VOLUNTARY SUPPORT · EDUCATION FOR EVERYONE
The Atlas is free. It stays free.Somebody still had to write it.
73 landmarks, written by hand, cut back, and read again before they went up. No advertising paid for that, no subscription, and no client with an opinion about the wording. If it was useful to you, this page is the account: what a voluntary contribution goes towards, counted from the files themselves — and the four things it will never buy.
What you already have
No account. No paywall. No advertising. No cookie. You agreed to nothing to read any of it, and nothing you read was recorded on a server here. That was the arrangement before you arrived, and this page does not change it.
- Written
- 73 landmarksof 103 planned
- Given a decision to make
- 219 optionsacross all 73
- Defined
- 113 concepts91 reachable from a landmark
- Ordered by hand
- 12 trails103 steps, each with a note on why it comes next
- Set as exercises
- 18 pieces48 self-check items
- Taught in the workshops
- 36 studio topicsacross 6 studios
- Typed out
- ≈69,987 wordscounted by whitespace, so approximate
- Charged for
- nothing
Counted from the content files when you asked for this page, not typed into a design. If the shelf grows, these move on their own.
Written, not yet finished.
Here is the part most projects leave out. The Atlas is published as it is written, and it is not finished: two whole rings — Build and Steward — are still unwritten frontier. That gap is counted from the files, not glossed over.
- 73 of 103landmarks written so far
- the Build and Steward rings — agents, permissions, evaluation, governance, procurement — are still to come
That is a job, not an opinion. Writing the remaining rings — Build and Steward — is slow, careful work done by hand, and it is the largest thing a contribution buys.
What a contribution pays for
Not servers. This site is deliberately built to run on very little, and the running cost is not the reason this page exists. What is expensive here is attention — somebody's hours, spent slowly, on work that only counts if it is done carefully. Each of the two below is a real backlog with a real count, not a category.
- The rest of the map
Writing the Build and Steward rings — agents, permissions, evaluation, deployment, governance, procurement, board reporting. The roadmap shows them because they are planned, not because they are done.
30 of 103 landmarks are still unwritten frontier
- Testing with real assistive technology
Running the site with actual screen readers and other assistive technology, and fixing what that finds. The target is WCAG 2.2 AA; no full audit has been done, so it is a target and not a claim.
Funds an audit that has not happened yet
Education for everyone. Free at every stage — for the person just starting out, and for the one already deep in it.
What it does not buy
This matters more than the list above, so it is stated plainly. None of these is available at any price, and there is no tier, badge, or supporter list on which they could be offered.
- Influence over what the Atlas teaches, or how a topic is framed.
- Removal of a criticism, a caution, or an inconvenient limitation.
- A mention, a backlink, a logo, or any form of placement.
- Anything at all connected to your learning record — contributions and learning are kept entirely separate.
Contribute what you think it was worth
There is no obligation whatsoever, no suggested amount, and no wrong answer. You choose the figure on Stripe's own page.
Support the Atlas Opens Stripe's secure payment page in a new tab.
How your payment is handled
Payments are processed entirely by Stripe, on Stripe's own pages. This site never sees or stores your card details, and it loads no payment code, scripts, or cookies — nothing is sent to Stripe unless you deliberately click the button above and go to their page. Your contribution is not linked to anything you have read or done here, because the Atlas keeps no learning record on its servers to link it to.
Contributions are voluntary support for an educational project. They are not a purchase, not a subscription, and not tax-deductible. There is no account to create, nothing to cancel, and no receipt you have to keep for anything other than your own records.
Other ways to help, worth just as much
The people this is built for are mostly not looking for it. One person passing it on does more than most things money can buy.
Accuracy is the whole product here. Anything unclear, out of date, or plainly incorrect is worth reporting — every page carries a way to do it.
If something was hard or impossible to use with your assistive technology, the accessibility page takes reports directly.
See also the privacy statement, the roadmap, and the accessibility commitment.