Accessibility Statement

Last updated: 2026-09-10

This statement covers the website gardencalcs.uk. We want the site to be usable by everyone, including people who use screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, voice control, or browsers set to high contrast or reduced motion. It describes what the site does today, what we know is not yet right, and how we test.

1. Conformance target and current position

We aim to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at Level AA. The site has not yet had a formal WCAG audit and has never been tested with a screen reader. On the limited evidence of our own checks (section 5) we believe it is partially conformant: the calculators and their shared controls meet the criteria listed in section 2, and the gaps we know about are listed in section 3.

2. What the site does to support accessibility

• Every calculator input is reachable and operable by keyboard, with a focus indicator on every focusable element (its strength on some controls, and its form on search results, is a known gap, section 3).
• A skip-to-content link is the first focusable element on every page.
• The shared input controls (number, measurement and select fields) carry a programmatic label, and their help text is linked with aria-describedby.
• When a required field is empty, focus moves to that field and a message appears next to the Calculate button. Where the field has a visible label the message names it; when the whole form is empty it asks you to enter your values. The message is placed in an alert region that exists before the text arrives, the pattern assistive technology announces most reliably, but we have not yet confirmed the announcement with a screen reader (section 3).
• When results first appear, a visually hidden status region announces “Results are ready below the Calculate button” to screen readers, and the page scrolls to the results.
• Search is a full combobox pattern: Up and Down browse results, Enter activates, Escape clears or closes, and the result count is announced.
• Decorative icons are hidden from assistive technology (alt="" and aria-hidden); icons that carry meaning have text.
• The design-system colour tokens (ten text tokens against five surface tokens, 50 pairs) were measured on 4 September 2026 and again on 10 September 2026, and both tables are kept in the repository; every pair the site renders as text meets the 4.5:1 body-text level. The pairs still below 4.5:1 are border and tint tokens, and muted grey text on the warning tint (4.34:1), none of which the site renders as text.
• Respects prefers-reduced-motion: counting animations and non-essential motion are suppressed.
• The site is readable without JavaScript; calculators need JavaScript to compute results.
• The printed job sheet keeps the site name, the page address, the date, the results, the disclaimer and any safety notice, so a printout stands on its own.
• Language attribute en-GB is set on every page.

3. Known limitations

• We have not yet tested the site with a screen reader (NVDA, JAWS or VoiceOver). Our checks use automated tools and the browser’s accessibility tree, which catch missing names, roles and states but not how a page sounds. If something reads badly, please tell us (section 4).
• Recalculating with results already on screen updates the numbers in place and is not announced again; only the first appearance of results is.
• Reference tables and guide pages have not all been audited for hand-built controls; the shared calculator controls have.
• The keyboard focus ring on the privacy-notice buttons, the feedback widget’s buttons, chips and comment box, the unit picker beside a measurement field, the toggles and the replay-choice reset is a 40% tint of the brand colour, measured at 1.78:1 against white on 10 September 2026 (1.75:1 on the off-white ground), below the 3:1 that WCAG 2.2 asks of a focus indicator; and a search result reached with the Tab key shows only a faint background tint. The calculator text boxes and the search box are not affected (their border changes to the full brand colour, 5.02:1). The ring is being replaced with the full-strength colour on every site.
• Composited colour pairs (text at partial opacity over a tinted background) and colours applied directly in components rather than through the design tokens are measured only where a reader or a review has pointed at one; the 50 token pairs are measured.

4. Tell us about a barrier

If you encounter an accessibility barrier, tell us using the feedback box under the results on any calculator page (choose “Report an issue”), or email [email protected]. Every report is read. If we do not resolve it, you can contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS): www.equalityadvisoryservice.com.

5. How we test

What has actually been run against this site:

• the six ARIA and alt-text rules that our Next.js lint configuration enables from eslint-plugin-jsx-a11y, run manually as part of our lint step;
• a mobile reachability check that opens the navigation menu at phone viewports and confirms every item can be reached;
• a browser test suite that finds and drives controls by their accessible role and name, so it fails if a control loses its name or role, and asserts the state of the privacy and unit toggles;
• contrast-ratio measurement of the design-token text-and-surface pairs (ten text tokens against five surface tokens), with the tables kept in the repository;
• automated axe-core scans over every route except the not-found page, run as part of the release checks before each deployment (the WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 A and AA rule set; a serious or critical finding stops the release).

Planned next: a screen-reader session with NVDA and VoiceOver. This page will say when it has been done.

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