Accessibility

The standard we build to

This site is built to meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA. That is a working floor rather than a badge: it has not been independently audited, and saying so is more useful to you than a compliance claim you cannot verify.

It matters more than usual here, because a significant share of this site’s readers are public and institutional owners, and a public entity frequently has its own accessibility expectations of the vendors it links to.

Colour and contrast

Every text and background pairing on this site was measured rather than eyeballed. Body text measures 13.95:1 on the page ground and 12.90:1 on the tinted band. The muted grey used for secondary text measures 6.51:1 and 6.02:1, and is used only at body size and above.

There is exactly one colour on this site besides black and paper: a single deep red. It measures 7.16:1 on the page ground, and paper on it measures 7.16:1 as well, so it reads correctly whichever way round it is used.

That red means one of four things and nothing else: something is certified, a field is required, a figure is not yet priced, or an input is in error. It never means important, new or “our brand”. And it is never the only signal — a required field also carries the word “required”, an unpriced figure also reads “site visit”, and an error also carries a written message.

There is no blue and no green anywhere on this site, including in links and focus rings.

Keyboard

Everything interactive is reachable and operable from a keyboard in a sensible order. Focus is always visible: a two-pixel outline, offset, in one fixed colour that never changes meaning.

A skip link to the main content is the first thing in the tab order on every page. The navigation on small screens opens from a real button with aria-expanded, and Escape closes it and returns focus to the button. Wide schedules that scroll sideways become focusable regions so they can be scrolled with arrow keys, and only when they actually overflow.

Screen readers and structure

Every page has one h1 and a heading order that does not skip levels. Landmarks are real: a banner, a primary navigation with a label, a main region, and a footer navigation with its own label.

Every schedule of values is a real table with a caption, a header row and row headers, so it is read as a grid rather than as a run of numbers. Units of measure sit in their own column rather than being jammed into the figure, so a price is announced as “one hundred and forty-five to two hundred and forty-five dollars, square foot” rather than as a string of symbols.

The division numbers in the left margin are real text in the document order, so a screen reader encounters the reference before the section it belongs to, exactly as a sighted reader does.

The circular device at the foot of each page is decorative and is hidden from assistive technology. It conveys nothing that is not also written out in words on the page.

Motion

There is one authored animation on this site: the circular device fades and settles into place once, over about six hundred milliseconds, the way a stamp lands. It happens once per page and never repeats. Everything else is a short fade as a section scrolls into view.

If your system asks for reduced motion, all of it is switched off and the page renders in its finished state. Nothing loops, nothing auto-plays, nothing flashes at a rate that could trigger a seizure.

Without JavaScript

The whole site works. Every page renders, every schedule of values is a complete table, the questions open because they are native disclosure elements, the telephone number is a real link, the contact form submits and validates on the server, and the footer carries the complete navigation. JavaScript adds the mobile menu and the fade. Nothing depends on it.

Text, zoom and print

Everything is real text; there are no images of text anywhere, including in the tables. Type is set in a serif at a deliberately generous reading size, sized in relative units so it follows your browser setting, and the layout holds at 200% zoom and at 400% in a single column without horizontal scrolling.

The budgets page is built to print, on purpose. Somebody is going to take a number to a board meeting on paper, and a table that only works on a screen is useless at exactly the moment it matters most.

What we have not done

We have not had an independent audit. We have not tested with every combination of screen reader and browser. There is no accessibility overlay or widget on this site, deliberately — those tend to interfere with the assistive technology you have already configured.

Telling us something is broken

Telephone (719) 570-1456, Mon–Fri 7:30 AM–4:30 PM MT. Or email [email protected]. Tell us the page and what happened, and what you were using if you know. We will fix it, and if a fix will take time we will tell you how to get the information another way meanwhile.

If something on this site is stopping you sizing a project, telephone and size it with us directly. The website is a convenience; the project does not depend on it.