Seven designs. One standard.
Most sites have one design to get right. This one has fourteen - seven presentations, each in light and dark - and every one of them is held to the same accessibility standard. This page says what we meet, what we do not yet, and how to tell us if something gets in your way.
This site is built to WCAG 2.2 level AA, the same standard as everything neo optic builds. You can operate it entirely by keyboard, scale the text to 125%, switch to dark or high contrast, and stop the motion - and those choices follow you from page to page. It is partially conformant: automated testing across all fourteen presentations has found colour contrast below the line in some of them, and we say exactly where below rather than round it up to a pass.
(01)What we build to
Every page targets WCAG 2.2 at level AA - the current version of the international accessibility standard, published by the W3C in October 2023. AA is the level public bodies, larger organisations and procurement teams ask for. neo optic's wider approach, and why we can stand behind it, is set out on the neo optic accessibility page. This page is about this site specifically.
(02)What that means in practice
In plain terms, on this site you can:
- operate everything with a keyboard alone, with a focus outline you can always see, and a skip link straight to the main content;
- use a screen reader against proper headings, landmarks and labels rather than a wall of unlabelled boxes;
- scale the text up without the layout breaking or clipping;
- tap controls sized for real fingers rather than pinpricks;
- have motion stop the moment your device asks for less of it;
- and change how the site looks and reads, from the panel in the header.
(03)The settings this site gives you
The accessibility panel is reachable from the header on any page:
- Light or dark - follows your system on a first visit, then remembers what you chose.
- Three text sizes, up to 125%, on top of whatever zoom your browser already applies.
- Higher contrast, which strengthens body text and borders throughout.
- Reduced motion - if your device asks for it, animation and parallax are switched off rather than merely slowed.
Your settings carry across to this page and back again. Losing your text size on the way to the accessibility statement would be a poor joke, so we made sure it does not happen.
(04)Testing fourteen designs, not one
This is where an ordinary accessibility statement stops and this one carries on. Because the site can be viewed in seven completely different presentations, a fix that corrects one design can quietly break another - at 125% text, on a narrow phone, in dark mode.
So the site is checked automatically across the full range of what it offers: every presentation, light and dark, all three text sizes, with and without high contrast and reduced motion, at phone, tablet and desktop widths. That check looks for content overflowing the screen, text clipped by its container, controls that disappear, keyboard focus that is not returned when a panel closes, and colour contrast below the AA threshold. Every combination, every time - not the default design and a hope.
(05)What is not conformant yet
Automated testing across all fourteen presentations found colour contrast below the 4.5:1 threshold in several places:
- primary buttons in several presentations do not reach 4.5:1 between the label and the button colour;
- some supporting text - captions, record labels and dates - sits between 3.8:1 and 4.5:1 against its background.
We are correcting the affected colours. [Target date for these corrections to be inserted.]
Some text sits over photography, where the contrast depends on the part of the image behind it. Those cases cannot be measured automatically and are checked by eye.
(06)What we do not claim
Honesty is part of accessibility. We do not claim full AAA - the W3C itself advises against requiring it across a whole site, and on this one, enhanced 7:1 contrast would flatten seven distinct designs into a single grey one.
We also do not claim that automated testing is sufficient. It cannot tell whether a heading structure makes sense, whether an error message is actually useful, or whether alternative text describes the right thing. Those need a person, and a tool that reports otherwise is not being straight with you.
(07)Found a barrier? Tell us
No test catches everything. If any part of this site gets in your way, or you need something in a different format, email talk@neooptic.com or call 0800 688 9010. Tell us the page and what happened and we will reply within five working days.
Reports of this kind are genuinely useful - they find things automated testing never will. Naming a way to report a problem is itself part of the standard, and we mean it as more than a formality.
(08)Enforcement
The Equality Act 2010 requires service providers to make reasonable adjustments so disabled people are not put at a substantial disadvantage. If you contact us about an accessibility problem and are not satisfied with our response, you can contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service, which handles enquiries about the Equality Act.
If a platform offers you a choice of designs, ask one thing: does every design meet the accessibility standard, or only the one in the demo? A theme switcher that quietly drops a site below the line the moment someone picks a different look is a liability dressed as a feature. We test all fourteen, publish what fails, and fix it. Ask us about it.