Accessibility Statement

01 · What we claim

houtoslabs.com is partially conformant with WCAG 2.2 Level AA. “Partially conformant” is the accurate term: most of the site meets the standard, and some parts do not. We list the parts that do not in section 03, by name.

We do not claim certification. No one can certify a website against WCAG: conformance is a property of pages at a moment in time, assessed by whoever is looking. What we can tell you is what we tested, what we found, and what we did about it.

02 · How we tested

• Automated: axe-core rules run against page markup. Automated testing catches a meaningful share of issues (missing alt text, contrast, form labels, heading order), and it is not a substitute for the rest.
• Manual: keyboard-only traversal of the primary navigation, the grader form, and the contact form. Heading-order review by hand.
• Not yet done: a full screen-reader pass with NVDA, JAWS and VoiceOver. Testing with people who use assistive technology daily. Both are planned; neither has happened, and until they do this statement rests on our own testing rather than on lived use.

03 · Known issues, by name

Most accessibility statements leave this section vague. Ours names each issue.

• Small uppercase label text sits close to the contrast floor. Our monospaced eyebrow labels are set around 10px with wide letter-spacing at roughly 4.7:1. That passes AA numerically. Passing and comfortably legible are not the same thing, and we are treating this as an open item rather than a closed one.
• Screen-reader testing is incomplete. See section 02. We would rather say so than imply coverage we do not have.
• Sample report pages are dense. The example report pages carry large data tables built to demonstrate a layout. They have had less accessibility attention than the pages you are more likely to use, and we know it.
• One form field is labelled by placeholder text only. The annotation input in the client-dashboard preview (dashboard.html) carries a placeholder where it needs a programmatic label. That is a failure of WCAG 2.2 success criterion 3.3.2, Labels or Instructions: a placeholder disappears the moment you type, and it is not a reliable accessible name. Found by our own audit on 5 September 2026, open at the time of writing. Every other form control on the site has a label.

Recently fixed: the homepage skipped heading levels in three places (h1 → h3, and h2 → h4 twice). Our own grader flagged it against its heading-outline check. Corrected 5 September 2026. The two sample-report pages carried no skip-to-content link; both now have one. Corrected 5 September 2026.

04 · What we have built in

• A skip-to-content link on every page.
• lang declared on every page, so screen readers pronounce correctly.
• Every image carries alt text; decorative images carry an empty alt so assistive technology skips them.
• Form controls carry programmatic labels, with one exception we found in our own audit and have not fixed yet: the annotation field in the client-dashboard preview is labelled by placeholder text only. It is named in section 03.
• prefers-reduced-motion is honoured: if your system asks for less motion, animations do not play.
• No auto-playing media, no carousels that move on their own, no time limits on any interaction.
• Keyboard focus is visible and never trapped.

05 · Tell us about a barrier

If any part of this site is difficult or impossible for you to use, we want to hear about it. A note from you is worth more to us than another automated scan.

Email hello@houtoslabs.com with the page and what happened. A plain description is fine; you do not need to name a WCAG criterion. We aim to reply within two working days and will tell you honestly whether it is something we can fix quickly or something that needs real work.

If you are in the EU or UK and are not satisfied with our response, you may raise the matter with your national enforcement body under the European Accessibility Act or the equivalent local regulation.

06 · Why this page exists

We grade other people's sites on accessibility. A firm that does that without publishing its own position, its own defects, and a way to report the ones it missed is asking for trust it has not earned. This page is the standard we hold ourselves to. Hold us to it too.

Statement prepared 5 September 2026 by Ryan Bonelli, Houtos Labs · Reviewed against WCAG 2.2 AA · Next review: on any substantive design change, or within six months