Accessibility.

Conformance target

We target WCAG 2.2 Level AA across every page of this site. WCAG 2.2 was published as a W3C Recommendation in October 2023 and is the current accessibility benchmark for European Accessibility Act compliance (effective 28 June 2025).

What we've implemented

• Keyboard navigation. Every interactive element is reachable via Tab and operable via Enter/Space. Focus order matches visual order. A "Skip to main content" link is the first focusable element on every page.
• Visible focus indicators. All focused elements show a high-contrast focus ring drawn with :focus-visible, so mouse users don't see the ring during a normal click but keyboard users always do.
• Landmark regions. Every page uses semantic HTML landmarks (header, nav, main, footer) with descriptive aria-label values where needed. Screen-reader users can jump between regions.
• Heading hierarchy. Every page has exactly one H1. Subheadings descend in order without skipping levels. Screen-reader rotor navigation works as expected.
• Colour contrast. We target WCAG 2.2 AA contrast — 4.5:1 for body text, 3:1 for large text, focus indicators, and UI components. An automated audit (axe-core, 19 May 2026) flagged failures in accent text, dark-mode link colour, footer text, and the orange button background. Remediated 23 May 2026: accent and link text now uses a deepened burnt orange that clears 4.5:1 on every background, the orange call-to-action button was recoloured to pass with its white label, footer and dark-mode text were retuned, and keyboard focus outlines were darkened to meet the 3:1 minimum.
• Light editorial theme. The directory is designed as cream paper + ink navy for maximum readability. We enforce color-scheme: light so OS dark mode does not invert our palette and crush button or body-text contrast (remediated May 2026).
• Reduced motion. All scroll-snapping, hover-transform, and animated transitions respect prefers-reduced-motion: reduce. View transitions degrade gracefully where motion is suppressed.
• Reduced transparency + data. Where backdrop-filter is used, the design falls back to an opaque surface under prefers-reduced-transparency. Hero imagery and non-essential decoration are suppressed under prefers-reduced-data.
• High contrast / forced colors. Components use system-color tokens under forced-colors: active, so the site works in Windows High Contrast mode and similar OS-level overrides.
• Touch targets. Interactive controls are sized to at least 44×44 CSS pixels (iOS HIG), exceeding the WCAG 2.2 minimum of 24×24.
• Form labels. Every form input has an associated <label>. Email links are augmented with descriptive subject lines so screen-reader users know what the link will do.
• Image alt text. All meaningful images carry descriptive alt attributes. Purely decorative SVGs are marked aria-hidden="true".
• Reading-mode + Speakable. Editorials carry Speakable schema selectors so voice assistants (Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa) can read the key passages aloud cleanly.

Known gaps

We are not yet perfect. The following are tracked and prioritised:

• The interactive school filter on the homepage relies on JavaScript; users with JS disabled see all schools in their default order, which is acceptable but not optimised. (Tracked for graceful enhancement pass.)
• Some long meta descriptions on comparison pages exceed the typical screen-reader chunking. Trimmed in May 2026 but minor work remains on topic hubs.
• The PWA install prompt is not yet styled for keyboard-first activation flow.

How we test

Every editorial is run through axe-core (browser extension) before publishing. Lighthouse accessibility audits run automatically on every push to main via the Lighthouse CI workflow against the live site. Periodically we run the page through NVDA on Windows and VoiceOver on macOS / iOS to verify the announcement quality of headings, landmarks, and link text.

Reporting an accessibility barrier

If you find a page that doesn't work with your assistive technology, please email [email protected] with the subject "Accessibility barrier" and the URL of the affected page. We aim for a 7-day acknowledgement and a 30-day fix on AA-conformance issues.

Standards we benchmark against

We design with reference to: WCAG 2.2 Level AA (W3C Recommendation, October 2023), the European Accessibility Act (Directive (EU) 2019/882, effective 28 June 2025), the ARIA Authoring Practices Guide, and the GOV.UK Service Manual accessibility section.