Accessibility
How this site is built to be usable
What this means
This site exists to make public information reachable. That is worth very little if the site itself is not.
If something here does not work for you, tell me and I will fix it. That is a faster route than any statement.
The standard being aimed at
The target is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2, level AA. The site is designed and tested against that standard rather than certified to it. No independent audit has been carried out, so a claim of full compliance would not be honest.
Last reviewed: 3 August 2026.
What is checked
Colour and contrast
Text is measured against WCAG AA contrast ratios in both light and dark themes: 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. Body text clears it comfortably. The orange accent does not, and that is listed under known limitations below rather than glossed over here. Colour is never the only way information is given, so a red or green figure always carries a word as well.
Keyboard access
Every control can be reached and operated with a keyboard alone, including the menu, the command palette and the calculators. Focus is always visible.
Headings and structure
One H1 per page, headings in order, and landmarks so a screen reader can skip to the main content.
Charts and figures
Every chart has a text alternative and the underlying figures are given as text or a table nearby. No finding is available only as a picture.
Motion
Animation is decorative and is switched off for anyone whose system asks for reduced motion. No content depends on movement to be understood.
Text and zoom
The layout works at 320px wide and at 200% zoom without content being cut off or requiring sideways scrolling, apart from wide tables which scroll inside their own container.
How it is tested
Automated accessibility checks run against a production build of every page in the sitemap, covering contrast, landmarks, heading order, form labels and image alternatives. Keyboard journeys are tested by hand: the menu, the command palette, the postcode lookup and both calculators.
Layout is checked at 390px, 768px, 1024px, 1280px and 1440px wide, in light and dark themes, with and without reduced .
Known limitations
These are the things currently known to fall short. The list being short does not mean nothing else is wrong, only that nothing else has been found yet.
The orange accent does not reach AA for small text
The orange used for buttons and section labels sits at about 3.1:1 against white. That passes the 3:1 standard for large text and interface controls, and misses the 4.5:1 standard for normal-size text. It is never the only signal: every button also has its own words, and no figure on this site depends on colour to be understood. An automated check counts these and fails if the number grows.
Real screen readers have not been tested exhaustively
Automated checks and keyboard testing are run regularly. Full manual testing with VoiceOver, NVDA and JAWS has not been carried out across every page.
iOS Safari needs real-device testing
Mobile layouts are tested at real widths in a desktop browser. Some behaviour, particularly the menu and sticky header, has been verified on a real iPad but not across every iOS version.
Wide data tables scroll sideways
Council comparison tables are wider than a phone screen and scroll inside their own container. The page itself never scrolls sideways, but the table does, which is awkward with a screen magnifier.
Embedded video
The explainer video is hosted on YouTube and its player is outside this site's control. Captions are provided.
Reporting a problem
If any part of this site is unusable for you, please get in touch and say what you were trying to do and what happened. A description of the barrier is more useful than a technical report, and you do not need to know the standard to report a problem with it.
Accessibility problems are treated the same way as factual errors: fixed, then recorded in the public corrections log.