An accessible Jekyll theme for research websites.

Important

This repository is under construction and active development.

Axya is a Jekyll theme that helps researchers quickly publish accessible, clean, and modern companion sites for their papers, posters, and projects. Most Jekyll themes overlook accessibility—this one aims for:

• WCAG 2.1 AAA compliance
• Screen‑reader‑friendly semantics
• Full keyboard navigation support
• High color contrast and readability
• Minimal cognitive load
• Solid mobile navigation experience

Live Example: Systems for Scaling Accessibility Efforts in Large Computing Courses

Features

• Accessible layouts for research websites
• Homepage with hero section + automatic page grid
• Clean typography
• Configurable metadata:
  • Conference name & year
  • Authors
  • Affiliation details
  • Research links (PDF, DOI, supplemental, etc.)
• Fully responsive

Installation

1. Using as a Remote Theme (GitHub Pages compatible)

First, follow the usage for jekyll-remote-theme.

Then, add this to your _config.yml:

remote_theme: ritesh-kanchi/axya@main

Then run:

bundle exec jekyll serve

Warning

jekyll-remote-theme has its own problems, and may not work out of the box. Including the following gems may help:

gem 'csv'
gem 'base64'
gem 'bigdecimal'

gem "jekyll", "4.3.3"
gem "jekyll-remote-theme", "~> 0.4.3"

2. Installing the Gem Locally

Build the gem:

gem build axya.gemspec

Install it:

gem install ./axya-0.0.1.gem

Then in your site’s Gemfile:

gem "axya"

And in _config.yml:

theme: axya

Usage

The theme currently provides these layouts:

• base — base layout with header and footer
• home — homepage with hero section and automatic page grid
• page — simple general‑purpose page layout

More layouts will come as the theme evolves.

Configuration

Add the following fields to your _config.yml to customize your research site:

title: Research Title
description: An accompanying website for a research paper.

conference:
  name: Conference Name
  year: 2026

content:
  footer: Your Name
  affiliation:
    name: University Name
    department: Department Name
    url: https://example.com
  type: Paper
  authors:
    - name: First Author
      url: https://example.com
    - name: Second Author
      url: https://example.com
  links:
    - label: Paper Link
      url: https://doi.org/10.1145/XXXXXXX.XXXXXXX

Add as many authors or links as needed.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/ritesh-kanchi/axya. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

I appreciate any feedback or suggestions for improvements!

License

This theme is open source under the MIT License.

Where does Axya come from?

A riff on "A11y" (if you can imagine the "x" being two crossed 1's.)