Access for every cat person.

FatCatCatalog should be usable by everyone — members, browsers, and the humans behind substantial cats alike. We aim to build the catalog so it works with keyboards, screen readers, magnification, and reduced-motion preferences, and to treat accessibility as part of “done” rather than a cleanup pass. This statement describes what is true today; we update it as the site changes.

We aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, Level AA. The site is currently partially conformant: most content and interactions meet the guidelines, and the gaps we know about are listed under Known limitations. This is an honest self-assessment, not a certified audit.

• Keyboard access — every page has a “Skip to content” link as its first tab stop, a single main landmark, and visible focus outlines on links, buttons, and form fields.
• Mobile menu — opening the drawer moves focus into it, traps Tab while open, closes on Escape, and returns focus to the menu button.
• Live updates — async regions announce themselves politely: the ticker's resolved items are read once via a live region, rather than read off a scrolling track.
• Forms — inline validation messages are associated with their inputs (aria-describedby, aria-invalid) and announced with role="alert", so errors are never color-only.
• Motion — all animations and transitions (including the marquee) stop when your system requests reduced motion.
• Contrast — text colors come from a shared token palette checked against WCAG AA for their rendered sizes.
• Images — cat photos carry descriptive alt text; illustrated avatars are labelled graphics.

We know about the following gaps and are working on them:

• Light mode first — the site is currently designed for light mode only; a full dark theme that keeps contrast guarantees is planned.
• Placeholder artwork — some profiles still show striped placeholder art pending real photos; these are labelled but not informative.
• Third-party embeds — our analytics script is cookieless and stores no IP addresses, but we do not control its assistive-tech behavior.

If you hit a barrier anywhere on fatcatcatalog.com — a control you can't reach by keyboard, a label a screen reader reads badly, anything — email accessibility@fatcatcatalog.com and tell us what page you were on and what assistive technology you use. We take reports seriously and aim to respond within five business days.