Accessibility

What we aim for

Calchis targets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA across the public site and the signed-in product. That includes every WCAG 2.0 Level AA criterion, which is the standard Section 508 incorporates. Emergency managers work under pressure, at night and on phones; a product that only some of them can use is not ready for an EOC.

What has been checked

• An automated axe-core audit (WCAG 2.0 and 2.1, A and AA rules) of 17 public pages and 15 signed-in pages, including a live incident, in screen and print. The last run, on October 7, 2026, found no violations.
• No sideways scrolling at 390, 768 or 1024 pixels wide on the audited pages, one h1 per page and no skipped heading levels.
• Checks that run before every deployment: text contrast of at least 4.5:1 recomputed from the design tokens, a visible focus indicator, a skip link, tab and dialog structure, Escape closing every dialog, and the jsx-a11y lint rules enforced as errors.
• Consequence rings carry a pattern as well as a color, animations respect reduced-motion settings, and the moving ticker can be paused or hidden.

What is known not to work yet

• No manual screen-reader walk-through (NVDA, JAWS or VoiceOver) and no keyboard-only pass through every workflow has been done yet. Automated tools catch roughly a third of WCAG failures, so treat the results above as provisional.
• Drawing a custom polygon on the map needs a pointer. A keyboard user can define the same area by address, ZIP code, county, city or state.
• Generated PDFs are untagged and declare no language. Every ICS form, SITREP, after-action report, shift handoff, the HVA report and the event briefings have an accessible HTML version beside the PDF button with the same content.
• Map overlays and chart marks have not been measured for non-text contrast, and text spacing has not been tested with a spacing override.
• Help videos have English captions and a written article beside them, but no audio-description track.

VPAT and Accessibility Conformance Report

An Accessibility Conformance Report in the VPAT 2.5 format (WCAG edition) is drafted, criterion by criterion, with the evidence for each answer. It has not been issued: it will be once the manual keyboard and screen-reader pass above is done and the report has been reviewed. If you are procuring and need it on a deadline, tell us the date.