them.

Alt text on every image, enforced by the system. An article cannot be published without alternative text of at least 12 characters on its lead image, and the check rejects text that merely restates that the thing is an image or echoes a camera filename. That is a build failure rather than a habit: the site will not compile, so nothing ships without it, including during a breaking story at 1am.

Contrast. Body text, headings and interface text meet or exceed the 4.5:1 ratio at Level AA, in both the light and dark colour schemes. Large text and non-text controls meet 3:1.

Text that resizes. Type is sized in relative units and scales with your browser or operating system setting. The layout reflows to 320 pixels wide without a horizontal scrollbar and without loss of content. Wide tables scroll inside their own box rather than pushing the page sideways.

Reduced motion respected. If your system asks for reduced motion, animation and smooth scrolling are switched off. There is very little motion here to begin with.

Both colour schemes. The site follows your system preference for light or dark, and both are designed rather than inverted.

Nothing depends on colour alone. Corrections, updates and warnings carry a label as well as a colour.

Stable layout. Images, embeds and, when they start running, advertising containers all reserve their exact space in the server's HTML before anything loads, so the page does not move under your cursor or your screen reader. Layout that shifts while you are reading is an accessibility problem before it is a performance one, and it is the reason the site is built the way it is.

Language declared. Every page declares en-US, so a screen reader pronounces it correctly.

Video embeds do not autoplay. A YouTube or Vimeo embed shows a still image and a button. Nothing loads or plays until you ask for it.

How this is tested

• Keyboard-only navigation through every page template, by hand.
• VoiceOver on macOS and iOS, and NVDA on Windows, on the article, hub and author templates.
• Rendering with JavaScript disabled, checked automatically on every change. The build asserts that every page still carries its prose, its navigation and a reachable contact address with no script executed, and fails if one does not.
• Automated checks in the build that block a deploy: alternative text present and not a filename or the word "image", no internal link that resolves to nothing, no raw markup reaching the page, and a written introduction on every listing screen. Colour contrast is checked by hand against the design tokens rather than automatically, which is a gap and is listed as one below.
• Zoom to 200 percent and reflow at 320 pixels.

Automated tools catch perhaps a third of real accessibility problems. The manual passes are the ones that matter, and they happen when a template changes rather than on a schedule.

Known gaps

Stated honestly, because a page that claims full conformance is usually a page nobody tested.

Third-party advertising creatives will be outside our control. No advertising runs on this site yet. When it does, we place the container, reserve its exact size, and label it, and what the advertiser puts inside it, including its contrast, its motion and its own controls, is theirs. Where an ad breaks a page or animates aggressively, report it with a screenshot and we will block that creative.

Colour contrast is not checked automatically. Every colour pair in the design tokens was measured by hand against WCAG AA and the site's brand red carries 6.3:1 against both the page and the chrome, but nothing in the build re-measures them, so a future token change could regress contrast without failing anything. That is the most likely place for this page to become wrong.

Embedded posts from other platforms carry that platform's accessibility, not ours. We link to the original in text as well, so the content is reachable without using the embed.

We do not yet caption our own video, because we do not yet publish our own video. When we do, it ships with captions and a transcript or it does not ship.

Complex data tables, such as the episode schedules and the brand-by-brand settings tables, are marked up correctly but can still be hard going with a screen reader. Where one exists, the article states the finding in prose as well as in the table.

Telling us something is broken

Write to hi@itsreelio.com. Useful, if you have it:

• the page address
• what you were trying to do
• your browser, operating system and assistive technology
• what happened instead

We acknowledge within 3 business days and tell you what we are going to do and when. Where a fix is quick, it usually goes out the same week. Where it is not, we say so and give you a date rather than leaving it open.

If you need something on this site in a different format, ask. We will find a way to get it to you.

Formal statement

This statement applies to itsreelio.com. It was last reviewed on 31 July 2026 and is reviewed whenever a page template changes, and at least every six months.

Reelio is partially conformant with WCAG 2.2 Level AA. Partially conformant means most of the site meets the standard, with the exceptions listed under known gaps above, which are mostly third-party content we place but do not author.

Accessibility work here is not a compliance exercise. Most of it is the same work as making the site fast and making it readable without JavaScript, and it was going to be done anyway.