Accessibility

1. Our commitment

Retro Delights is a personal project, not a public-sector site, so this statement isn’t a legal obligation under the UK Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018 — but we publish one anyway because the site is for everyone, and because retro gaming is a community whose access needs are often overlooked (motion sensitivity from CRT effects, reduced colour vision, screen-reader users wanting to read articles, keyboard-only navigation through long pages).

We try to make every part of the site usable without a mouse, without animation, without colour as the only signal, and with a screen reader.

2. What standard we aim for

We aim for WCAG 2.1 Level AA, with a stretch goal of AAA where we can. The site is built with semantic HTML, full keyboard navigation, visible focus states, descriptive link text, alt text on every meaningful image, and reduced-motion respected via the prefers-reduced-motion media query throughout.

Specific things we’ve done:

• Every animation, parallax effect, CRT scanline, and ambient grid honours prefers-reduced-motion: reduce — either freezing or replacing motion with a static equivalent.
• Colour is never the only signal — achievement chips, member badges, and post-type labels all carry text or shape cues alongside colour.
• Modal overlays (the More menu, ritual dialogs) trap focus inside the modal and apply inert to the rest of the page, so Tab and screen-reader navigation stay where the user can act.
• Forms have proper labels, error messages are read out via aria-live, and we don’t hide form-control visited states on mobile.
• The arcade games (Space Invaders, Pac-Man) include full keyboard controls in addition to touch / pointer.

3. Known issues

Honest list of what we know we don’t do well yet:

• The Rewind (/rewind/) is heavily motion-driven by design — it simulates browsing the web through five eras of design history. Reduced-motion is honoured but the experience is degraded for users who rely on it. There’s no audio-described or text-only version yet.
• The Quiz CRT screen (/quiz/) renders question text inside a faux television. Screen readers can read the text fine, but the visual frame around it doesn’t carry semantic role — the experience is essentially just “a question and five answers” for assistive tech, which is correct but loses the playfulness.
• The Manual (/manual/) uses a chromatic-aberration effect on its H1 that may be uncomfortable for some users with visual sensitivities; reduced-motion partially mitigates this. We’re considering an explicit override.
• Some hidden game easter eggs (Konami code, the ghost game in /graveyard/, etc.) are not keyboard-discoverable — they’re intentionally hidden. The mainline content paths are all keyboard-accessible.
• Audio cues (coin-collect, theme-toggle bleeps) play without a visible UI affordance to toggle them globally. Each surface that uses ambient audio has its own toggle, but there isn’t a single site-wide mute.

If you’ve hit something that isn’t on this list, please tell us — see section 5.

4. Tested with

We test against:

• VoiceOver on macOS Safari and iOS Safari.
• Keyboard-only navigation in Chrome and Firefox.
• Browser zoom up to 400%.
• prefers-reduced-motion: reduce in DevTools and at OS level.
• Lighthouse accessibility audits (current score around 95).

We don’t currently test with NVDA / JAWS on Windows or with switch input; if you use either and hit problems, please report them.

5. Reporting a problem

The fastest route is email: help@retrodelights.co.uk. Tell us:

• Which page the problem is on.
• What you were trying to do.
• What happened (or didn’t happen).
• What browser / OS / assistive technology you’re using, if you know.

We’ll respond within five working days. If it’s a fix we can ship quickly, we will; if it’s in the “known issues” list above, we’ll explain where it sits in our queue.