Accessibility

rubelmollik.com is designed and built to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at Level AA.

I describe this as designed and built to conform rather than claiming the site is perfectly accessible. No site is finished, conformance is measured against the pages as they stand today, and every new post is a new chance to introduce a problem. The known gaps are listed further down, and the statement is revised whenever the site changes.

Structure and semantics

• Every page uses native HTML landmarks such as banner, navigation, main, and contentinfo, so screen reader users can jump between regions.
• Headings are properly nested, one h1 per page, with no levels skipped. The heading outline alone is enough to understand a page.
• Lists of publications and posts are marked up as lists, so assistive technology announces how many items there are.
• The page language is declared as English on the html element.

Keyboard and focus

• Everything on this site is reachable and operable with a keyboard alone. The home-page guide uses native buttons, links, a form, and a text field; there are no mouse-only controls.
• A skip to main content link is the first thing you reach on every page.
• Focus is always visible: a 3 pixel solid outline, offset from the element so it is never clipped, meeting the 3:1 contrast required for non-text indicators.
• Focus order follows the reading order of the page. Nothing traps focus.
• Interactive targets are at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, per WCAG 2.2 success criterion 2.5.8.

Colour and contrast

• Text and background pairs are selected to meet the WCAG Level AA contrast thresholds: 4.5:1 for regular text and 3:1 for large text. Focus indicators are also designed for visible contrast.
• No information is carried by colour alone. Publication status reads “Under review” in words; the current page in the navigation is marked by weight and an underline, not just a hue.
• Long-form pages include light and dark palettes that follow the operating-system theme. The home page uses a deliberate light-and-dark narrative composition in either theme.
• A higher-contrast palette is applied automatically if your system requests one.

Text and reading

• Body text is set in Atkinson Hyperlegible, drawn by the Braille Institute with deliberately disambiguated letterforms for low-vision readers. Headings use Atkinson Hyperlegible on the journey-style home page and Newsreader on long-form pages; JetBrains Mono marks navigation, status, and metadata.
• No font size is set in fixed pixels on the root element, so changing the text size in your browser works as expected. The layout holds at 200% zoom and reflows to a single column at 400%.
• Line length is capped at roughly 70 characters, and line height is 1.65.
• Link text describes its destination on its own. There is no “click here”.
• Links never open in a new window, so the back button always works.

Motion and images

• Motion is limited to short section-arrival effects, small lifts on hover, and a scroll progress rail. If your system asks for reduced motion, arrival effects are removed and all content is shown immediately.
• Nothing flashes, blinks, loops, or auto-plays, and no animation lasts longer than a second.
• Scroll effects never create an invisible initial state, so tabbing ahead of the scroll position cannot land on hidden content.
• Every meaningful image has alternative text. Decorative marks are drawn in CSS and hidden from assistive technology.

Robustness

• Every piece of content works with JavaScript switched off. One small script adds optional extras such as a scroll progress rail, gentle chapter-arrival effects, keyboard chapter shortcuts, the focus announcer described below, and the question guide on the home page. None of it hides the page content. With scripting disabled, the guide is replaced by a direct contact note.
• Pages are plain, valid, static HTML and remain readable with stylesheets disabled.
• No frameworks, no third-party scripts, no analytics, no cookies. Nothing here tracks you.
• The site is usable over a slow connection; the heaviest page is well under 300 KB.

With a screen reader, the landmark list gives you banner (site name and navigation), main (the page content), and contentinfo (the footer). The main navigation is labelled “Main”. Pulling up the heading list is the fastest way to get an overview of any page here.

The focus announcer

Start pressing Tab and a small bar appears at the bottom of the window showing the focused control’s role and name. It is there because most sighted visitors have never seen the version of a page that a blind visitor navigates, and a description is far less convincing than watching it.

If you use a screen reader yourself, the bar is marked aria-hidden and will never be read to you, so it cannot double up on what your software already says. It appears only after you press Tab, never for pointer users, and clears automatically. It is an approximation for illustration, not a substitute for testing with real assistive technology.

• Manual keyboard-only traversal of every page, checking focus visibility and order.
• Contrast ratios computed numerically for every foreground and background pair, in both the light and dark palettes.
• Structural review of landmarks, heading outline, list semantics, and alternative text.
• Layout checked at 200% and 400% zoom, and with stylesheets disabled.

The site is built to work with JAWS, NVDA, and VoiceOver, and uses only native HTML elements that these screen readers have supported for years. If you use one of them and something does not announce the way you expect, I would like to know.

• The CV PDF. The downloadable PDF is generated from a LaTeX template and its tagging may be incomplete. This is exactly why the CV also exists as a web page, which is the version I recommend.
• Web fonts. Typefaces load from Google Fonts. If that request fails or is blocked, the site falls back to your system fonts and remains fully readable, but the intended letterforms will not be the ones you see.
• Links to other sites. Publisher pages, arXiv, GitHub, and Google Scholar are outside my control and I cannot make any promise about their accessibility.
• No theme switch. The site follows your operating system's light or dark setting and does not yet offer its own control to override it.

If any part of this site gets in your way, please email me at RubelHassanMollik@my.unt.edu. It helps if you can tell me the page, what you were trying to do, and which browser and assistive technology you were using. Send it even if you cannot, because a vague report is far better than none.

I aim to reply within five working days, and accessibility issues on this site are the first thing I fix.

Statement last reviewed 20 August 2026