Accessibility

We aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 at level AA. Body text is checked against a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 against its background; most of it exceeds 7:1, and the primary text colour measures 16.6:1.

This is a statement of how the service is built and tested. It is not a claim of certification by anyone else.

The three risk levels are distinguished by shape, fill pattern and an all-capitals word — never by hue. There is no red-amber-green scale anywhere on this site.

Two reasons, and both of them are about being understood:

• Around one in twelve men and one in two hundred women has a colour vision deficiency. Those are also, disproportionately, the people who have been told they mis-sort the laundry. A verdict they cannot read is not a verdict.
• This service is about colour. Using colour to state a conclusion about colour is ambiguous even for someone with typical vision.

The three marks — a filled square with a second rule around it, a diagonally hatched square, and an outlined square — are all drawn in the same ink, and each is always accompanied by its label in words. They read identically in greyscale, on a photocopy, and on a phone in direct sunlight.

Nothing on this site requires a mouse. The drum simulation accepts drag and drop for people who want it, but every garment in it is a real button: tab to it and press Enter or Space to move it in or out of the drum. The self-test slider is a native range input and responds to the arrow keys.

Focus is always visible — a 2px outline offset from the element, never removed. A skip link is the first thing in the tab order on every page. The navigation dropdowns open on focus as well as on hover, and the whole navigation is reachable without hovering on touch devices.

If your system is set to reduce motion, we respect it. The drum stops rotating and colour changes apply instantly rather than fading.

The colour change itself is not suppressed, because it is the content rather than decoration — it is the thing the simulation exists to show. Instead, a text panel below the drum states in words which items are affected and how strongly, updating as you change the load. That panel is a live region, is present for everyone, and is the canonical statement of what the simulation demonstrates.

The self-test illustration is the same: the five steps are written out in full above it and are complete without the animation ever playing.

Body text is 17px with a line height of 1.68 and a measure capped at 68 characters. The layout is built with relative units and reflows to 400% zoom without horizontal scrolling. Nothing depends on a fixed pixel height, and no text is rendered as an image.

Every image has alternative text describing what is in the photograph. Decorative rules and marks are hidden from assistive technology rather than announced as meaningless elements.

The first-wash card is designed to be printed. The print stylesheet drops the background to white, forces text to black, removes every photograph and every control, and converts the risk marks to line art so they survive a monochrome laser printer. It fits one page at both A4 and US Letter.

This matters more than it sounds: a card taped to a machine in a badly lit utility room is read by people who did not produce it.

• The drum simulation communicates a quantity through a colour tint. The text equivalent describes the same information in words, but the visual and the text are not identical experiences.
• Reading a composition label requires taking a photograph, which assumes a device with a camera and enough sight to aim it. Anyone who cannot do that can type the fibre percentages instead, and the reading is identical.
• We have tested with VoiceOver on Safari and NVDA on Firefox. We have not tested every combination of screen reader and browser.

If something here does not work for you, write to support@artgalleryclothing.shop or call +44 20 8013 8366. Tell us what you were trying to do and what got in the way; you do not need to know the technical name for it.

We aim to reply within one working day and to fix accessibility problems ahead of other work.