Accessibility

Good design works for everyone. That belief runs through the Output Design Award, and it shapes this website as well: every visitor should be able to read about the award, explore the winning works and find out how to take part, whether they browse with a mouse, a keyboard, a screen reader, voice control or screen magnification.

The standard we work to

We aim for level AA of WCAG 2.2, version 2.2 of the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The page templates of this site were built and tested against that level. Where parts of the site do not reach it yet, or lie outside our control, they are named below under “Limits we know about”.

How the site supports access

  • Keyboard. Every link, button and control can be reached and used with the keyboard. The first stop when you press Tab is a link that jumps past the menu to the page content. On the pages of each award year, the arrow keys, Home and End move along the row of works, and nothing has to be dragged.
  • Visible focus. Whatever has keyboard focus is outlined by a ring that stands out from its background: dark on light areas, light on dark ones. The header that stays at the top of the screen never covers it.
  • Motion you control. The water that moves across the site can be stopped at any time with the “Stop the waves” button in the header, which you reach with Tab before the main content. The water, the waterlines and the floating elements then stand still, and the button changes to “Start the waves”. Your choice is remembered on this device for the whole site. If your device is set to reduce motion, the water starts out still and moves only if you start it.
  • Contrast and colour. Text meets the WCAG AA contrast ratios and is never placed over the moving water. Buttons, form fields and focus rings meet the contrast ratio for non-text elements. Colour is never the only signal: the current page and the award level of each work are also shown by text or shape.
  • Images. Images that convey content, such as winning works, juror portraits and article pictures, have text alternatives. The water drawings, the buoys and other decoration are hidden from screen readers, and reflections in the water exist only in the drawing, so no text is read out twice.
  • Lower-case lettering. Menus, headings and buttons appear in lower case as part of our visual identity. Only the display changes: the text itself keeps its capital letters, so screen readers, search engines and translation tools read the words as written.
  • Structure. Each page has a single main heading, headings in a logical order, and named regions for the header, the menus, the main content and the footer.

How we test

In October 2026 we tested every type of page on the site at a desktop width and a phone width: automatically with axe-core against the WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 rules at levels A and AA; by moving through each page with the keyboard alone; with the reduced motion setting switched on; and by reviewing the accessibility tree, the information that screen readers announce, for headings, landmarks and the names of controls.

Limits we know about

  • Entering the award. Entries are made on a separate entry website, linked from the Submit page and opened in a new tab. That website is run independently of this one, and this statement does not cover it.
  • Articles from earlier years. The news and SDGs articles published since 2022 were moved to this site with their text unchanged. Some of them point to reports and other documents, often PDF files, that other organizations publish; we cannot make those documents accessible. If an article itself causes you a problem, tell us and we will correct it.
  • Other websites. Links from this site lead to websites we do not run, such as university websites in the Ranking and the websites of jurors. Their owners are responsible for how accessible they are.

Report a barrier

If anything on this site is hard or impossible for you to use, please email us at info@inputoutput.de. It helps to know which page you were on, what you were trying to do, and which browser or assistive technology you were using. You can also ask at the same address for any information on the site in a form that works for you.

About this statement

This statement was last reviewed on 28 October 2026. It is based on the tests made in October 2026. We review it whenever a change to the site affects accessibility.