Accessibility

1. What we are aiming for

We build this site to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 at level AA. That is the standard most public bodies are held to, and we hold ourselves to it because an IT company with a website you cannot use is not making a good argument for itself.

Accessibility is not a project that finishes. When we build something new we check it, and when somebody tells us we have got it wrong we fix it rather than explaining why it is acceptable.

2. Where we actually are

This site has not been formally audited, and no independent accessibility review has been carried out. We are telling you that rather than publishing a conformance claim nobody has tested, because an untested claim is worse than none: it tells you a barrier you have hit should not exist, and leaves you no wiser about whether we know.

What follows is what we have built deliberately, and what we already know is not right. Treat it as partially conformant with WCAG 2.2 AA: most of it holds, some of it is untested, and section 4 lists what we know is missing.

3. What is built in

• A skip link. The first thing in the tab order on every page jumps straight past the navigation to the content, and it moves focus rather than just scrolling.
• Keyboard access throughout. Every menu, filter, and dialog can be reached and operated without a mouse. Dialogs use the browser's own dialog element, so focus stays inside them and Escape closes them.
• Visible focus. Whatever has keyboard focus is outlined, including the skip link, which becomes visible as soon as it is focused.
• Reduced motion is honoured. If your system asks for less motion, our animations do not run. The loading indicator, which would otherwise be the most animated thing on the site, does not start at all and shows a still mark instead.
• Labelled controls. Icon-only buttons carry a text label for screen readers, and where a label names a row it names which row, so a list of controls is not read out as the same word repeated.
• Real headings and landmarks. Every page has one main region, its navigation and its contents lists are labelled so they can be told apart, and the page language is declared. Within the content, headings run in order and describe what follows them, so a screen reader can navigate by structure and pronounce the words correctly.
• Decorative images are hidden from screen readers rather than announced, and images carrying meaning have text alternatives.
• Text, not images of text. Nothing on the site puts words in a picture, so everything reflows and rescales with your browser settings.
• Tables and wide content scroll inside their own box rather than pushing the page sideways, so zooming in does not produce a page you have to scroll horizontally to read.

4. What we know is not right yet

We would rather list these than let you find them:

• No screen reader testing has been done. We have used the right markup, and that is not the same as having listened to the result. This is the biggest gap on the list.
• Colour contrast has not been measured across the whole site. Our palette was designed with contrast in mind, and nobody has checked every combination against the AA thresholds, particularly muted text on tinted panels.
• The main menu's own headings come before the page heading in the underlying document order. Somebody navigating by heading will meet two collapsed menu headings before reaching the page title. It is a small thing and it is not how we would write it today.
• Some documents in our resource library are PDFs we did not author, and we cannot promise their internal structure is accessible. Ask us and we will get you the content in another form.
• The payment fields at checkout are provided by our payment processor and rendered inside their own frame, so their accessibility is theirs rather than ours. If you cannot complete a purchase, call us and we will take the order.
• The rotating globe on our locations page is decorative and hidden from screen readers. The same information is in text on the same page.
• The client portal has had less attention than the public site. It is a denser application, and if you are a client hitting a barrier there, please tell us and we will prioritise it.

5. Telling us about a problem

If something on this site is hard or impossible to use, we want to hear about it, and you do not need to describe it in technical terms. Tell us what you were trying to do and what happened.

• Email ContactUs@ClearPathMSP.com
• Call (512) 481-4017

We will acknowledge you within two business days and tell you what we are going to do about it and roughly when. If something on the site is blocking you, we will also do the thing for you in the meantime, whether that is taking an order, sending you a document in another format, or answering the question you came for. You should not have to wait for a fix to get served.