Accessibility
Accessibility statement
This site is used on phones in trucks, on tablets in mechanical rooms and on desktops in offices, by people with a wide range of vision, hearing, motor and cognitive differences. It should work for all of them.
- Target
- WCAG 2.2 Level AA
- Status
- Partially conformant
- Last reviewed
- September 2026
Our commitment
True Trade Path aims to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 at Level AA. We state our status as partially conformant, which means most of the site meets the standard and we know of specific areas that do not yet. Those areas are listed below rather than omitted, because a statement that claims full conformance without qualification is usually a statement nobody has tested.
Accessibility here is not a compliance exercise bolted on at the end. The design constraints that make this site look the way it does — high contrast, sharp edges, generous type, no decorative motion, no content behind hover — are the same constraints that make it accessible.
What we have done
- Structure and semantics
- Pages are built from landmarks, headings in sequence, real lists and real tables with scoped headers and captions. Calculators are forms: every control has a programmatically associated label, related controls are grouped in fieldsets with legends, and help text is linked to its input rather than floating beside it.
- Keyboard operation
- Every interactive element is reachable and operable by keyboard alone, in an order that matches the visual layout. The navigation mega-menu, mobile panel and search results are fully keyboard-driven, and a skip link precedes the header on every page. Focus is never trapped and is always visible.
- Visible focus
- Focus indicators use a high-contrast outline with an offset so they remain visible against every background on the site, including the navy bands and the red accent. We do not remove outlines without replacing them.
- Colour and contrast
- Body text, headings and interface labels meet or exceed the WCAG 2.2 AA contrast ratios against their backgrounds. Colour is never the sole means of conveying a result: status is always carried by a label, an icon or explicit text as well as a hue, which matters because several of our tools report pass, caution and fail states.
- Results announced to assistive technology
- Calculator results update as you type. The result region is marked as a live region with a polite priority so a screen reader announces the new figure without interrupting the user mid-input.
- Works without JavaScript
- Content pages — trade guides, cost guides, diagnostics, licensing and the directory — are server-rendered and fully readable with JavaScript disabled, including FAQ content, which uses native disclosure elements rather than scripted accordions. Calculators require JavaScript to compute, which is a functional necessity rather than a choice.
- Motion and zoom
- Animation is limited to short transitions and is suppressed for anyone who has set a reduced-motion preference at the operating system level. Pages reflow to 320 pixels wide and support 400 percent zoom without loss of content or horizontal scrolling, apart from wide data tables, which scroll horizontally by design and are marked as scrollable regions.
- Text and language
- Text is never rendered as an image. Body copy uses a system font stack at a comfortable measure and can be resized by the browser without breaking layout. The document language is declared, and abbreviations that a reader is unlikely to know are expanded on first use.
How we test
Every template is checked by keyboard alone, at 400 percent zoom, and at a 320 pixel viewport width. Automated checks run against axe-core. Automated tools catch perhaps a third of real issues, so templates are additionally reviewed manually with VoiceOver on macOS and iOS, and with NVDA on Windows.
We do not treat a clean automated report as evidence of an accessible page. Where a test conflicts with a visual preference, the test wins.
Known limitations
These are the things we are aware of and have not yet resolved. This list is maintained honestly — if you find something not on it, we would like to hear about it.
- Wide comparison tables
- Several tables — trade comparison, apprenticeship wage steps, metro cost adjustments — carry more columns than fit a phone screen. They scroll horizontally inside a focusable region. That is usable, but it is not as good as a genuinely responsive presentation, and we intend to replace them with stacked layouts on narrow screens.
- Third-party advertising
- Advertising is served by Google AdSense. We control the placement, the reserved space and the labelling, but we do not control the markup inside an ad frame, and some creatives fall short of the standard we hold our own interface to. Ad slots are labelled and sit outside the main reading flow so they can be skipped by landmark navigation.
- Complex calculator output
- A few tools produce long multi-column breakdowns that are dense to navigate linearly with a screen reader. The headline result and the recommendation always come first, before the breakdown, so the conclusion is reachable without traversing the detail — but the detail itself could be structured better.
Report a barrier
If any part of this site prevented you from doing something, tell us what page you were on, what you were trying to do, and what assistive technology and browser you were using. Email hello@truetradepath.com with “Accessibility” in the subject line.
We acknowledge reports within five business days and tell you what we intend to do and by when. If a fix will take time, we will offer another way to get you the information in the meantime.
Assessment and standards
This statement reflects a self-assessment. It has not been audited by an independent third party, and we say so rather than implying otherwise. Our target standard is WCAG 2.2 Level AA, which is also the standard referenced by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and by the European EN 301 549 harmonised standard.
This statement was last reviewed in September 2026 and is revised whenever a template changes materially or a reported barrier is resolved.