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Accessibility

This site is built to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Here is what that means in practice, what we know is not perfect, and how to tell us when something does not work.

Our target

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1, Level AA. That is the standard this site was designed and built against, and it is checked rather than assumed.

What that means here

  • Every page works with a keyboard alone, in a sensible order, with a visible focus ring on everything you can reach.
  • Text meets or exceeds the contrast ratios the standard requires, measured rather than estimated.
  • Colour is never the only way meaning is carried. Every status also carries a text label.
  • Every page has one main heading and a correct heading order, real landmarks, and a skip link to the main content.
  • Form fields have real labels, and errors explain what to do rather than saying that something is invalid.
  • Every image has alternative text describing what is in the frame, and decorative images are hidden from screen readers.
  • If your system asks for reduced motion, all transitions and movement are switched off.
  • The site is readable and usable with JavaScript turned off, apart from the contact form, which still shows the phone number.

Known limitations

We would rather name these than pretend they are not there.

  • The seasonal calendar on the homepage is a wide grid. It scrolls sideways within its own container on a narrow screen, and the information in it is also written out in text for screen readers, but the visual grid itself is difficult to read at very small sizes.
  • Photographs on the site are currently placeholders. When real photographs replace them, their alternative text will be written individually, and we may not catch every one immediately.
  • Condition report samples are dense tables of data. They are marked up as description lists and read correctly, but they take longer to listen to than they do to look at.

Tell us if something does not work

If any part of this site is difficult or impossible for you to use, use the form on the contact page to tell us what happened and what you were trying to do. We will fix it, and in the meantime we will give you the information you were after in whatever format suits you.