NoticeMasset Household Spring Clean-up
Read this noticeAbout this concept
Accessibility
This page is about the accessibility of this design concept — not a statement on behalf of the Village of Masset, which is not ours to write.
Why it matters for a BC municipality
Under the Accessible British Columbia Act, local governments are among the organisations required to establish an accessibility committee, an accessibility plan and a way for the public to give feedback on barriers. Whether the Village of Masset has done so was not checked and is not asserted either way here.
Separately from the legislation, there is the plain practical case. On a small island community a village website is often the only way to find out whether the water is safe to drink at eleven o'clock at night. If that page cannot be read on a phone, it does not much matter what it says.
What this concept does
Every item below is a property of the pages you are reading, and can be checked by anyone with a browser and a keyboard.
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It fits the screen it is opened on
A viewport meta tag, fluid layout and no fixed pixel widths. The page reflows down to a 320 pixel viewport with no horizontal scrolling and no pinch-and-zoom, which is WCAG 2.2 criterion 1.4.10 Reflow.
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One h1 per page, headings in order
Every page opens with a single h1 and steps down through h2 and h3 without skipping a level, so somebody navigating by headings gets a table of contents rather than a jumble.
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Real alt text on every image
Photographs are rendered through one component that will not compile without an alt attribute. Decorative marks and icons are hidden from assistive technology instead of being given filler text.
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A skip link that lands somewhere useful
The first tab stop on every page skips the navigation and lands at the top of the main content — which is where the notice strip lives, so nobody skips past an advisory.
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Contrast checked, not assumed
Every text and background pair used on the site was measured against WCAG AA. The lowest ratio in the build is 4.75:1 for small supporting text; body text runs at 7:1 or better.
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Nothing carried by colour alone
Notice status is written out as a word and paired with a shape. Links in body copy are underlined, not only coloured. The design survives greyscale printing and forced-colours mode.
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Keyboard operable, with a visible focus ring
Every link, button and menu can be reached and operated from the keyboard, the focus indicator is a solid three-pixel outline, and the mobile menu closes on the Escape key and returns focus to the button that opened it.
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It works with the motion turned off
The fade-in on scroll is opt-in: with JavaScript disabled or blocked, every section renders at full opacity. With prefers-reduced-motion set, animation and smooth scrolling are switched off entirely.
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Text, not pictures of text
Notices, dates and contact details are HTML. They can be enlarged, read aloud, machine-translated and copied into a text message — none of which is true of a scanned PDF.
What a concept cannot settle
Automated checks and careful markup get a site most of the way. The rest needs the Village and needs real users.
To be confirmed
Testing with residents who use a screen reader, magnification or keyboard-only navigation. No automated check substitutes for this.
To be confirmed
A published route for reporting a barrier on the website, and who reads what comes in.
To be confirmed
Whether existing PDFs — agendas, minutes, bylaws — are tagged and readable, and what to do about the ones that are not.
To be confirmed
Plain-language review of the Village's own wording, which is an accessibility measure as much as any technical one.
If something here is hard to use
This is a concept built by JnP Studio and is not run by the Village. For anything to do with actual Village services, contact the Village Office on 250-626-3995 or admin@masset.ca.