Built to be usable, and honest about the gaps.

The standard I am aiming at

WCAG 2.2 Level AA. That is the standard UK public sector bodies are held to and it is the one I hold my own work to, on this site and on client work, whether or not anyone asks for it.

What that means in practice here

• Real HTML. Headings are headings, buttons are buttons, links are links. One h1 per page and no skipped levels.
• Keyboard everything. Every control can be reached and operated with a keyboard, in an order that matches the page. There is a skip-to-content link as the first thing you reach.
• Designed focus rings. Every interactive element has a visible focus indicator that was drawn on purpose rather than left to the browser, and it meets the 3:1 contrast a focus indicator needs.
• Contrast. Body text is at least 4.5:1 against its background everywhere, and large text at least 3:1. The palette is checked against these rather than eyeballed: there is a contrast table in the internal styleguide that is generated from the real colour tokens so it cannot drift.
• Motion. If you have "reduce motion" turned on, the movement stops. The scrolling screenshot on a work card becomes a still image with a link to the full page, and nothing on the site animates a transform.
• Panels behave. The work panels and the mobile menu are native dialogs, so they trap focus, close on Escape and return focus to whatever opened them.
• Images. Every image that carries meaning has a description. Decorative ones are marked as decorative so a screen reader skips them.
• Text you can resize. Type is set in relative units and the layout holds at 200% zoom without anything being cut off.
• No accessibility overlay. There is no widget in the corner offering to fix the site for you. Overlays are widely held to be ineffective and they interfere with the real screen readers people already use. The fix is building it right.

What is not right yet

This site is still being built, and I would rather list the gaps than let you find them.

• No independent audit. Nothing here has been tested by an accessibility specialist or by a panel of disabled users. My own testing is automated tooling plus a keyboard-only walkthrough, which catches a lot and is not the same thing.
• Screen reader testing is not complete. The site has not yet been walked through end to end with NVDA, JAWS and VoiceOver.
• Filtering on the work page is silent. Changing the sector filter changes what is on screen without announcing the change. The counts on each chip tell you what to expect, which is a mitigation rather than a fix.
• Screenshots have generic descriptions. A full-page screenshot of a website is described as what it is rather than transcribed. Where the content of one matters, it is written out in the case study text as well.
• No enquiry form yet. When it lands, its errors and labels will be built to the same standard, and this list will be updated to say whether it has been tested.

Tell me if something does not work

If any part of this site is difficult or impossible for you to use, I want to know, and "this was annoying" is a perfectly good bug report. Email [email protected] or ring 07700 900123.

I reply within one working day, and I will tell you either when it is fixed or why it is going to take longer. If you need something on this site in another format, ask and I will send it to you.

How this page is kept honest

It is reviewed whenever a page is added or materially changed, and the date at the top moves when it is. If something ships with a known problem, it goes in the list above on the day it ships rather than once somebody complains.