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Portland Press Journals

Summary

Accessiblü conducted a high-level accessibility evaluation of the Portland Press platform, a scholarly publishing platform operated by Portland Press Ltd. on behalf of the Biochemical Society, to assess its usability for individuals with disabilities. Portland Press publishes journals including the Biochemical Journal, The Biochemist, and several other life sciences titles. The review was conducted using the JAWS 2025 screen reader on Windows 11 with Google Chrome, keyboard-only navigation, and manual inspection, supplemented by automated scanning with axe DevTools, for conformance with select WCAG 2.2 AA success criteria. 

Portland Press has deployed an accessibility overlay, which was present on all tested pages but was not activated during this evaluation. Accessibility overlays are third-party tools that attempt to apply automated fixes to a website's accessibility issues at the browser level. While overlays are sometimes marketed as a path to WCAG conformance, the accessibility community has extensively documented that they do not reliably improve accessibility and frequently introduce new barriers for users of assistive technology. Screen readers in particular can be disrupted by overlay scripts that inject dynamic content, alter focus behavior, or modify the DOM in ways that conflict with how AT software reads a page. For this reason, Accessiblü's standard practice is to evaluate platforms in their native state without overlay activation. The findings in this report reflect the underlying accessibility of the Portland Press platform itself. 

Key Findings

Across all four pages, the most significant opportunity areas center on three recurring patterns. First, the platform’s primary color for interactive elements, links, and action buttons (#008ab7, a medium teal/blue) does not meet the 4.5:1 contrast ratio required for normal text against white backgrounds, yielding approximately 3.94:1. This affects search buttons, article action links, “Find Out More” calls to action, and content links throughout the platform. Second, heading hierarchies are inconsistent across the home page and article pages, leaving screen reader users without a reliable page structure to navigate by. Third, several interactive controls, including the filter toggle on the Advanced Search page, the article toolbar icons, and some navigational links, are either coded with incorrect roles or lack the programmatic state information assistive technologies need. 

These issues, while addressable, do create meaningful friction for users with disabilities. A researcher using JAWS to locate and access a specific article would encounter multiple barriers in the search and retrieval workflow, from misidentified control roles on the Advanced Search page to unlabeled graphic links and incorrect heading structure on the article page itself. Resolving the core contrast, heading, and role/name patterns would improve accessibility across the entire platform rather than requiring page-by-page fixes. 

Top 3 Issues

  1. Insufficient Color Contrast on Interactive Elements and Links

    • Brief Description: The platform’s primary action color (#008ab7 on white #ffffff) produces a contrast ratio of approximately 3.94:1 for most links, buttons, and action elements. The minimum required ratio for normal text is 4.5:1. This affects Search buttons across all pages, article action links (Abstract, View Article, PDF), “Find Out More” links on the home page, and the Bluesky follow link in the footer (#cf4520 on #f5f5f5 = 4.25:1). The PDF button label on the article page adds a second contrast issue, with white text on the same #008ab7 background.
    • Impact: Users with low vision who rely on color differentiation may have difficulty reading these elements. The issue extends beyond aesthetics; interactive elements that cannot be visually distinguished create barriers for low-vision users who do not use a screen reader.
    • WCAG Success: 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) (AA)

  2. Missing H1 and Heading Hierarchy Inconsistencies

    • Brief Description: The Portland Press home page contains no H1 heading. The first heading encountered by JAWS is “Your Science, Your Publisher” at Heading Level 2, followed by additional H2 and H3 headings, but no H1 to anchor the page for screen reader users. On the article page, the article title is correctly coded as H1, but the sidebar headings (“Cited By” and “Get Email Alerts”) are coded as H3, skipping H2 entirely.
    • Impact: Screen reader users who navigate by heading to orient themselves to a page will find no H1 on the home page, making it difficult to establish page context or confirm they have landed in the right place. On the article page, the skipped heading level creates structural confusion for users navigating by heading level.
    • WCAG Success: 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A)

  3. Filter and Interactive Controls Coded with Incorrect Roles

    • Brief Description: Across the search results and advanced search pages, several interactive controls are assigned incorrect semantic roles. The Filter expand/collapse toggle on the Advanced Search page is coded as an anchor link rather than a button and does not announce its expanded or collapsed state. On the search results page, the date range “Apply” control is similarly announced as a link. Radio buttons for search scope (“All” and “Exact Phrase”) are announced as checkboxes rather than radio buttons.
    • Impact: Screen reader users who navigate by element type (buttons, links, form controls) receive incorrect information about what these controls do and how to interact with them. Users who expect a button to behave like a button, or a radio group to
      behave like a radio group, may not discover the correct interaction pattern or may activate the wrong control.
    • WCAG Success: 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value (A)

Disabilities Impacted

Blind and Low-Vision Users

  • Issues: Screen reader users encounter a missing H1 on the home page, causing disorientation on page load. The phantom “Skip nav destination” link, which is accessible by arrow key but not Tab, adds noise to the reading flow. A WeChat QR code image in the home page footer is hidden from assistive technology entirely, leaving screen reader users without access to this contact channel. On the article page, multiple navigation and action links lack accessible names (issue cover link, All Issues link, share icon graphic, copyright icon). The article’s DOI link uses the raw URL as its accessible name rather than a meaningful label.
  • Impact: Low-vision users who cannot meet the platform’s primary blue contrast ratio may struggle to identify actionable elements. Blind users face meaningful barriers on the article page, where several links in the action toolbar and sidebar are effectively unlabeled, requiring trial-and-error navigation.
     

Users with Motor Disabilities

  • Issues: Keyboard-only users on the Advanced Search page find that the term search and author search input fields are only reachable via Tab, not by arrow key or scroll navigation. The citation combo box grouping announces all citation fields (journal, year, volume, issue, first page) as a single contiguous block when using arrow keys, making individual fields difficult to target without Tab navigation.
  • Impact: Users with motor disabilities who rely on keyboard navigation may find the Advanced Search page’s citation search form particularly time-consuming, as Tab-only field access increases the number of keystrokes required to navigate between form sections.

Neurodiverse Users

  • Issues: The absence of a page-level H1 on the home page, combined with heading levels that begin at H2, reduces the clarity of page structure for users who rely on predictable document hierarchy. On the search results page, the date picker presents all dates as “selected” regardless of actual selection state, providing no reliable feedback for users who depend on accurate status information to make decisions.
  • Impact: Cognitive accessibility benefits significantly from consistent, predictable structure. Resolving heading hierarchy and providing accurate status information for interactive controls would reduce cognitive load for users with attention or processing differences.
     

Users with Hearing Impairments

  • Issues: No specific audio content barriers were identified on the tested pages. Portland Press does not embed auto-playing video or audio on the home or search pages. The YouTube video embedded on the home page follows standard YouTube embed practices and is announced appropriately.
  • Impact: No significant barriers were identified for users with hearing impairments on the evaluated pages.