Accessibility

The target is WCAG 2.0 Level AA (the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines of the World Wide Web Consortium), which is what the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act requires of public-sector websites in Ontario and, by extension, of what school boards buy. In the US, the Department of Justice's 2024 rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act sets a higher bar for public schools and districts: WCAG 2.1 Level AA for their websites and the web content they provide, from April 26, 2027 for the largest (the rule on ada.gov). The automated checks here are already run against the WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 rules for levels A and AA.

• Plain words, with every abbreviation explained in brackets the first time it appears on each screen.
• Large tap targets, and a career deck you can move through with the keyboard arrows, by swiping, or by tapping anywhere on the card.
• Motion of 320 milliseconds or less, switched off entirely when the device asks for reduced motion.
• One colour scheme, dark ink on cream, with every text colour at 4.5 to 1 contrast or better.
• A skip link to the main content, one level-one heading on every page, and a section tracker that reads as a list.

24 October 2026, three passes by script. An automated pass with axe-core (a widely used free set of automated accessibility rules) over 33 page types (every kind of page on the site) at desktop and phone width. A keyboard pass over ten page types that tabbed through every control and tried the deck's arrow keys, the quiz's options and the section tracker's open and close keys. A third pass read the accessibility tree the browser hands a screen reader on 14 page types: every control must have a spoken name, every image an alt text, every page one level-one heading with no skipped levels.

26 October 2026, a screen reader pass by a person. Vedant Singh used the live site with NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access, a free screen reader) and Chrome on Windows, by ear and keyboard only, across ten tasks, one per tool: search, a career's screens, the quiz, both comparers, the program finder, the deadline calendar, a school page, the menu, the feedback box and Send to a student.

The script passes found contrast below 4.5 to 1 on muted text, coral text, one category colour and two comparer colours, and six markup faults (description lists, a list, a nameless button, a nested control, missing level-one headings on deck screens, duplicate landmark labels). The keyboard pass found every control reachable, named and with a visible focus ring, no focus traps, and the deck, quiz and tracker working from the keyboard; it found no skip link, which was added. The accessibility-tree pass found 72 links all called "its page" on the US finder, now named per school, and no announcements when results change, so both finders and the search box now carry a spoken status line. All were fixed the same day and the passes re-run on the live site came back clean on every page.

The screen reader pass found headings, landmarks, button names, tables and dialogs reading correctly, and 21 problems, most of them changes on screen that a screen reader was not told about: moving between a career's screens, the next quiz question, results and additions in the search boxes, the calendar's days, focus left on a disabled button or stranded after an addition, words run together in a name, and three links with the same name. All 21 were fixed on 26 October 2026, each checked by a script against the fixed site, and a follow-up automated pass darkened five category colours to 4.5 to 1.

• A pass with a phone screen reader (VoiceOver on iPhone or TalkBack on Android) has not yet been done and is the next step.
• Automated rules catch roughly a third of WCAG criteria; the keyboard and screen reader passes cover much of the rest, but no page has been tested by a person who relies on a screen reader every day. If that is you and you find a barrier, the box below is for you.
• A formal conformance report (a VPAT, the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template that some boards ask for) has not been written. One is produced on request for a licensed board.

The automated and keyboard passes are re-run after any change to the site's components and before any release a school board is told about. A reported accessibility problem is answered within one school day and fixed within three, under the same rule as a wrong figure, in the commitments.

Write to hello@career.help and say which page, what you were using (the browser, and the screen reader if any) and what happened. A person reads every message and answers within one school day. If you need any page in another form, say which and it will be sent.