Legal · website accessibility statement

Built to be read, heard, and tabbed through.

This page is about the website. Accessibility on the festival site in August is a separate page with its own commitments. Here is how these pages are built, what has been checked, what is honestly still open, and the form that tells us where something blocks you.

Report a barrier What is still open

Current as of 29 August 2026 · target WCAG 2.1 level AA · two known failures open, and both of them are on this page

What is built in, page by page.

Each of these is a rule the build enforces. A page that breaks one of them is sent back before it publishes.

Enforced at build time · every page on this site

Where this site stands
Line	State
Target	WCAG 2.1 AA
Contrast	Measured per colour band, not judged by eye
Keyboard	Every control, including the sections curtain
Motion	Honours prefers-reduced-motion
Independent audit	Not yet commissioned
French mirror	In preparation
Known failures	Two, listed below with what closes each

Ten build rules · checked before a page publishes

01

Contrast is measured, never eyeballed

This site is made of saturated colour fields, which is exactly where contrast usually fails. Every ink carries a measured pairing: turmeric, matcha and saffron take dark type, indigo and sumac take light type, and the brightest red is limited to headlines and short heavy lines because its best pairing clears the large-text bar and not the body bar.

02

One H1, and headings that descend

Each page opens on a single first-level heading, and levels descend without gaps, so a screen reader's heading list works as a table of contents.

03

Keyboard reaches everything

A skip link comes first. Every link, button, form control, accordion and the sections curtain works from the keyboard, the curtain closes on Escape, and focus returns to the control that opened it.

04

Focus is always visible

The focus outline is never removed anywhere on this site. On a colour band it is drawn in the type colour of that band so it stays visible on every ground.

05

Nothing depends on hover

The picture that rides the cursor across the ruled rows has a keyboard path built into the same component: focus a row and the same picture appears.

06

Motion answers the system setting

The ink flood and the headline wipes resolve instantly and the community parade stops when the operating system asks for reduced motion. There is no parallax, no auto-playing carousel and no scroll hijacking anywhere here.

07

Forms label every field

Every control carries a visible label tied to it, help text is announced with the field it belongs to, a required field says «required» in words, and no form relies on a placeholder to say what it wants. An error names the field it belongs to in the words of its own label, one line at the head of the form counts what is still missing, and a form sent with JavaScript switched off comes back as an ordinary page with a reference number.

08

Text scales and reflows

Type is set in relative units and the layout reflows to a single column, so enlarging text or working at a narrow window keeps the page usable without sideways scrolling.

09

Images carry real alternative text

Every picture that means something is described in a sentence written for the page it stands on, and the build refuses a frame that arrives without one. The wording used for the festival scenes is being reworked, and that item is in the open list below.

10

Emphasis is carried in words

A page read in greyscale keeps its meaning: headings, labels and the text of a message all survive the colour coming off. The dated timeline and the passport strip print «done», «now» and «planned» in words beside the mark, and a field in error carries a line of text of its own as well as a coloured rule.

What is still open.

A statement listing only the good parts is worth nothing. These are the gaps we know about today, each with what closes it. The two marked as failing today are measured failures against the standard this page aims at, found by testing the built pages themselves.

Known gaps · this list gets shorter, and it gets published either way

Failing todayPlanned The French page prints its menu and its footer in English The holding page at /fr/ is written in French. Around it, about 350 words of English sit under the page's French language declaration with no marker of their own — the sections curtain, the subscription block in the footer, and the sentences a form uses when an answer is missing. A screen reader set to French pronounces them by French rules and they arrive as noise. WCAG 3.1.2 asks for a marker on a passage in another language. Marking every English run closes the noise; the French mirror closes the item.
Failing todayPlanned A wide table scrolls sideways and the keyboard cannot move it Rates, rules and shifts stand in tables that run wider than a phone, inside a strip that scrolls sideways. A mouse drags that strip and a finger swipes it, and a keyboard finds nothing inside it to hold focus, so the columns past the right edge stay out of reach — while the hint that says «Swipe» is written for a thumb and hidden from a screen reader. WCAG 2.1.1 Keyboard is level A. The strip gets focus of its own, a name that says what it holds, and a hint addressed to the keyboard.
Closed 29 August 2026Done Four failures came off this list in one day The roll-call of communities has a pause button now, on all six pages that carry it. An error names the field it belongs to, and one line at the head of the form says how many answers are missing and which one comes first. A form sent with JavaScript switched off lands on an ordinary page carrying its reference number. The dated timeline, the passport strip and a field in error each print their state as a word. All four stood on this list the day before, and each was checked on the built pages before it came off.
Being rewrittenPlanned The festival scenes are described as though they had happened The scenes on this site illustrate a festival planned for August 2027. Their alternative text was written to describe what is in the frame and reads today as a report of an event, which is what a screen reader, a search engine and a link preview all receive. Every scene description is being reopened with the frame it belongs in — an illustration of a plan — and the still lifes stay as they are, because they claim nothing.
Not yet commissionedPlanned An independent audit Everything on this page has been checked by the team that built it. An audit by people who did not build it is planned before the first city application, because a self-assessment is the weakest kind of assurance.
Not yet runPlanned Testing with people who use assistive technology Screen-reader testing here has been done by the builders, on the desktop. Sessions with people who use a screen reader, a switch or voice control every day are worth more, and we are looking for the right partner to run them.
In preparationPlanned The French mirror A federally bilingual city deserves both languages. The site is English today, the language switch leads to a holding page that says so in French, and the mirror is written page for page before it opens. The English menu and footer standing around that holding page are the first item on this list.
As the site growsPlanned Search and the participant account Both arrive later. Both get the same keyboard and screen-reader work as everything already here, and they get it before they open.

Tell us what blocked you.

A barrier report is the most useful message this site can receive. Name the page and what happened, and a person answers you and says what we are doing about it.

Website accessibility · a person reads every report and answers

A concrete path curving through a mown park at sunset with a metal handrail along one side and a tactile warning strip across the entrance, benches and trees in the low light beyond. — A rail along a park path, and a tactile strip across the entrance

Or write to us directly The rest of the contacts

What standard are you aiming at?

WCAG 2.1 at level AA, which is the bar Ontario's rules point to. Where a page falls short of it today, this statement says so above, and the level gets claimed outright on the day the list up there is empty.

The colours are very strong. Can I turn them down?

The colour is the design, so there is no quiet mode. Every band is measured for contrast, every state that used to ride on colour alone prints its word beside the mark, and a browser or operating system reader mode strips the page to plain text without losing content. If a specific band is unreadable for you, that is exactly what the form above is for.

Does the site work without JavaScript?

Reading it does. Pages are plain HTML, the accordions are native elements, the navigation is a list of links, and nothing on a page waits for a script to appear. A form submits as an ordinary POST as well, and the browser lands on the thanks page with the reference number for what was sent. One thing does wait for the script: the button that stops the moving roll-call, and the roll-call itself stands still whenever the operating system asks for reduced motion.

How long until I hear back?

Within ten working days — the one answering standard this organisation holds itself to, on every page of this site. A report is read by a person, and the answer tells you what we found and what happens next. The fix itself takes as long as it takes, and the answer says which of the two you are getting: a repair, or a date.

Can I get this information another way?

Ask, and any page here comes to you as plain text, a large-print document or read aloud over the phone. Say which suits you in the message.

Legal · three pages and a map

Where to go next.

Found a wall? Name it.

One report from somebody who hit the wall is worth more than a month of our own testing.

Report a barrier Accessibility on the day