Accessibility
The site is built to be read without a mouse, without colour and without images. This page gives the standard aimed at, how the pages are checked, where they fall short, and how to report a barrier.
Target and status
The target is WCAG 2.2 Level AA for the content pages and the three calculators. No external audit or third-party overlay has been used, so full conformance is not claimed: conformance is a tested result and this site has not been tested to that standard. What is claimed is narrower: the checks below are by hand, most AA criteria they cover pass, and every exception is listed underknown limitations.
How the site is checked
Checks are manual and repeated at review:
- Keyboard. Each page is tabbed from address bar to footer. Focus order follows the document, links activate with Enter, and nothing traps focus: no modal, menu or custom control.
- Zoom and reflow. Viewed at 200% and 400% zoom and at 320 px: the page must not scroll sideways; tables may scroll inside their container.
- Contrast. Palette values against their backgrounds: body 14.0:1, secondary 4.55:1, links 13.8:1, navigation 14.5:1 — all above 4.5:1.
- Structure. Heading order, landmarks, table headers and form labels are read from the DOM and accessibility tree, as a screen reader receives them.
- Without images or JavaScript. Content pages are read with images blocked and scripting off: the text survives both, the calculators do not.
No screen-reader matrix across every pairing has been attempted.
What is in place
- Semantic HTML. One
h1per page, headings in order, lists as lists, real links. - Landmarks. A
header, a labellednav, onemainand afooter, with the language declared as English. - No moving parts. No autoplay, carousel, animation or timed content.
- Labelled inputs. Calculator fields sit in
fieldsetgroups withlegends and labels; results go into a polite live region, so changes are announced, not just shown. - Resizable type. Relative sizes and a fluid container, so text grows with the browser setting.
Known limitations
- No skip link. Nine navigation links precede content on every page, so keyboard users tab through them each time. The fix needs a layout change and has not been made.
- Wide tables scroll sideways. Tables carry a 640 px minimum width inside a horizontal scroll container: four columns are cramped on a phone, and the header row is not sticky, so column meanings scroll out of view.
- Secondary text has little headroom. The grey used for dates and captions measures 4.55:1 — a pass, but barely, and the least legible text on the page.
- Focus is the browser default. No custom focus ring: the default is never removed, but varies by browser and operating system and is not tuned for this palette.
- Calculators need JavaScript. There is no
noscriptfallback: with scripting off, the method is explained but no result is produced. - External documents are outside our control. Some regulator PDFs are untagged or scanned; where that is the only source, the page summarises the point in text.
- Mixed-script names. Chinese characters and transliterated Arabic depend on the reader's screen-reader language data.
Compatibility
Current Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari, plus Safari on iOS and Chrome on Android. No plugin or proprietary API, so reader modes get the same text; Internet Explorer is unsupported. A pairing that behaves differently is worth reporting: a gap in the check, not a user error.
Reporting a barrier
Write to [email protected] withAccessibility in the subject, and include:
- The page URL and the part you were trying to use.
- Browser, operating system, and any assistive technology and version.
- What you did, what happened, and what you expected.
- Whether it blocked a task or only made it harder; both matter, the first is triaged first.
Reports are acknowledged within five working days. A wording or markup fix usually lands in the next review cycle, targeting twenty working days; a structural fix is scheduled and the reply says when, or that it is not. There is no charge, no customer status required — material fixes are dated.
Escalation
If nothing arrives within ten working days, resend with Escalation in the subject and the original attached. One desk runs the site, so there is no separate support tier: escalation is a labelled second pass through the same mailbox, and an unanswered report is a process failure, not a reader's mistake. Thirty days after acknowledgement the reply must give a fix date or say it will not be fixed.
Review cadence
Reviewed at least twice a year and whenever the layout, stylesheet or navigation changes. The date above is the last review, not first publication. Material changes go in thecorrections log; a limitation leaves the list when fixed.