Accessibility statement
Our conversations are for the whole community. This page explains what we do to make the site usable for everyone, and how to tell us when something gets in your way.
Make the site work for you
Press the accessibility button (the figure icon at the top of every page), or choose Accessibility settings in the menu. You can:
- Make text bigger, up to 150%, without the page breaking or scrolling sideways.
- Turn on high contrast for stronger text, borders and focus outlines.
- Switch to a readable font (Atkinson Hyperlegible, designed for readers with low vision), with no capital-letter headlines or italics. Many people with dyslexia find this easier.
- Add extra spacing between letters, words and lines.
- Underline every link so links don't rely on colour.
- Stop animations, including the scrolling ticker.
Your choices are saved in your browser on this device only. We never see them. If your device is set to reduce motion, the site respects that automatically.
Listening and reading
- Every episode can be played on the site with a player you can use by keyboard and screen reader. It has skip back and forward, playback speeds from 0.75× to 2×, and lock-screen controls.
- Most episodes have chapters, so you can jump straight to the part you want.
- Briefings and show notes have a Listen to this page button that reads the text aloud using your device's voice, highlighting each paragraph as it goes.
- When an episode has a transcript, a Read the transcript link appears on its page.
Using a keyboard or screen reader
- A Skip to content link is the first thing on every page.
- Every control can be reached and used with a keyboard, with a clearly visible focus outline.
- Pages use proper headings, landmarks and labels, and images have text descriptions.
- Text meets WCAG contrast ratios, and buttons and links are at least 44 pixels tall for easy tapping.
How accessible this site is
We aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at level AA. We know of these limitations:
- Most episodes do not have transcripts yet. If you need the content of an episode in text form, email us and we will help.
- Links to Spotify, Apple Podcasts and our survey take you to other services, which have their own accessibility.
- Some older episode artwork contains text within the image. The episode title and description always carry the same information.
Tell us about a problem
If something on this site is hard to use, or you need information in a different format, email info@theblackpaper.co.uk. Tell us the page and what went wrong. We aim to reply within two working days.
This statement was last reviewed in October 2026.
