Accessibility

Our aim

We want every reader to be able to use this site, whatever device they have and however they read. Our reference is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, version 2.2, at level AA, and the site was built with those guidelines in mind rather than checked against them afterwards. Where we know we fall short, we say so below.

What the site does

• Every page works without a mouse. The first thing in the tab order is a "Skip to content" link that jumps past the navigation. Menus, tables and forms can all be reached and used from the keyboard, and the element that has focus is always outlined.
• Every page works without JavaScript. The pages are rendered on our server as plain HTML. Nothing you need to read a statistic, a ranking or an article depends on a script running in your browser.
• Text is text. Headings are real headings in a sensible order, tables have header cells and captions, and lists are lists. A screen reader can move through a page by its structure.
• Contrast has been checked. Body text, secondary text and link text were each measured against the page background and meet the AA contrast ratio. The one typeface is set at 16 pixels for body text and larger for headings, and every page reflows cleanly when you zoom in.
• Pictures carry a description or are marked as decoration. Photographs describe what they show and name the place. Flags beside a country's name are marked as decorative, because the name is already there and reading "flag of Norway, Norway" says it twice.
• Links say where they go. A link is a phrase that names its destination, not "click here".
• The layout fits a phone. Nothing requires a wide screen. Long tables scroll sideways inside their own box rather than pushing the page wider, and the columns that matter least are hidden first on a narrow screen.

Tables, maps and charts

Much of this site is numbers, and numbers are presented in more than one way. Every figure a map colours or a chart draws is also printed somewhere on the same page, in a table or in the text, so a reader who cannot see the drawing loses no information. A map is an illustration of a table, never a substitute for one.

Some tables show extra detail in a tooltip that appears when you hover over a cell. Tooltips of that kind cannot be reached by most screen readers or on a touch screen, so nothing is only in a tooltip: the same fact is stated in the note under the table or in a panel of its own on the country's page. The tooltip is a convenience; the text is the record.

What we know falls short

An honest statement lists its gaps. These are the ones we know about.

• The site has not yet been tested end to end with a screen reader by someone who uses one every day. It has been built to work with one, which is not the same thing. If you use a screen reader and something is confusing, we would like to hear exactly where.
• Some ranking tables are long. A table of two hundred countries is a lot to move through row by row. The finder at the top of those pages lets you jump straight to a country, which is quicker than reading down.
• The maps are drawings. Each has a text description and its data is in a table on the same page, but the map itself cannot be explored by keyboard.

Tell us

If any part of this site is hard to use, please write to the address at the top of this page and tell us which page and what happened. Accessibility problems are treated as corrections: we fix them, and we record the fix on the Corrections page.