Accessibility statement

This site is built to meet WCAG 2.2 at level AA on every page, in all five languages and in both the light and the dark theme. It meets one criterion of that level only in part, named below with the reason, and we know of no other gap. This statement says what that rests on, where the checks stop, and how to reach us about anything that stands in your way.

What is checked before a release

These checks run on the site before it is published, in the light and the dark theme alike, and a failure stops the release.

• Structure, names and contrast. axe-core audits names, roles, landmarks, heading order and colour contrast, with its best-practice rules switched on as well as the WCAG ones.
• The keyboard. A real Tab key is pressed from the top of a page to the bottom, and every stop is checked for a focus indicator that can be seen and that nothing covers. The first stop is a link straight to the content.
• Target size. Every link and control is measured against the 24 by 24 pixel minimum.
• Spacing and larger text. The page is laid out once with wider line, letter, word and paragraph spacing and once with its text at twice the size, and either way must lose no content and gain no sideways scroll.
• Readable lines. Prose stays under 80 characters a line, nothing is justified, no paragraph is centred and the line spacing is at least 1.5, measured at every width. These come from 1.4.8 Visual Presentation, a level AAA criterion the site meets in full.

Two more are run on demand rather than before every release. One lays the pages out 320 CSS pixels wide, the width 1.4.10 Reflow is written for, and checks that nothing needs a sideways scroll. The other stretches every string of the interface to up to two and a half times its length, as an automatic translation may, and checks that the layout holds.

Built to be read any way

• Links are underlined everywhere, so they can be found without telling colours apart.
• Movement is ornament only: the turning cogs, the portrait and the brand mark. All of it stops when your system asks for reduced motion.
• The site works with JavaScript switched off. Its one script filters a list as you type and tells a screen reader how many entries match.
• Every page declares its language, so a screen reader speaks it in the right voice.
• Every photograph has a text alternative, and a screen reader also hears who took it.

The pages are written in HTML, CSS and SVG, with WAI-ARIA where HTML alone does not name something, and every page is complete without the script.

The one criterion met in part

1.4.13 Content on Hover or Focus. The small labels that appear when you point at or focus an icon stay while you move the pointer onto them, and stay until you move away. They cannot be closed with a key, because that takes a script and this site runs one only, the list filter. They also cover other content when they appear, so the criterion’s exception for labels that cover nothing does not apply to them.

Each label repeats the name of the icon it belongs to, which a screen reader has already announced, so a reader who never sees it misses nothing it says. Moving the pointer or the focus away closes it.

What does not apply

Some criteria concern things this site does not contain:

• audio and video, so captions, audio description and media alternatives;
• forms that send anything, so the criteria on input errors: the contact page hands you to your own mail app or phone;
• time limits of any kind;
• gestures, dragging and device motion, which nothing here asks for;
• signing in, which this site never asks you to do.

Where the checks stop

Automated checks have known limits, and these are ours:

• The audits run on a representative page of every template in every language, rather than on every page.
• The site has been tested by checks and by hand, without a screen reader such as VoiceOver or NVDA and without a switch device.
• Whether a link’s words make sense out of context is judged by a person, not by a tool.
• The menu, once opened, is measured by hand rather than by the checks.
• The sister addresses that mirror these pages under other engineer.company names are built from the same templates and checked on demand rather than before every release.

Tell us about a barrier

If something here stands in your way — a page you cannot reach, a label that says the wrong thing, text you cannot read — write to welcome@engineer.company with the address of the page and what happened. A person reads every message, and we reply personally.

Want your own site held to the same checks? talk to us.