Accessibility
What we do on this website, what we do on the websites we build, and what we haven't yet verified.
The standard we work toward
We use WCAG 2.2 Level AA as a baseline when building and maintaining websites, including this one. The same decisions that make a site work with a screen reader tend to make it clearer for everybody.
What this website does
- Semantic HTML with a single main landmark and a correct heading order on every page
- A skip link to the main content as the first focusable element
- Visible focus indicators on every interactive element
- Full keyboard operation, including the navigation menu, every form and the website checkup
- Text and interface colors meeting AA contrast on the light, navy and blue grounds, measured rather than assumed
- Real labels on every form field, with errors announced in text, not by color alone
- Alternative text on every meaningful image, with decorative artwork hidden from assistive technology rather than described to it
- Motion reduced to nothing under
prefers-reduced-motion - Layouts that reflow without horizontal scrolling down to 320 pixels wide
- Core content, every form and the website checkup working with JavaScript disabled
- Lists announced as lists, and the state of the checkup’s progress steps given in words as well as in color
What we haven’t done
This site is checked automatically on every build: heading structure, labels, alternative text, contrast measured against the color actually behind the text, and horizontal overflow, at three screen widths down to 320 pixels, plus a pass at 200% text zoom. It has also been worked through with a keyboard, and the reduced-motion behavior is measured rather than assumed.
It hasn’t had a formal audit by an accessibility specialist, or testing across every screen reader and browser, and no automated check finds everything. So this is a statement of what we target and what we test, not a claim of conformance. When a specialist audit happens, the findings will be listed here.
On the websites we build
Accessibility is part of the build, not a phase at the end. It’s cheaper that way and retrofitting rarely works well. If you have a specific legal obligation, we’ll tell you which parts are technical work and which are questions for your own counsel.
We don’t use accessibility overlay widgets. They don’t make a site conformant and can interfere with the assistive technology somebody is already using successfully.
Documents
PDFs are often the biggest accessibility problem on an established website. If information can be a web page, it should be. Where a document is genuinely needed, it has to be tagged properly, with an HTML summary alongside it.
Tell us about a problem
If you have difficulty using anything on this website, tell us and we’ll fix it. A specific report helps more than a general one: the page, what you were trying to do, and what happened. We respond within one business day.
Accessibility on your site
If you are reading this because you have an obligation of your own, that is work we do: an audit of what is actually wrong, then the fixes, scoped and quoted. We will also tell you which parts are technical work and which are questions for your own counsel.