What we aim at
WCAG 2.1 level AA, on every page, in both light and dark. US school districts have to meet that standard and they pass the requirement on to the tools they buy, so for us it's a working promise rather than a badge on a page.
What is checked, and how often
All of this runs on every change, and any failure stops the change going out:
- An automated audit against every state of every page: open, saved, full, closed, paused, not found, and each form with an error showing.
- What a screen reader would actually say: what kind of thing each one is, the words that name it, the words attached to it, and whether it's selected. Each square in the grid has to announce its day and time. Each row of a sign-up sheet has to carry its own name and how many places are left. Every error has to be attached to the field it's about.
- A keyboard-only pass of all three ways of making something and all three ways of responding, driven with nothing but Tab, the arrows, Space and Enter. Every place the keyboard lands is checked for a focus ring you can actually see.
- Every page rendered with scripting switched off, and responded to that way.
- Phone widths, and again at 320 pixels: nothing may run off the side, and anything you tap has to be at least 44 pixels square.
- Both colour schemes, checked for contrast.
The hard part, and what we did about it
The grid where you paint the times you're free is about a hundred small squares, which is the sort of control that usually goes wrong. It works three ways, and all three are tested:
- Drag across it with a mouse or a finger to paint, and drag again to rub out.
- Tab to it once. It's a single stop rather than a hundred. From there you move with the arrows and toggle with Space, each square says which day and time it is as you land on it, and saving is announced out loud.
- With no scripting, it becomes ordinary checkboxes, grouped one day at a time, and the form posts like any other.
Colour never carries a meaning by itself. A square you've marked gets a check as well as a fill, and the heat map spells its legend out in words.
Telling us something is wrong
Write to support@whenabouts.me and tell us the page, what you were using (a screen reader, a keyboard, a magnifier) and what happened. You'll hear back within three working days. An accessibility problem goes to the front rather than into a backlog.