Accessibility Statement

Last updated: April 18, 2026

Our Commitment

OrganicChemistryData.org is committed to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities. We are continually improving the user experience for everyone and applying the relevant accessibility standards to ensure we provide equal access to all users.

Conformance Status

We aim to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA. These guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible for people with disabilities and more user-friendly for everyone.

Measures Taken

We have taken the following measures to ensure accessibility of OrganicChemistryData.org:

• Color contrast — All text meets or exceeds the minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text against their backgrounds.
• Keyboard navigation — All interactive elements (links, buttons, dropdowns, sidebar chapter controls) are accessible via keyboard. A visible focus indicator is displayed on all focusable elements.
• Skip navigation — A "Skip to main content" link is provided at the top of every page, allowing keyboard and screen reader users to bypass repetitive navigation.
• Semantic HTML — Pages use proper heading hierarchy, landmark elements (<nav>, <main>, <footer>), and ARIA labels to communicate page structure to assistive technologies.
• ARIA attributes — Navigation regions are distinguished with aria-label attributes. Interactive controls include appropriate role, aria-expanded, and aria-controls attributes. Dynamic content regions use aria-live to announce updates to screen readers — including AJAX-loaded pages, save confirmations, and 3D model loading states.
• Text resizing — Font sizes use relative units (rem/em) to respect user font preferences. The layout remains usable at 200% browser zoom.
• Responsive design — The site is built with Bootstrap 5 and adapts to screen sizes from mobile phones to large desktop monitors.
• Image alternatives — All ~9,700 chemistry images across the site have contextual alt text auto-generated from structured metadata. Alt text includes the section context, page topic, and figure position (e.g., "Carbonyl Chemistry: Aldol Reactions, figure 3"). For the Grossman PPAP database, alt text includes compound names and structural classifications from the database. For Evans Problem Sets, alt text includes the problem category and topic keywords. Navigation icons include aria-label attributes.
• First-party analytics — We use self-hosted analytics (Matomo) with no third-party tracking cookies, respecting user privacy.

Known Limitations

Despite our efforts, some content may not yet be fully accessible. Known limitations include:

• Chemistry image descriptions — All chemistry images now have contextual alt text describing the section, topic, and figure position. However, chemical structural formulas and reaction diagrams are a visual language: a single reaction scheme may encode information equivalent to an entire research paper. Our alt text identifies what the image is about and where it appears, but cannot fully describe the chemical notation itself. We are monitoring advances in AI-assisted chemical image description for future improvements.
• 3D molecule viewers — Interactive JSmol molecular models provide visual 3D representations of chemical structures. Viewer containers are labeled with molecule names, and control buttons are keyboard-accessible with descriptive text. However, the 3D canvas itself (mouse drag to rotate, scroll to zoom) is inherently visual and cannot convey spatial structure to screen readers. Surrounding text descriptions provide context where available.
• Molecular structure editor — The JSME drawing editor used in practice problems is labeled for screen readers, but its canvas-based drawing interface requires mouse or touch interaction that cannot be fully replicated by keyboard or assistive technologies alone.
• Interactive problem sets — Over 60 legacy practice problems use custom JavaScript with alert() dialogs for answer feedback. While alerts are announced by screen readers, some form inputs in these legacy pages may lack explicit <label> associations. We are progressively improving these pages.
• PDF documents — Some linked PDF resources from the Hans Reich Collection are published academic papers whose accessibility is determined by their original publishers. We link to DOI URLs where available so users can access publisher-provided accessible formats.

Compatibility

This site is designed to be compatible with the following assistive technologies:

• Screen readers (NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver)
• Screen magnification software
• Speech recognition software
• Keyboard-only navigation

The site is best experienced with current versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge.

Feedback

We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of OrganicChemistryData.org. If you encounter accessibility barriers or have suggestions for improvement, please contact us:

• Contact form: organicdivision.org/contact

We aim to respond to accessibility feedback within 5 business days.

Technical Specifications

Accessibility of OrganicChemistryData.org relies on the following technologies:

• HTML5
• WAI-ARIA
• CSS3
• JavaScript
• Bootstrap 5.3

These technologies are relied upon for conformance with the accessibility standards used.