Last updated: 17 May 2026
Our commitment
The Life Mapper consortium is committed to making this website and the Knowledge Platform accessible to the widest possible audience, in line with the open-access principles of the EU LIFE Programme and with applicable accessibility law.
This statement applies to the institutional website at life-mapper.eu and to the Knowledge Platform served under /knowledge/.
Standards we target
We aim to conform to:
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA — the international reference standard;
- EN 301 549 — the European harmonised standard for ICT accessibility;
- Directive (EU) 2016/2102 on the accessibility of the websites of public sector bodies, as the project is coordinated by an Italian public research body (CNR-ISMAR);
- Italian Law 4/2004 ("Legge Stanca") and the AgID guidelines that transpose the Directive in Italy.
Conformance status
Current status
Largely conformant with WCAG 2.1 AA.
"Largely conformant" means the site conforms to most of WCAG 2.1 AA, with a small number of named exceptions listed below. Automated testing passes with no detected violations, and a structured manual-equivalent audit of keyboard operability, focus order and visibility, reflow/zoom, reduced-motion and heading/landmark structure was completed on 17 May 2026 across 27 pages of both the institutional site and the Knowledge Platform; all defects it found have been remediated and re-verified. We deliberately do not yet claim full conformance, because two checks can only be done by a person using real assistive technology (see "Known limitations" below) and over-stating conformance would itself be misleading.
What we have tested
On 15 May 2026 we ran an automated accessibility audit using axe-core 4.10.2 (rule sets: wcag2a, wcag2aa, wcag21a, wcag21aa) at a 1280×900 viewport on the following public pages of the institutional site:
- Home, About, News, Deliverables, Contacts
- Privacy policy, Cookie policy, Licence, Terms of use
Result: zero automated violations across all tested pages, including colour-contrast, form labels, landmark structure, link purpose and image alternatives, with the cookie-consent banner open.
Automated tools detect roughly half of all WCAG success criteria. They cannot, for example, judge whether alternative text is meaningful, whether the keyboard focus order is logical, or whether the experience works with a screen reader. Those checks require manual testing.
On 17 May 2026 we therefore ran a structured manual-equivalent audit across 27 pages — 19 public pages of the institutional site (including the five legal pages, the cookie-consent banner, the newsletter call-to-action and the News & Events filters) and 8 pages of the Knowledge Platform (including faceted search, a tutorial, and the subscribe dialog). It covered the criteria automated tools miss: keyboard operability and focus order, focus visibility, heading and landmark structure, reduced-motion, and reflow at 320 CSS px (equivalent to 400% zoom).
Result: the audit found and we fixed a missing "skip to content" link, horizontal scrolling at 400% zoom on a few pages, missing focus indicators on the search controls, and some heading-level skips. After remediation the same audit was re-run and reports zero remaining issues in those areas across all 27 pages, with no keyboard traps and reduced-motion fully respected. The native modal dialog was verified to trap focus, close on Escape and restore focus correctly.
Known limitations and work in progress
We are aware of the following and are actively working on them:
Screen-reader listening pass
Our manual-equivalent audit verifies the structure a screen reader relies on (landmarks, headings, names, roles, focus order) but cannot judge the spoken experience — for example whether dynamic result counts in the Knowledge Platform search are announced. A listening pass with NVDA and VoiceOver by a person is the remaining step before we can claim full conformance.
Video captions and transcript
The project introduction video offered on the Press page needs a human check for captions and a transcript or audio description (WCAG 1.2.2 / 1.2.5). This is tracked and will be addressed with the media owner.
Third-party content
Embedded videos (YouTube/Vimeo) and the external Geoportal hosted by CNR-ISMAR are produced and operated by third parties. We have brought the cookie-consent banner up to AA contrast, but we cannot fully guarantee the accessibility of content hosted on external platforms.
Feedback — tell us about a barrier
If you find a page, document or feature you cannot use, please tell us. Describe the problem, the page address, and the assistive technology or browser you were using, if you can.
We aim to acknowledge accessibility reports within five working days and to agree a remediation timeline with you.
Enforcement procedure
If you are not satisfied with our response, in Italy the Directive (EU) 2016/2102 is enforced by the Agenzia per l'Italia Digitale (AgID). You may submit a complaint to the Difensore civico per il digitale through AgID's channels. For matters concerning the EU LIFE grant more broadly, the European Commission contact is CINEA-LIFE-ENQUIRIES@ec.europa.eu.
Preparation of this statement
This statement was prepared on 15 May 2026 using a self-assessment method (automated testing with axe-core, followed by manual review of the findings). It will be revised when the manual audit is completed and at least once a year. Last review: 17 May 2026.