Cultural Notice
Two commitments stand behind everything published here. The first concerns cultural protocol. The second concerns access, and whether everyone can read what I write.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers should take care. The pages here name, picture, and quote people who have died.
Some of them are my own family. Some are leaders whose names came close to being lost, among them Dundalli, hanged at the old Brisbane gaol on 5 January 1855. Some appear in archival photographs held by public collections, and their names were never written down at all.
Truth-telling means saying who these people were. A word of warning at the front respects the protocol without silencing the story.
Where the images come from
Photographs of living people appear here because those people agreed to appear here. Archival photographs come from named public collections, and each one is credited to the collection that holds it. Nothing has been lifted from social media or scraped from elsewhere on the web.
The full record sits on the Image Credits page, kept in one place so it stays accurate. That page also sets out what you may and may not do with the photographs.
If something needs attention
Protocols differ between families and between communities, and I will not always know what a particular family expects. If a name or an image here troubles you, write to me at connect@unclebill.online, or use the form at the foot of the Image Credits page.
If a family asks me to remove an image of a relative who has died, I remove it first and we talk afterwards. I ask for no reason and I require no particular form of words. The same holds for anybody living who would rather not appear.
The protocols I follow
- I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the Country where the work happens, and I name them.
- I ask a guest before I publish their story or their photograph, and I ask again when the use changes.
- I address Elders as Aunty and Uncle where that standing is theirs in their own community.
- Cultural knowledge shared with me remains the property of the person and the community who shared it, and I hold it on those terms.
- Sovereignty was never ceded, and nothing published here suggests otherwise.
Accessibility
A truth-telling site that some people cannot read has failed at the first step. The standard I work to is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, version 2.1, Level AA.
Where things stood on 17 August 2026, measured across twenty-four pages:
- Images
- 216 photographs, every one of them with a written description for people using a screen reader. None missing.
- Contrast
- Body text against the paper background measures 15.7 to 1, and links measure 7.2 to 1. The standard asks for 4.5 to 1.
- Structure
- One first-level heading and one main region on every page, so a screen reader can move through the site by structure rather than by guesswork.
- Keyboard
- A skip link at the top of every page jumps past the navigation to the start of the page content, so a keyboard user reaches the writing in one keystroke instead of ten.
- Text size
- Text resizes with the browser, and the layout reflows rather than clipping.
Two items remain on the list. Two long pages, Keep Walking and Leading Lights, step from a first-level heading to a third-level heading and skip the level between, which makes their outline harder to follow by screen reader. Automated checking also finds what a person using the site would miss, so the next step is a session with a screen reader rather than another audit tool.
If something here stops you, tell me what happened and what you were using, and write to me at connect@unclebill.online. I will either fix it or tell you when I can.
This notice will be revised whenever the answers change, and the date at the head of the page will say when.