Accessibility Statement
New Left Review has always aimed to make its website accessible to the widest possible range of users. This statement provides accessibility information about that website.
Web Standards
The NLR website was built from scratch using valid HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to the standards laid out in the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) - Level AA, and we refer to these guidelines in ongoing maintenance and updates.
The NLR website has been built to be usable and readable without dependence on any special technology: we work to principles of ‘progressive enhancement’, and the entire site should function well even in text-only browsers or browsers without JavaScript enabled. The sole exception is the Stripe payments integration, which unavoidably depends on JavaScript, but this JavaScript itself adheres to WAI-ARIA standards.
The NLR website should thus work well by default with assistive technologies such as screen readers, and we have tested it with some common ones. But let us know if you do encounter difficulties using the site with any such device and we will do our best to solve the problem quickly.
Auditing
NLR has had its website reviewed systematically by web accessibility and user experience experts in order to ensure adherence to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and will conduct further such reviews for any updates that have a potential bearing on accessibility.
The New Left Review website was last audited for accessibility in September 2025, and minor improvements were made in line with US ADA Title II regulations. Please contact subs@newleftreview.org for our latest accessibility conformance report.
What we do about known issues
If we discover an accessibility problem, we will aim to fix it as quickly as possible, and we invite users to inform us if we have missed anything. Feedback from users on this level will always be gratefully received.
Contacting Us
Please do contact us if you have any problems. It helps us to identify and fix problems if you are as specific and detailed as possible. We will typically respond within a couple of working days.
Known Issues
As part of our commitment to improving accessibility, we publish all outstanding issues identified in our audits here.
Alt Text
The journal’s archive since 1960 has been checked for informative alt text on all article images, and images that are standard parts of the site structure should also have standards-compliant alt text. However, blog posts on Sidecar have yet to be given the same thorough treatment. NLR intends to make this fully compliant ASAP.
Status Messages (WCAG 4.1.3)
Most status messages are announced by screenreaders. On some forms, such as the newsletter signup form, where there are multiple messages at once (for example, if there were multiple problems with a form submission), only the first message is announced. NLR intends to make this fully compliant ASAP.
Contrast
NLR’s multicoloured designs are central to its visual identity. Since the journal has been published since 1960, many of its historic colour schemes were chosen prior to modern standards on text accessibility. Despite this, NLR has for the most part been able to adjust colour to meet minimum contrast requirements (WCAG 1.4.3), while balancing this with reflecting the character of the Review. There are a few points remaining where this has not been successful, and we remain committed to improving these.
The key case is the archive page, which represents the iconic appearance of the full run of NLR copies on a bookshelf; it would not have been possible to authentically represent the journal’s history in this way without using these colours. As a simple list of issue numbers, akin to a row of spines on a bookshelf, the page does not adhere to standard functional web design patterns, and is primarily intended for decorative purposes. For functional purposes, the archive is generally better navigated by other means such as the search page, as noted for screenreaders at the start of the archive page. This aspect of the site should thus be interpreted in the spirit of WCAG exceptions for decorative elements.
Last Updated
This page was last updated on 1 December 2025.