Built to be used. By everyone.

(01)What we build to

Every page targets WCAG 2.2 AA - the current version of the international accessibility standard, published by the W3C in October 2023. AA is the level most public bodies, larger organisations and procurement teams ask for. We design and build to meet it, and reach past it wherever reaching past it costs nothing but care.

(02)What that means in practice

In plain terms, on this site you can:

• operate everything with a keyboard alone, with a focus outline you can always see, and a skip link straight to the main content;
• use a screen reader against proper headings, landmarks and labels - not a wall of unlabelled boxes;
• scale the text right up without the layout breaking or clipping;
• read at colour-contrast levels that meet the standard, in both light and dark themes;
• tap controls sized for real fingers, not pinpricks;
• have motion stop the instant your system asks for less of it;
• and use the on-page toolbar to listen to the page, raise contrast, enlarge text or switch to dark mode.

(03)The AAA criteria we meet

Full AAA is not something we claim - the W3C itself advises against requiring it across a whole site. But several AAA criteria cost nothing but discipline, so we meet them: every link makes sense read on its own (2.4.9); the heading structure is a clean outline with nothing faking a heading (2.4.10); nothing auto-plays over you without a way to pause it (2.2.4); and any animation driven by scrolling or interaction yields entirely to a reduced-motion preference (2.3.3).

(04)What we do not claim, and why

Honesty is part of accessibility. We do not claim full AAA, because three of its criteria would make a worse site: enhanced 7:1 contrast would flatten the brand into grey; a lower-secondary reading-level rewrite would strip the voice out of the words; and sign-language video tracks are not something this site needs. Targeting AA and being straight about the rest is the responsible position - and the one the standard's own authors recommend.

(05)Why it matters

Around one in five people has a disability, and far more use the web in ways a careless build quietly shuts out - on a phone in bright sun, with a keyboard instead of a mouse, with the sound off. Accessibility is not charity; it is competence. It is also, increasingly, a requirement: public-sector and larger private contracts often mandate it, and the law expects reasonable adjustments. A site built this way reaches more people and closes the door on no one.

For us it is simpler than all of that. We own our platform, OliveCore, top to bottom - no plugin stack, no page builder guessing on our behalf. The same team and the same tools build every client site, so building it right is not extra work. It is just the work.

(06)Why we can stand behind it

Owning our platform is not a boast about features - it is what lets us make this promise at all. Build on someone else's theme, page builder and plugins, and when an accessibility problem lives in that layer, the honest answer is a support ticket and a wait. We do not have that layer. Every line of OliveCore is ours, which means:

• no theme vendor can block a fix;
• no page-builder markup is off-limits;
• no plugin roadmap decides what is possible;
• no licence forbids a change;
• no abandoned dependency forces a compromise.

Whatever an accessibility requirement asks for - improving a component, replacing the renderer, redesigning the editor, rebuilding from line zero - we own the route to it. The honest limit is the web itself: a browser's behaviour, a third-party service, an embedded tool or content someone else supplies can introduce constraints, and we flag those rather than hide them. But within the platform there is no inaccessible layer we are forbidden or unable to change. Requirements evolve; because we own the complete source, we are never trapped by the technology we started with.

(07)Commissioning for the public sector

If you are a council, an NHS body, a university or any public-sector organisation, accessibility is not optional for you: since 2018, UK public-sector websites have been legally required to meet WCAG AA and to publish an accessibility statement. That requirement is where a lot of agency budgets quietly go - a site gets built on an off-the-shelf theme and a stack of plugins, is found to fall short, and is then audited and remediated back up to the line, with the paperwork billed on top. You pay a great deal to reach a minimum.

We start at that line, not below it. Because we own our platform rather than assembling one, accessibility is built in, not bolted on - so meeting AA is the foundation of the build, not a remediation project stapled to the end. Any site we build can be delivered to WCAG 2.2 AA and evidenced with an accessibility statement and a conformance report (a VPAT) for your specific site, on request - drawn from a foundation that is already sound, rather than reconstructed from a stack that never was.

And it does not stop at launch. Most sites are accessible on the day they go live and quietly decay as content is added - a missing image description here, a broken heading order there. Because the same team owns the editor your people will use, accessibility is something we can keep true across the life of the site, not hand over and hope.

(08)Found a barrier? Tell us

We build and test against keyboards, screen readers and real-world settings as we go, and a full audit runs before launch - but no test catches everything. If any part of this site gets in your way, tell us - email talk@neooptic.com and we will fix it, and thank you for the flag. Naming a way to report a problem is itself part of the standard; we mean it as more than a formality.