Accessibility statement

This statement applies to the website at mashreeves.com (mash.), which is a personal site run by Michael Shreeves. It is not a public sector service, so the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 do not apply to it. This statement is published anyway, because a site that says it builds to WCAG 2.2 AA should be willing to say how far that actually got.

I want as many people as possible to be able to use this site. That means you should be able to:

• navigate the whole site using a keyboard alone
• switch between light and dark and have that choice remembered - the site opens in dark by default rather than following your device's setting, but light is one click away and stays chosen once you pick it
• increase text spacing without content being cut off
• use it with a screen reader

How accessible this site is

Colour, specifically, has been checked thoroughly and passes: every text colour pairing, every border and UI boundary, and Windows High Contrast mode have each been measured against the rendered page rather than assumed - see "What has been tested, and passed" below for the numbers. The site as a whole has not been fully assessed against WCAG 2.2 level AA - that is a broader claim than colour alone, and no screen reader test has been carried out, and reflow and zoom have not been checked on a real device, so claiming full compliance would be claiming testing that has not happened.

That is a deliberately cautious answer rather than a list of known barriers. Everything found so far has been fixed rather than listed - including, on 8 September 2026, a target-size claim on this very page that turned out not to be true until it was actually measured. That is also why this statement gets re-read against what was actually run each time, rather than trusted from what the previous version already said.

What has been tested, and passed

• Keyboard operation. Every interactive element is reachable in a sensible order — checked directly, not just assumed from markup, since every section, the job history, each tool's build notes and the tools list itself are all now keyboard-operable disclosures — the skip link appears on the first press of Tab, and every accordion opens and closes from the keyboard.
• Visible focus. Every focusable element shows a three-pixel focus ring. On the dark contact panel the ring is light rather than blue, so it stays visible (9.17:1 against that panel).
• Colour contrast (text). Every text and interface colour pair is measured by a script against the rendered page, not eyeballed, in both the light and dark themes, on the page background and on the card background — 536 elements, most recently on 8 September 2026. The lowest measured ratio is 4.68:1, against a requirement of 4.5:1. This is what "AA on colour" mostly means in practice, and it passes.
• Colour contrast (borders and UI boundaries). A second, separate check on 8 September 2026, because a border can fail this requirement (WCAG 1.4.11) even when every text colour on the page passes the one above — every element with a visible border was measured against its own background. 29 checked, 0 below the 3:1 floor.
• Colour is never the only signal. Statuses are words, not colours, and the replaced-job line uses an actual strikethrough rather than a colour change.
• Text spacing. Applying the WCAG 1.4.12 spacing overrides causes no clipping and no horizontal scrolling.
• Headings and landmarks. One h1, no skipped heading levels, and every section is labelled.
• Target size. Measured on 8 September 2026, not assumed - this line previously claimed no target was smaller than 24 by 24 pixels, which was not actually checked and turned out to be wrong. Two disclosure triggers ("Build notes" and "What I learned here") were genuinely under 20 pixels tall on every one of the 20 tool cards and career entries carrying one. Fixed with real padding on the clickable area, not by relying on the "inline in a sentence" or "enough space around it" exceptions the rule also allows - a solid 24px box holds up regardless of what copy ends up near it later. Re-measured after: every interactive control on the page is at least 24 by 24 pixels.
• Reduced motion. Every animation on the site — the hero terminal's line-by-line reveal, the scroll-in on the tool and highlight cards, and the accordion markers — is switched off when your system asks for reduced motion.
• Windows High Contrast (forced-colors mode). Checked on 8 September 2026 and two real gaps were found and fixed: a box behind the career and belief-list text that carried no border of its own would have flattened to nothing when backgrounds are stripped to system colours, and the pressed state of the tool-view toggle had no non-colour way to show which view was selected. Both now hold a visible boundary in this mode.
• Every control has a name that makes sense on its own. Also on 8 September, every link, button and disclosure trigger on the page was grouped by its computed accessible name to find any that repeat with nothing telling them apart out of context — the "Read more" repeated eleven times problem. It found one: the "Build notes" toggle on every tool card, and the "What I learned here" toggle on every career entry, all read identically. Fixed with a label naming which one it is (the tool or the role), without changing the short visible text.

What has not been tested

• Screen readers. The site has not been tested with NVDA, JAWS or VoiceOver. Markup has been checked programmatically — every image, link and control has an accessible name — but that is not the same as listening to it. Planned: before the site is published on its own domain.
• Reflow at 320 pixels and zoom to 400% (WCAG 1.4.10 and 1.4.4). The layout is built to reflow and a grid problem that would have caused horizontal scrolling at narrow widths was found and fixed by inspection, but it has not been confirmed on a real handset or at real browser zoom. Planned: before the site is published on its own domain.
• Testing by disabled people. None has taken place.

Reporting an accessibility problem

If you find a problem that is not listed here, or you need something on this site in a different format, email [email protected]. I aim to reply within five working days, and I will tell you what I can do and by when. If something is broken and I can fix it quickly, I will.

Enforcement procedure

The accessibility regulations do not apply to this site, so there is no formal enforcement route for it. If you are unhappy with how I respond, the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS) can give free advice on disability discrimination generally, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) enforces the regulations where they do apply.

What I am doing to improve accessibility

WCAG 2.2 AA is the standard I build everything to, not something added at the end. Concretely, on this site: the contrast of every colour pair was measured rather than eyeballed; the focus ring on the dark panel was changed after measuring it at 1.77:1 and finding it failed; and a grid track floor that would have forced horizontal scrolling on a narrow screen was corrected. The two outstanding tests above are scheduled before the site goes live on its own domain, and this statement will be updated with what they find — including if they find something.

How this site was tested

Tested on 31 August 2026 by Michael Shreeves, covering the whole site, which is a single page plus this statement. Testing was done in Google Chrome on Windows and consisted of keyboard-only operation, programmatic checks of the rendered page for heading structure, landmarks, accessible names and target sizes, computed colour-contrast measurement across both themes, and application of the WCAG 1.4.12 text-spacing overrides. No assistive technology was used, and no automated audit tool such as axe or Lighthouse has been run against the live site yet.

The site was rebranded to mash. on 6 September 2026 — new colours, typefaces and mark. Every colour pair was recomputed rather than carried over on the assumption the old numbers still held; keyboard operation, heading structure and landmarks were not retested because none of them changed. The two outstanding tests below are unaffected and remain outstanding.

The site grew substantially between 7 and 8 September 2026 — new sections, every section made independently collapsible, and each tool card gained an optional "build notes" disclosure. A script-driven contrast sweep was re-run against the rendered page rather than assumed to still hold (536 elements, both themes, 0 failures), and it is what this time found two real, pre-existing failures the earlier passes had missed: white text on the hero's highlighted word, and the Contact panel's body copy, both specifically in dark theme. Both are fixed and the sweep re-run clean. Windows High Contrast mode was also checked for the first time on 8 September, which is a genuinely different test from a contrast-ratio sweep, and so was a check for controls sharing an accessible name with nothing telling them apart out of context — see above for what each one found.