What is in the downloadable checklist?

Five pages. A cover sheet explaining how to use it and what our A1, A2 and A3 grades mean, a venue sheet covering entry, steps and gradients, the accessible toilet and seating, a bedroom sheet for hotels, and a verdict sheet where you record the grade you would give the place and the one obstacle worth warning a friend about. Print one copy per place.

Why does the checklist ask for millimetres?

Because wide, small step and mostly flat are not measurements, and every venue means something different by them. A number can be planned against from four thousand miles away. In four years of asking, not one Irish hotel has objected to somebody producing a tape measure.

Can I send you a completed sheet?

Yes, and we would like you to. Corrections are logged and published with the date, and we credit the person who sent them unless they ask us not to. Email hello@theirelandedit.com with the venue, the field, what you found and when you were there.

Which standard do you work to?

We build to WCAG 2.2 AA and test the paths that matter most to this audience first: keyboard navigation, focus order, heading structure and contrast. Where we fall short we would rather hear about it than not. Tell us the page and what happened.

The Ireland Edit

Accessibility

We write a great deal about doors, thresholds and gradients. It would be indefensible to publish that research on a site you could not use.

This page does two things. It sets out how the site behaves under a keyboard and a screen reader, so nothing is a surprise. And it hands you the sheet we use ourselves when we audit a hotel, a restaurant or a trail, so you can hold a venue to the same standard we do.

The audit checklist

One page per place. Ask the same four questions every time.

Five printable pages: how to use it and what A1, A2 and A3 mean, a venue sheet, a hotel bedroom sheet, and a verdict sheet. Fill it in before you book, then correct it when you arrive. What you end up with is the thing nobody sells, which is a list you can trust, in your own handwriting.

Download the access checklist (PDF, 5 pages)

Keyboard navigation

Everything on this site can be reached without a mouse

A skip link is the first thing that receives focus on every page, so you can step past the navigation straight into the article. Focus never disappears and never gets trapped.

Keyboard shortcuts and what they do on The Ireland Edit
Key	What it does
Tab / Shift + Tab	Move forward and back through links, buttons and form fields. The focused item always carries a visible ring.
Enter	Follow a link, or activate the focused button.
Space	Activate a button, open or close an accordion, and scroll the page when nothing is focused.
Arrow Up / Arrow Down	Move between questions inside a Common Questions accordion.
Home / End	Jump to the first or last question inside an accordion.
Escape	Close an open overlay, including search, and return focus to whatever opened it.
Command + K, or forward slash	Open search from anywhere on the site.

What we hold ourselves to

Six rules, applied to every page we publish

Every question is a heading

Questions inside our accordions are real level three headings, so a screen reader can list them and jump straight to the one that matters rather than reading the page top to bottom.

Links say where they go

No bare 'read more'. Link text carries the destination, because a screen reader user often hears links out of context, as a list.

Grades are never colour alone

A1, A2 and A3 are written as text wherever they appear. The colour is decoration. Remove it and the page still says the same thing.

Measurements, not adjectives

Widths in millimetres, gradients as a ratio, step heights counted. Wide and flat are opinions. A door is 800 mm or it is not.

Focus is always visible

We never remove the focus ring. If you are navigating by keyboard you can always see where you are.

Nothing depends on hover

Anything that appears on hover is also reachable by keyboard and by touch, because a hover state does not exist on a phone or under a head pointer.

Before you print it

Common questions

The research the checklist came from

Accessible Ireland is our wheelchair edition: a graded path system, a seven day route through Dublin, Kilkenny, Cork and Killarney, and four practical guides on transport, hotels, dining and attractions.

Read Accessible Ireland: the wheelchair edition Read the seven day wheelchair route

If something on this site does not work for you, tell us the page and what happened. Email hello@theirelandedit.com. We log it, fix it, and publish the correction with the date.