Accessibility

Our commitment

We build websites for healthcare businesses. Their visitors include people with low vision, people who cannot use a mouse, people using a screen reader, people with tremors, people reading on a phone in a waiting room, and people who are anxious and in a hurry. Accessibility is not a feature for them. It is whether the site works at all.

We hold our own site to the standard we ask clients to meet. This page explains what we aim for, what we have done, what we know is not finished, and how to tell us when something does not work.

The standard we work to

We work to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG, at level AA. That is the level most referenced by law and policy in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, and it is the level we design and build to for clients.

In plain terms, level AA asks that content can be perceived, operated and understood by people using assistive technology or no mouse at all. It covers things like readable colour contrast, text that resizes without breaking, every control reachable by keyboard, images described in text, forms with real labels, and no content that flashes in a way that could trigger a seizure.

We aim to meet that standard. We are not claiming full conformance across every page, and the next section explains why that distinction matters.

Where this site stands

An accessibility statement that claims perfection is usually written by someone who has not tested. Here is the honest position.

The pages we have designed and built are made with accessibility handled during the build rather than audited afterwards. That includes:

• A real heading structure, so a screen reader can move through a page by section instead of reading everything.
• Keyboard access to every link, button, tab and accordion, with a visible focus outline so you can see where you are.
• Colour contrast checked against the AA thresholds for body text, headings and buttons.
• Text that resizes and reflows rather than overlapping or disappearing when you zoom.
• Form fields with proper labels, sized so that tapping one on a phone does not zoom the page.
• Motion that respects your settings. If your device asks for reduced motion, animations stop.
• No autoplaying audio or video, and nothing that flashes.
• Images described in text where the image carries meaning, and marked as decorative where it does not.

Accessibility is not a state you reach and keep. Every new page, image and embed is another chance to get it wrong, which is why this is a continuing commitment rather than a completed task.

What we know is not finished

These are the areas we keep an eye on, because they are where problems usually appear.

• Third-party embeds. Maps, booking tools, chat widgets and video players are built by other companies. We choose carefully, but we do not control their code.
• Documents. PDFs are harder to make accessible than web pages. Where we publish one, we aim to provide the same information as a web page.
• Older content. Articles published before a standard tightened can fall behind it. We fix these as we find them rather than all at once.
• Screen reader differences. A page can behave correctly in one screen reader and awkwardly in another. We test with what we have, which is not every combination.

If you hit something not on this list, we would rather hear about it than have you assume we already know.

Why we do not use an accessibility overlay

You may have been offered a widget that promises to make a site accessible overnight, usually a floating icon with a menu of contrast and font size controls.

We do not use them and we do not install them for clients. They sit on top of the problem rather than fixing it, they can interfere with the screen readers and browser settings people already use, and organisations using them have still faced complaints. Browsers and operating systems already provide zoom, contrast and reading tools that work better than a widget bolted onto one site.

The work is in the markup. There is no shortcut, and anyone selling one is selling the appearance of accessibility rather than the thing itself.

Accessibility in the work we do for clients

Every site we build gets this treatment as standard rather than as a line item on a quote. Headings, labels, contrast, focus states and keyboard navigation are handled during the build, which is both cheaper and more effective than auditing at the end and patching what is found.

For healthcare clients there is a further reason to care. The people least able to use an inaccessible site are often the ones most likely to need the service, and in several of our markets accessibility is a legal obligation for organisations providing services to the public rather than a matter of good practice. What applies to any particular practice depends on where it operates and what it does, which is a question for their legal adviser rather than for us.

Tell us about a problem

If any part of this site is hard to use, we want to know. You do not need to know what caused it or use the right terminology. "I could not get past the contact form with my keyboard" is a perfect report.

It helps if you can tell us the page you were on, what you were trying to do, what happened instead, and the browser, device or assistive technology you were using. Any of those is useful, and we would rather have a short message than nothing.

If we do not put it right

We would rather fix a problem than have it escalated, so please give us the chance first.

If we do not resolve it, the route beyond us depends on where you live. Most of the countries we work in have a body that handles accessibility and disability discrimination complaints about organisations providing services to the public. Your national disability rights or equality body is the place to start, and we will not treat a complaint as a reason to stop helping you.

Reviewing this page

We review this statement when the site changes in a way that affects accessibility, and at least once a year otherwise. The date at the top shows when it last changed.

Our privacy policy and terms and conditions sit alongside this page.