Accessibility

WCAG 2.1 at level AA, checked during development rather than claimed afterwards. The contrast ratios below were measured, not estimated, and the figures are written into the top of the stylesheet so anybody can recompute them.

The core figure on this site is a bar cut into sections. Four things separate a working section from a waiting one, in this order:

• the words in it — every section is labelled, and the label says whether anybody is on site;
• the fill — flat against a diagonal hatch, which survives greyscale and print;
• the border and the join marks between sections;
• the colour, last.

Every bar is also repeated underneath as a real table, with a caption and proper row and column headers, listing each section, whether anybody is on site, the range, what is being waited for and why it cannot be shortened. That table is not a fallback: on a narrow screen it is often the better of the two.

Body text is ink on the page ground at 12.71:1. The working blue reaches 5.75:1, the brown 4.86:1 and the accent 5.45:1, all of which pass at normal size.

Two of the eight colours do not. The secondary grey reaches 3.98:1 and the waiting fill 1.68:1 against the page. The palette is fixed by the brief and cannot be changed, so those two are simply not allowed to carry body text: the grey appears on text only at large sizes and on non-text elements, and the waiting fill never carries text on the page ground at all — where a label sits inside a waiting section it is dark ink on that fill, which measures 7.55:1. Hierarchy on this site is done with size, case and letter-spacing rather than with tone.

One thing on this site moves: the bar at the top of the home page opens itself once, over about five seconds, and then stops. Nothing loops, nothing flashes and nothing auto-advances.

If your system is set to reduce motion, it does not play at all — the bar renders in its final state immediately and the sentence that the movement was making is simply present as text. Nothing is lost.

• Everything interactive is reachable with the keyboard, in a sensible order, with a visible focus outline that is three pixels wide and offset from the element.
• The temperature control is a native range input, so the arrow keys, Home and End all work without any code from us, and its current value is announced as it changes.
• There is a skip link to the main content as the first thing in the tab order.
• Every page has one h1 and a heading structure that does not skip levels.
• Decorative artwork is hidden from screen readers rather than announced as an unlabelled image. Anything that carries meaning has that meaning written in the page as well.
• Form fields have real labels, and errors are announced rather than only coloured.

There is a print stylesheet. Navigation, the slider and the cookie notice drop out; the bars keep their fills so they still read on paper. The card and the timeline are things people hand to somebody else in the house, so they had to survive a printer.

On a very narrow screen a bar with many sections becomes tall, because the sections stack rather than shrink. We think that is the right trade-off — a legible stack beats an illegible row — but it does mean a long stage takes a lot of scrolling. The table underneath is more compact if you would rather use that.

If something here does not work for you, write to support@bakermartin.shop or call +44 7972840596. Tell us what you were using and what happened. We will reply, and we will tell you what we are going to do about it.