Accessibility at Valify.

What we aim for

We work towards the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 at Level AA. That is the standard most UK organisations use as a benchmark, and the one procurement teams usually ask about.

We do not claim to fully conform to it. Parts of this site have been measured against specific AA criteria and pass; other criteria have not been formally audited, and the site has not been tested with people who use assistive technology day to day. Saying “fully accessible” would be a claim we cannot support.

What has been measured, and what it found

These are checks run against the live site, not intentions.

Colour contrast

Every distinct text style on all thirteen public pages was checked by computing its contrast ratio against the actual background it sits on — including translucent tints, composited rather than assumed. All of them now meet the AA threshold of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.

This found real failures rather than confirming a guess. The grey used for most body text measured 4.14:1 against the page background and 3.59:1 on raised panels; the grey used for fine print measured 1.72:1, which is effectively unreadable for anyone with reduced contrast sensitivity. Both were changed, along with the blue and red used for small labels. The visual hierarchy between body text and fine print is now carried mainly by size and weight, because colour alone was never doing that job for a reader who cannot see the difference.

Keyboard access

Every page can be operated from the keyboard alone. The navigation is short and sits in a <nav> landmark ahead of a <main> landmark, so screen reader users can jump straight to the content without tabbing through it. Focus is visible on interactive elements. The mobile menu can be opened, used and closed from the keyboard, and closes on Escape.

Structure

Every page has one <h1>, a <main> landmark, a page title, and a declared language. Every form field has a label, every image has alternative text, and every button and link has a name that describes it.

Known gaps

These are things we know are not right yet.

• Heading levels skip in places. On some pages a heading level is jumped — an <h2> followed by an <h4>, for example. It does not stop a screen reader working, but it makes the outline harder to navigate by heading.
• No testing with assistive technology users. The checks above are automated and manual-by-developer. Nobody who relies on a screen reader, voice control or a switch device has tested this site, so there will be problems these checks cannot find.
• PDF reports are not tagged for accessibility. A report downloaded as a PDF is generated from the page and is readable as text, but it does not carry the structural tagging that makes a PDF properly navigable by a screen reader. The same report on screen does.
• The uploaded documents themselves are outside our control. Valify reads whatever RAMS document you upload. If that file is inaccessible, the report describes its contents but does not fix it.
• No formal third-party audit. Nothing here has been reviewed by an external accessibility auditor.

Tell us if something does not work

If any part of this site is difficult or impossible for you to use, email support@valify.co.uk and say what you were trying to do and what happened. We will reply, and if it is something we can fix we will tell you when.

If you need something from Valify in a different format — a report as plain text, for instance — ask and we will send it.

How this statement is maintained

This page is reviewed when the site changes in a way that affects it. The measurements described above are re-run against the live site rather than taken on trust, and this page is updated when what it says stops being true.

See also our limitations, Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.