Accessibility

Who this is for

Then & Theory is for anyone curious about the past, and a lot of those people are disabled. We built this site so you can read every case, watch every film and buy an edition with a keyboard, a screen reader, a switch, voice control, a magnifier, captions or a contrast theme.

There is no accessibility overlay here: no widget, no toolbar, no script that rewrites the page after it loads. Overlays tend to fight the tools you already use. The work is in the site itself, in its markup, colours, controls and films, and we checked it page by page.

The standard

We build and test to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA. It’s the international standard for accessible websites, and the one the U.S. Department of Justice and the courts look to under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Measured against it, the site partially conforms: nearly all of it meets level AA, and the exceptions are listed below. Nobody certifies websites as “ADA compliant”, so you won’t find a certification badge here. This page is our own account of what we did and what’s left.

What we tested, on 29 and 30 September 2026

• Every page, at desktop and phone widths, with animation on and with reduced motion, through the axe-core engine’s WCAG 2.2 A and AA checks. That includes the menu and floor plan, the cart, quick shop, “Help me choose”, the timeline cards and the image viewers while they’re open.
• The keyboard alone, on every page: a skip link, a visible focus ring on everything you can reach, a sensible order, no traps, and dialogs that keep focus inside, close with Escape and return you to where you were. The ring has two tones, dark on a light edge or light on a dark one, so it shows on light pages, dark pages and photographs alike.
• What a screen reader gets: headings, landmarks, labels, states and announcements, read from the browser’s accessibility tree, which is what NVDA, JAWS, Narrator and VoiceOver read from.
• Zoom to 200% and 400%, and a screen 320 pixels wide: text reflows, nothing is cut off, and the page never scrolls sideways.
• Wider spacing between letters, words and lines, as many readers with dyslexia set it.
• Windows contrast themes: chosen sizes, pressed buttons and the current page stay visible.
• Colour contrast, including text laid over films and photographs.
• Touch targets, flashing, and everything that moves.

We haven’t yet had disabled testers work through the site with their own set-ups. We’d like to, and we’ll add what they find here.

What that means when you visit

• Skip to content is the first thing Tab reaches on every page.
• Nothing moves on its own for more than five seconds without a way to stop it. Films, loops, embers and snow, the torch’s flicker and the turning mammoth all stop with the Pause motion button in the header, beside Map, on every page where something moves. It stays paused as you go from page to page until you press Play motion. The shop’s film, clips and plates have their own Pause buttons.
• If your device asks for reduced motion, the site starts still: no smooth scrolling, no reveals, nothing turning or drifting on its own, and stills in place of the shop’s film.
• Films: every narrated film has captions, and its full script is printed beside it. The flashes of light in the shop’s film come about once every seven seconds, far below the limit of three a second.
• Shopping: sizes and colours are ordinary radio buttons, a sold-out size says so, and the cart announces what changed. In the customiser you can place the print with the arrow keys or the sliders instead of dragging it.
• Hands-on exhibits: the timeline, the 3D scans, the X-ray and the other interactive pieces work from the keyboard, and everything on the timeline is also listed as plain text under it.
• Pictures: every plate, photograph and still has a written description. Purely decorative images are hidden from screen readers.

Where it still falls short

• 3D scans. You can turn each object with buttons or keys, and a screen reader gets a written description of it, but not the shape of the model itself.
• Audio description. The narration describes what’s on screen and the script sits beside each film, but there is no separate audio-described version. Scenes marked as generated reconstructions are artwork, not footage.
• The timeline. In its most crowded views, a few events that fold to small dots can sit closer together than 24 pixels. Zooming in separates them, and the list under the timeline carries every item as ordinary text and links.
• Checkout happens on Fourthwall’s pages, which we don’t control. If anything there stops you, email us and we’ll take the order with you directly.
• Links to other sites, such as museums, journals and Instagram, lead to pages we don’t control.

Tell us what isn’t working

Email [email protected]. Tell us the page, what happened and, if you’re happy to, what you use: a screen reader, magnifier, keyboard, switch or voice control. We aim to reply within two working days. We’ll fix it, or find you another way to get what you came for, whether that’s reading a case or placing an order.

We review this page whenever the site changes substantially, and at least once a year. Last reviewed 30 September 2026.