JSTOR is committed to ensuring digital accessibility for persons with disabilities. We apply WCAG and Section 508 standards to improve the user experience for everyone.
The latest JSTOR Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) (PDF) and Forum ACR demonstrates the extent of compliance with both Section 508 and WCAG standards and guidelines based on the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT). The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) define requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for persons with disabilities at three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. The target for JSTOR is WCAG 2.2 Level AA.
Measures to support accessibility
The website is accessible to users with disabilities, including persons using a keyboard and those with visual and cognitive impairments.
Measures have been taken to ensure that you are able to:
- Resize text, adjust text spacing, and change fonts by adjusting browser settings (for example, this can be done in the appearance settings in Chrome or in Firefox’s preferences).
- Have sufficient color contrast on all areas of the site. You can change colors by adjusting the browser settings. Typically this can be done in the appearance settings, such as the font and color preferences in Firefox. There are also plug-ins that work with certain browsers, such as Change Colors on Google Chrome.
- Navigate the website using just a keyboard and access all interactive elements.
- Skip directly to main content and skip long lists of links.
- Zoom in at least 200%. Text will reflow so it can be presented without loss of information or functionality.
- Use the content in your desired orientation. Both landscape and portrait layouts will work responsively with the content.
- Listen and use the website with a screen reader (ex. NVDA, VoiceOver, JAWS). All functionality within the JSTOR platform is accessible to these technologies.
- Understand page hierarchy due to proper heading structure and the reading order being set correctly.
- Utilize text-to-speech tools on the platform and with PDF content. There are many browser plug-in tools (such as Natural Reader for Chrome) that work on JSTOR. Some technology has text-to-speech software built into the device’s accessibility settings.
- Access alternative text for images that are a part of the interface. Content contributed directly by JSTOR participating institutions and users (referred to as Community Collections) will display any supplied alternative text and descriptions of content.
- Understand link destinations without surrounding context.
We regularly use automated checks and manual audits to evaluate and measure the accessibility of the site.
Please note that we no longer support Internet Explorer 11. Some users may experience accessibility issues when using this browser. You can find a full list of compatible browsers on the JSTOR Support browser compatibility page.
Contact us
We have a single point of contact on our platform, which helps us to increase speed and turnaround time with support requests from all our users. Accessibility tickets are prioritized in this system and put to the top of our workflow.
Please contact us if you need content in an alternative format, find an accessibility issue with the website, or need general assistance. You can do this via phone, chat, or email.
Phone: (888) 388-3574
Email: support@jstor.org
Chat: JSTOR Support homepage
Twitter: @JSTORSupport
Hours: Monday-Friday, 8:30 AM-5:00 PM EDT
For more information about accessible content on JSTOR, including how to report issues with OCR or PDF tagging, please see our Support for Content Accessibility page.
Last updated March 20, 2024