Accessibility

I want everyone to be able to read about these books, including people who use a screen reader, a keyboard instead of a mouse, screen magnification, or who are sensitive to motion on screen.

The standard

This site aims to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at Level AA. WCAG is the standard most widely used to judge website accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and it is the basis of the European accessibility standard EN 301 549.

Status: partially conformant. Almost everything on the site meets the standard. The one exception I know of is listed under “Known limitations” below, with a way to get the same content in an accessible format.

What the site does

• Keyboard. Every link, button and menu works with the keyboard alone, with a clearly visible focus outline. A “Skip to content” link is the first thing on every page.
• Screen readers. Pages have a set language, a logical heading structure and labelled navigation. Meaningful images have text descriptions; purely decorative images are hidden from screen readers. Links that open in a new tab say so.
• Colour and text. Text meets the WCAG AA contrast ratios. Body text is large, and text can be enlarged to 200% or more and still fit the screen without scrolling sideways.
• Motion. If your device is set to reduce motion, the site shows everything still, with no scroll effects. You can also press “Turn off animation” at the bottom of any page to stop all animation, including the moving review ticker, on this and later visits. Nothing on the site flashes more than three times a second.
• Easy to find your way. The menu bar never hides, the home page has a real “Scroll down” button, and there are no time limits, pop-ups that block the page, sound, or videos that play by themselves.

Known limitations

• Sample chapter PDF. The downloadable sample chapter of Children of Violence is not yet tagged for screen readers. If you need it in another format (accessible PDF, Word, or plain text in an email), write to me and I will send it promptly.
• Other websites. The stores, Instagram, YouTube and Kirkus Reviews pages that this site links to are run by other companies, and their accessibility is outside my control.

How the site was checked

In October 2026 the site was tested with automated checks (axe-core, against WCAG 2.2 A and AA), by measuring colour contrast, by moving through every page with the keyboard alone, and with reduced-motion settings turned on. It is checked again when pages change.

Tell me if something doesn’t work

If any part of the site is hard to use, or you need information from it in a different format, please email lukegherardi2@gmail.com. Let me know the page and what went wrong, and what format would help. I aim to reply within five business days, and to fix problems or provide the information another way as quickly as I can.