Accessibility.

The standard I'm working to

WCAG 2.2 Level AA. That is the level most accessibility legislation points at, including the ADA guidance in the United States.

I am not going to tell you this site fully conforms, because I have not had it independently audited and I would rather be accurate than reassuring. What follows is what I have actually checked myself.

What's in place

• Real HTML. Headings are headings, buttons are buttons, lists are lists. Screen readers work by reading structure, and this site is hand-written, so the structure is genuinely there rather than approximated with styled divs.
• Keyboard operable. Every link, button, form field and the FAQ accordions can be reached and used with a keyboard alone, in an order that matches the page.
• A skip link. The first thing a keyboard or screen reader user reaches is a link that jumps past the navigation to the main content.
• Motion respects your settings. The illustrated scenes on the home page animate as you scroll. If your device is set to reduce motion, they stop. Nothing on this site moves on its own, autoplays, or flashes.
• Labelled forms. Every field has a real label attached to it, not placeholder text pretending to be one. Placeholder text disappears when you start typing, which is why it is not a label.
• Described images. Images that carry meaning have alternative text. Images that are purely decorative are marked so screen readers skip them rather than reading a filename aloud.
• Text that scales. Type is sized in relative units, so it grows when you increase your browser's text size instead of staying stubbornly fixed.
• Light and dark. A toggle in the navigation, remembered between visits.
• Nothing third-party in the way. No chat widget, no popup, no interstitial. Those are a common cause of keyboard traps on small business sites, and this site has none of them.
• The cookie notice is a notice, not a trap. It sits at the bottom of the page, never covers what you are reading, and does not block the site behind it. Both answers are ordinary buttons of equal size, reachable by keyboard in the order they appear, and once you answer it is gone. Declining is not made harder than accepting.

Where it currently falls short

One thing, measured. I would rather write it down than let you discover it.

Everything that is actual content, on every page, in both light and dark mode, now measures at or above the standard.

What I haven't done

Being straight about the limits of the above:

• No independent third-party audit.
• No testing with real users of assistive technology, which is the only test that genuinely counts.
• Screen reader testing has been spot checks, not a systematic pass over every page.

Websites I build for clients

The same approach applies to client work: semantic markup, keyboard operability, labelled forms, described images, and motion that respects the visitor's settings. It is a large part of why I hand-code rather than assemble pages from a builder, where the generated markup is often the thing standing between a visitor and your content.

If you need a formal conformance audit for legal or procurement reasons, say so early. That is specialist work, and I will tell you honestly whether it is something I should be doing or whether you want a dedicated auditor.

Telling me something is broken

If any part of this site is difficult or impossible to use, I want to know, and you do not need to be polite about it.

Email hello@shorelinewebdesign.com. If you can, tell me the page, what you were trying to do, and what device or assistive technology you were using. Any of those helps; all three helps most. It comes straight to me and I will reply.

If something is blocking you right now and you would rather just get an answer from a person, email me and say what you need. I will send it to you directly.