Accessibility

The short version

We target WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Rather than assert conformance, this page lists what is actually measured, by what, and what is still untested. If something on this site is unusable for you, we want to hear about it — details at the bottom.

What is measured automatically, on every change

These run in a real browser against the built site, on every page type, in both light and dark themes. They are not a one-off audit; a change that breaks any of them fails the build.

• Colour contrast — every text element is measured against its actual background, composited through any transparency, and held to the AA ratio for its size. Measured at two screen widths in both themes.
• Touch target size — every interactive control is checked for a minimum 24 px target, including the invisible hit areas some controls extend themselves with.
• Horizontal overflow — no page may scroll sideways at 390 px, the width of a common phone.
• Keyboard access — every page has a working skip link, every focusable control shows a visible focus indicator, and no page contains a keyboard trap.
• Heading structure — headings descend in order without skipping levels, checked on every page type.
• Reduced motion — if your system asks for reduced motion, every animation on this site collapses to its final state.

What we have not tested

This is the part most accessibility statements leave out, and it is the part that tells you how far to trust the rest.

• No testing with real assistive technology. Nothing here has been driven with a screen reader by someone who uses one daily. Automated checks find missing labels and broken structure; they cannot tell you whether a page is pleasant to listen to.
• No audit by a disabled user. Every check described above was written by the people who built the site.
• Automated checks cover a minority of the criteria. They catch the measurable ones. Judgement-based criteria — whether a link's text makes sense out of context, whether an error message actually explains what to do — are not covered.
• Dark mode carries tracked debt. Dark mode is measured to the same standard as light, and any known exception is recorded and counted so it cannot grow silently.

Known limitations we have chosen not to hide

• Some pages carry dense comparison tables. They scroll horizontally inside their own container rather than forcing the page to scroll, but a wide table is still harder to read on a small screen than we would like.
• Third-party destinations we link to — retailers, course providers, universities — have their own accessibility, over which we have no control.

Tell us what is broken

If any part of this site is difficult or impossible for you to use, email press@onlineengineering.com. Tell us the page and what happened, and if you can, the assistive technology and browser you were using.

A report about a barrier is treated as a defect, not a suggestion — the same as any other bug.