Accessibility statement

The standards we build to

WCAG 2.2 Level AA is the binding baseline for this site and for the app. Every automated check below enforces it.

EN 301 549 v3.2.1 — the European harmonised standard, and the one the European Accessibility Act is assessed against — incorporates that same Level AA baseline for web content.

Level AAA is an aspiration, met in specific places and not claimed as conformance. The W3C itself advises that Level AAA is not achievable for entire sites as a general policy, and we agree.

Conformance status

This site is partially conformant with WCAG 2.2 Level AA and EN 301 549 v3.2.1, in the specific sense those templates use the phrase: automated testing finds no violations, and no independent party has performed a manual audit. The gap is described under “What has not been done”, because that gap is the useful part of a statement like this one.

What is checked on every change

None of these is a one-off report. Each one runs before a change can ship, and a failure stops it:

• Every published page is tested against the WCAG 2.2 Level AA ruleset with two independent engines — HTML CodeSniffer and axe-core — in a browser forced into reduced-motion. A single error fails the build.
• Every published page is also tested against the Level AAA ruleset. That pass reports rather than blocks, for the reason given below.
• Every page is a complete, readable document with JavaScript switched off. Motion is opt-in, and instantiates nothing at all when your system asks for reduced motion.
• The production Content-Security-Policy is exercised against the built site, so a policy that silently drops a stylesheet cannot ship and leave these pages unstyled and unreadable.
• The narrated audio is checked against the page text, so a wording change cannot quietly leave stale narration behind.

Where we go beyond Level AA

Named individually rather than claimed as a level, because a Level AAA criterion met on one page is not Level AAA conformance:

• 1.4.6 Contrast (Enhanced) — every colour that carries text on this site meets the 7:1 Level AAA ratio, not the 4.5:1 Level AA floor, and meets it against the darkest background it is ever placed on rather than only against the page background.
• 2.2.3 No Timing — nothing here is time-limited.
• 2.3.2 Three Flashes — nothing flashes at all.
• 2.4.9 Link Purpose (Link Only) — links are written to make sense read out of context, which is how a screen-reader rotor presents them.
• 3.3.5 Help — the route to report a barrier is in the footer of every page, not buried in a support section.

Why we do not claim Level AAA

Claiming it site-wide would be exactly the kind of overclaim this statement exists to avoid. Specifically: a signed version of the narrated audio does not exist (1.2.6), and the reading-level and pronunciation criteria (3.1.3 to 3.1.6) impose obligations on translated content that a three-language site maintained by one person cannot honestly guarantee on every change.

Where a Level AAA criterion is cheap and durable, we take it. Where meeting it would require a promise we cannot keep on every change, we say so here instead of claiming it.

What has not been done

Stated plainly, because an accessibility statement that lists only its successes is marketing:

• No independent third-party accessibility audit has been carried out, on this site or on the app.
• No formal validation with blind and low-vision testers has been completed. Automated checks cannot tell you whether a page makes sense to someone navigating it by ear; only those users can. This is the project's largest open accessibility risk, and it is tracked as one.
• Automated testing has limits. Tools of this kind catch a minority of real barriers — commonly cited as around a third. A page can pass every automated rule and still be confusing, mislabeled, or unusable in practice.
• No VPAT or Accessibility Conformance Report has been produced.

Known limitations

• The narrated audio covers the main content of the home page, not navigation or the footer.
• The Spanish and Vietnamese pages are reviewed for accuracy of meaning, but have not been tested with a screen reader running in those languages.
• Where a browser or operating-system control appears, its accessibility is governed by whoever makes it, not by us.
• High-contrast and forced-colours rendering is implemented against the platform's own settings but has not been audited by an outside party.

The SenseBridge app

Conformance is not yet claimed for the app. It has not been publicly released, and this statement will not pretend a pre-launch build has been audited.

Its internal gate is stricter than a percentage — zero unlabeled interactive elements on every screen, with a VoiceOver pass required on any changed interface before the change can merge — but a gate is a development discipline, not a conformance audit.

Tell us about a barrier

If any part of SenseBridge is not usable for you, that is a defect, and it is treated with the same priority as a crash — not as a feature request.

Write to kevinle3212@gmail.com. Describe what you were trying to do, what assistive technology you were using and its version if you know it, and what happened instead. You do not need to know the technical cause, and you do not need to phrase it in accessibility terminology.

We aim to acknowledge you within 5 working days, and to give a substantive answer — a fix, or a timeline for one — within 30 days. This is the feedback mechanism the European Accessibility Act and EN 301 549 require a statement to name, and it is read by the maintainer directly.

If we do not fix it

This project is pre-launch, free, and maintained by one person. There is no formal enforcement body engaged with it. If we do not resolve your report, you keep every escalation route the law where you live gives you — the market-surveillance authority designated by your EU Member State, the Equality Act route in the United Kingdom, a Department of Justice complaint under the ADA in the United States, the Accessibility Commissioner in Canada, or the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Nothing in this statement, and nothing in our terms, limits any of those routes.

How this statement is kept honest

It is reviewed whenever a change touches an accessibility check, and at minimum once every twelve months. The full version, including the specific laws it is written against, is published in the project repository as legal/ACCESSIBILITY_STATEMENT.md. Neither document may claim a check the other does not.