Accessibility
Our target for this site is WCAG 2.1, Level AA.
That is the standard we build and test against, stated as an aim rather than a certification. We have not commissioned a third-party audit, we do not publish a conformance claim or a VPAT, and we will not tell you this site is certified. What follows is what we have actually done, what we know is unfinished, what the documents we deliver to you do, and how to tell us we missed something.
Commitment
Why this page is not boilerplate.
We sell language access to public agencies. A vendor in this business whose own website locks people out is arguing against itself.
Language access and disability access are the same problem seen from two sides: a notice that cannot be read is a notice that was not delivered. So the commitment here is specific enough to be checked, and it stops where the evidence stops.
What “aim and test” means here.
It means the guidelines are the specification we build to, and that the site is checked against them before a page ships. It does not mean a certificate exists. Nobody certifies WCAG conformance, and an automated checker cannot establish it — the automated tools catch a minority of the failures that actually block people, which is why the checks below are mostly done by hand.
- A keyboard-only pass over each template: tab through it, operate everything, leave.
- A screen-reader read-through of each template before it ships.
- Browser zoom to 200%, and narrow viewports, checked for reflow and truncation.
- Contrast checked for every text and background pair in the palette, with the measured ratios recorded next to the color values rather than assumed.
- An automated checker on pages as they are built, as a floor and not as evidence.
Your obligations are yours.
Agencies buying from us are usually working to accessibility requirements of their own. We do not determine what those are for you and we do not certify that anything we hand over satisfies them. What we do is tell you precisely what this site and our deliverables do, so your own review has something factual to check.
This website
What we have done, and what we have not.
Each item below is a decision made in the build, not an intention. If one of them is not true on a page you are reading, that is a bug and we want the report.
Done.
- Headings that never skip a level. One h1 per page, and the levels below it descend in order, so the heading list a screen reader offers is a usable table of contents rather than a scramble.
- A skip-to-content link. First stop in the tab order on every page, visible the moment it takes focus, so a keyboard user is not tabbing through the navigation on each visit.
- Visible focus indicators. Every link, button, and form control shows where focus is. We do not remove an outline without putting a clearer one in its place.
- Text contrast checked to AA. Every text and background pair in the palette is measured against 4.5:1 for body text and 3:1 for large text. The lightest greys in the palette are reserved for hairlines and decoration and are never used for body copy.
- No meaning carried by color alone. Where a status is shown, a word says what the color says. Links are underlined, not merely tinted.
- Resizable text. Type is set in relative units and survives browser zoom and text-only zoom; the layout reflows to narrow widths without a horizontal scrollbar and without cutting content off.
- Keyboard operability. Everything on the site can be reached and operated from the keyboard, including the mobile menu, which reports its own state and closes on navigation. There are no keyboard traps.
- No autoplaying media. No video, no audio, no carousel, no auto-advancing anything, nothing that starts on its own.
- No motion-triggered content. Nothing appears, moves, or changes because you scrolled or hovered. The only movement on the site is a short color or position change on hover, and it never carries information.
- Real text and a declared language. Content is live text, not pictures of text, and the page declares its language so a screen reader pronounces it correctly. Decorative icons are hidden from assistive technology; icons that carry meaning have a text label.
Not done, and stated rather than omitted.
- No third-party audit, no VPAT, no conformance claim. We have not commissioned an external evaluation and we do not publish an accessibility conformance report. If that changes, this page will say so and will say who did it.
- No third-party embedded content today. There is no video player, no map, no chat widget, no social embed, and no advertising on this site — so there is no component here whose accessibility we do not control. If one is ever added, it will be listed here with what we know about it.
- No PDFs published on this site today. Everything is HTML. If we publish a PDF, it will be tagged, and this page will note anything about it that falls short.
- Combinations we have not tried. Assistive technology, browser, and operating system combine in more ways than anyone tests. Something that works in our checks can still fail in yours. That is what the report route below is for, and a report is a favor to us rather than a complaint we tolerate.
What we deliver
Accessibility of the translation you receive.
A translated document that arrives as a flat image of a page has undone whatever accessibility work you did on the English. Delivery is where a language-access vendor either helps or quietly hurts.
The structure of your source comes across.
- Headings stay headings, lists stay lists, and table header cells stay table header cells. The reading order of the translated file follows the reading order of the source.
- Text is returned as live text — selectable, searchable, reflowable — not flattened into an image. Send a tagged PDF and you get a tagged PDF back.
- Alt text you supply is translated along with the rest of the document rather than left in English.
- Right-to-left scripts and CJK line breaking are set so the translated file reads and prints the way the source did, rather than arriving with reversed punctuation or broken lines.
The language is tagged, which matters more here than in English.
For web deliverables we return content with correct language attributes, so a screen reader switches voice and pronunciation instead of reading Spanish or Vietnamese with an English engine. Where a passage stays in the source language inside a translated document — a form name, a legal citation, an address — that passage is marked too. For document deliverables we set the document language. If you tell us your CMS strips attributes on paste, say so and we will give you the text in a form that survives it.
We flag what your source will carry into the translation.
Some accessibility problems are inherited. A scanned form is an image of text in every language. An untagged PDF is untagged after translation. Tables used for visual layout, images with no alt text, instructions that depend on color, and form fields without labels all reach the translated file intact. Where we see these, we tell you what we saw and what will not survive translation — before delivery, not after.
What we do not do is quietly fix them. Remediating a source document is a different job from translating it, we do not perform it as part of a translation, and we do not audit your source. We report; the decision and the work stay with you.
Report a barrier
Tell us what you hit.
A report about this site goes to a person, not a queue. We acknowledge every one within 5 business days.
What helps us reproduce it.
- The page you were on, or a description of it if a URL is awkward to send.
- What you were trying to do, and what happened instead.
- Your browser and operating system, and any assistive technology and version, if you know them.
- Whether it stopped you completely or only made the task harder. Both are worth reporting.
A screenshot helps and is never required. Asking someone to send a picture of a visual problem is not a reasonable condition for fixing one.
What happens next.
Within 5 business days you get a reply from us with one of three things: a fix already made, a date by which it will be, or a plain statement that we cannot solve it yet and what the workaround is in the meantime. If the barrier stopped you getting information you needed from us, tell us what you needed and we will send it another way while the fix is in progress.
Alternative formats.
Anything on this site can be sent another way on request — plain text in the body of an email, an accessible word-processing file, or large print. Tell us which format suits you and we will use it for anything we send you afterwards, without your having to ask again. If you need this information in a language other than English, name the language and we will arrange it.
- contact@civictranslation.comSubject line “Accessibility” routes it on arrival.
- Within 5 business days
- San Francisco, CA
- Monday–Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. Pacific