Sustainability & Accessibility

  1. Our Commitment

    At Glass Castle, we believe that a well-designed website should be fast, easy to use, and mindful of its environmental impact. This statement outlines the steps we've taken - and continue to take, to make our site lighter, more accessible, and more sustainable.

    A website's carbon footprint is shaped by its page weight, the traffic it receives, how and where it's hosted, the networks it travels through, and the devices used to access it. We've considered each of these factors throughout the design and development of this site.

  2. Sustainable Hosting & Infrastructure

    • Renewable-powered hosting: Our site is hosted with Krystal.io, a UK-based, Green Web certified provider with a strong focus on renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure. Both our staging and live environments run on this green infrastructure.
    • Consolidated services: We use Krystal for hosting, email delivery (SMTP), and file/media storage, minimising the number of third-party providers our site depends on and keeping our digital footprint lean.
    • Efficient image delivery: We use ImgIX to automatically resize, compress, and convert images into modern formats, so every visitor receives an image sized appropriately for their device - nothing larger than necessary.
    • Caching and CDN delivery: Static content and assets are served through caching and a content delivery network, reducing repeated processing and unnecessary data transfer.

  3. Designing for a Lighter Web

    We've followed a set of low-carbon design principles throughout this project, including:

    • Minimising data capture - keeping forms and tracking to only what's genuinely needed, since every piece of data stored and processed has an energy cost.
    • Prioritising clear, intuitive navigation so people can find what they need quickly, without unnecessary page loads.
    • Using “click-to-load” video embeds: rather than loading a full third-party video player automatically, we display a static preview image, and the real player only loads when a visitor chooses to press play.
    • Keeping our code clean and minimal - reducing the number of JavaScript files, stylesheets, fonts, and templates in use.
    • Using server-side analytics tagging rather than heavier client-side scripts.
    • Targeting a total page weight of under 2MB, particularly on our homepage.
    • Compressing and optimising all media and downloadable documents before they're published.

    Where sustainability goals and user experience are in tension, we aim to strike a thoughtful balance - but we test every page against accessibility and carbon-impact checkers to keep both front of mind.

  4. Accessibility & Respectful Design

    We've also designed the site around a set of accessibility and user-respect principles:

    • Attention and consent first: Pop-ups, modals, and other interruptive elements only appear when a visitor chooses to open them - never automatically.
    • No dark patterns: We avoid design techniques intended to keep people engaged longer than they need to be, such as infinite scroll or disabled browser navigation.
    • Purposeful media: Media is included only where it genuinely supports understanding, and is kept to a minimum, compressed, and served in efficient, widely supported formats.
    • No autoplay: Audio and video never play automatically - visitors are always in control of playback.
    • Considered animation: Animation is used sparingly, and only where it aids understanding rather than distracts.
    • Accessible documents: Downloadable files are optimised, compressed, and provided in accessible formats.

  5. Technical & Search Practices

    To keep the site efficient and easy to find, we ensure:
     

    • robots.txt, sitemap.xml, and a favicon.ico are published by default, helping search engines - including AI crawlers such as GPTBot and CCBot - understand and index the site appropriately.
    • Structured data (schema.org via JSON-LD) is used so content can be consistently interpreted by both people and machines.
    • Broken links are updated, and redirects are used only where they genuinely benefit users or preserve SEO value.
    • Unwanted bots and scrapers are restricted through security controls, while legitimate users, search engines, and helpful crawlers retain full access.
    • Every image includes alternative text, and every page includes considered SEO metadata (headings, descriptions, and image data), supporting both accessibility and discoverability across search results.

  6. Looking Ahead

    We're continuing to explore privacy-first analytics alternatives - such as Fathom Analytics or Pirsch - as a more sustainable option to conventional tracking tools, and we welcome feedback from visitors on how we can make this site more accessible and lower-impact over time.

    This statement reflects the technical and design decisions built into this website by Glass Castle and its development partners, and will be reviewed periodically as our practices evolve.