Accessibility statement

The standard we hold ourselves to

WCAG 2.2, level AA, across telehealthgraded.com, applied to the pages we write and the components we build. That is a target we design and review against, not a conformance claim — nobody outside this desk has audited the site, so calling it conformant would be an accessibility statement that is itself untrue, which is worse than not having one.

A few things sit outside what we can promise, and it is better to name them than let you find out: pages on a provider’s own site after you follow a link are theirs, not ours; and the web font is served by Google, so if it fails to load the page falls back to your system fonts and stays readable.

What we built in

• A skip link. The first thing a keyboard lands on is a link straight to the page content, past the masthead.
• A menu that works with JavaScript off. On a phone, the navigation collapses behind a control that is a plain focusable form element, not a script. Tab to it, press space, and it opens. If our JavaScript fails to load, the menu still works.
• Real landmarks. One banner, one main, one navigation, one footer, and one first-level heading per page, so a screen reader can jump between them instead of reading the chrome again on every page.
• Tap targets that are actually tappable. Every link and control in the chrome is at least 40 pixels high, and 48 in the mobile menu.
• Motion you can turn off. The only animation on this site is a small lift on a card under the pointer, and it is disabled entirely when your system asks for reduced motion.
• Wide things scroll inside their own box. A price table scrolls sideways within its own frame. The page itself never scrolls sideways at any width.
• Aligned figures. Prices use tabular numerals so columns of dollar amounts line up digit for digit rather than drifting.

Color never carries a grade by itself

This one is worth its own section, because the grade is the whole product here. We tested our four grade colors as a set and found that under protanopia the amber we use for a caveat and the green we use for a pass sit too close together to tell apart by hue. Red and amber are marginal even with full color vision.

We did not change the palette, because those four colors are the network standard and they are correct as status colors. We changed what we are allowed to do with them: every grade on this site renders as a colored chip with the letter, the word, and a shape glyph inside it. The letter and the word are what carry the meaning. If you cannot see the color at all, you lose nothing.

The same rule applies to the charts: a comparison uses one hue with direct labels rather than five colors you have to decode against a key. How we grade covers the scale itself.

What we have not done

We have not commissioned an independent audit, and we have not tested every page end to end with a screen reader, a switch device, or voice control. We check each page at several widths, with a keyboard, and against contrast requirements before it ships. That is a floor, not a certification, and we would rather you knew which one this is.

Tell us what broke

If any part of Telehealth Graded stopped you from getting to something, write to desk@telehealthgraded.com and say which page, what you were using, and what happened. That goes to the same desk as everything else — see contact.

Here is what we commit to doing with it:

• A barrier that blocks you from reaching content is treated as a defect, not a feature request — the same category as a wrong price, which is the most serious thing that can be wrong on this site.
• We reply to say we have it, and tell you what we found and whether we can fix it. If we can’t fix something quickly, we say so and offer you the content another way rather than going quiet.
• While a fix is outstanding, we will read the page to you, send it as plain text, or get you the number you were after by email. Ask for whichever is useful.
• A fix ships with a date on it, and anything we learn from it goes into the components rather than being patched on one page — these pages are all built from the same handful of parts, so a problem on one is usually a problem on all of them.

We are a small desk and we are not going to publish a response-time promise we can’t keep, which would be its own kind of inaccessibility. What we will do is answer, and not make you chase us.