Making Digital Preservation Accessible to All

At CLOCKSS, our mission has always been clear: to ensure that the world’s scholarly and cultural knowledge remains accessible, reliable, and preserved for the long term.

But preservation alone is not enough.

If knowledge is not accessible to everyone, then it is not truly preserved.

That’s why, over the past six months, we’ve taken significant steps to improve the accessibility of the CLOCKSS website, culminating in the publication of our new accessibility statement.

Why accessibility matters

Accessibility is not just a technical requirement, it’s a fundamental part of equitable access to knowledge.

For many people, navigating the web is not as simple as clicking a link or reading a page. It may involve screen readers, keyboard navigation, speech recognition software, or customised display settings.

Ensuring our website works with these tools means more people can:

• Engage with preserved scholarly content
• Access critical research and information
• Participate in the global knowledge ecosystem

It’s the right thing to do.

It’s also increasingly a legal expectation, with evolving accessibility legislation across the UK, Europe, and the United States. But beyond compliance, this work is deeply human. Many people within the CLOCKSS community live with accessibility challenges every day, and these personal experiences help shape our approach.

Starting with an audit

Our journey began with a comprehensive accessibility audit conducted by All Able Ltd, using a wide range of assistive technologies, devices, and testing tools. This included:

• Screen readers such as VoiceOver, NVDA, and JAWS
• Speech recognition software
• Keyboard-only navigation testing
• Colour contrast and visual accessibility analysis
• Browser and device testing across multiple environments

This combination of manual and automated testing gave us a clear, honest picture of where we stood, and where we needed to improve.

What we’ve improved

Based on the audit findings, we’ve already implemented a number of meaningful enhancements to the CLOCKSS website:

Improved colour contrast

We’ve refined our colour palette to ensure better readability for users with visual impairments.

Stronger keyboard navigation

Focus indicators have been enhanced, making it easier for users navigating without a mouse to understand where they are on a page.

Better table responsiveness

Content now adapts more effectively across screen sizes and zoom levels, improving usability for those who rely on magnification.

Clearer error messaging

We’ve improved how errors are communicated, particularly for screen reader users—making interactions smoother and less frustrating.

Alongside these changes, we’ve worked to simplify and clarify website content, helping ensure it is easier to understand for all users.

Being transparent about the challenges

Accessibility is an ongoing journey, and one that comes with real complexities, particularly in the context of digital preservation.

A significant proportion of CLOCKSS content is archived material, including PDFs and web content created long before modern accessibility standards were established.

This means:

• Some documents lack alternative text or proper structure
• Certain materials rely on colour alone to convey meaning
• Older web content may not respond to modern accessibility tools

It will take a concerted effort to work through these problems, and to ensure all the archived content is accessible. We need and want to be open about this.

While we continue this journey, please speak up if you (or another user) needs access to specific content. We will take steps to provide an accessible version on request.

Our ongoing commitment

Accessibility is not a one-off project, it’s a continuous process of learning, improving, and adapting.

Over the coming months and years, we will:

• Undertake a further accessibility audit in 2026
• Improve the accessibility of our triggered content pages
• Migrate to updated infrastructure (LOCKSS 2.0), enabling better accessibility in future ingest and preservation workflows

This work is iterative, but every improvement brings us closer to a more inclusive digital archive.

A shared responsibility

Accessibility is not just about compliance, or even usability, it’s about inclusion.

At CLOCKSS, we believe that preserving knowledge means making it available to everyone, regardless of how they access it. Because knowledge that cannot be accessed, risks being lost in a different way to content never preserved.