Accessibility overlays sell a promise: install a script, become compliant. The promise is false, and most disability advocates will tell you the overlays make sites worse. We do not install them. We write a statement instead, and we publish it on every site we launch.
What the statement says
It is one page, in plain language, with five sections.
- What we tested. The pages, the browsers, the screen readers, the keyboard-only path through the primary task.
- What passed. Against WCAG 2.2 level AA, named criterion by criterion. Not “we aim for”, but “we checked”.
- What did not pass, and why. There is almost always something. A third-party embed, a PDF from the client’s legal team, a video without captions yet. Naming it is more honest than hiding it, and it gives the client a list.
- When it was last tested. A date. Statements without dates are decoration.
- Who to write to. A real address that a real person reads, with a commitment on response time.
Why it works
The statement changes the conversation with the client. Accessibility stops being a vague fear of lawsuits and becomes a checklist with a date, owned by someone.
It also changes the build. Knowing that the statement will name every failure makes the team fix them before launch rather than after. The keyboard path through checkout gets tested in week six, not in the week a complaint arrives.
The parts nobody expects
Reduced motion is in every statement, because every Synora site respects the operating system setting. The word-by-word headline reveal you see on our own homepage turns into a plain fade for people who have asked their device to calm down.
Focus states are visible and drawn, not left to the browser default. Contrast is measured for every text colour against every background it sits on, including the small mono labels that most audits skip.
What it costs
About three days per project, spread across design and engineering. Less than one round of revisions on a hero image. The statement itself takes an afternoon to write, and the template is the same on every site.
We consider it part of the deliverable, the way a building comes with a fire exit. You do not get to opt out of the fire exit.
