Accessibility

The standard we build to

This site is built to meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA. That is a working floor rather than a badge: it has not been independently audited, and saying so is more useful to you than a compliance claim you cannot verify.

It matters more than usual here, because a significant part of the audience for this site is public-sector, and a public entity has its own accessibility obligations when it links to a contractor.

Colour and contrast

Every text and background pairing on this site was measured rather than eyeballed. Body text measures 13.17:1 on the page ground. The muted grey used for secondary text measures 5.24:1 on the page and 4.83:1 on the tinted band, and is used only at body size and above.

The APWA colours needed a specific rule, because one of them is a trap. White text on APWA safety green measures 2.98:1 and fails, so text never sits white on green anywhere on this site; where text sits on a green ground it is near-black, at 5.63:1. White on APWA safety blue measures 5.62:1 and is allowed. Where the utility colours appear as text rather than as a surface, they are darker tones chosen for the specific ground: 7.75:1 for water and 6.20:1 for sewer on the light page, 5.41:1 and 7.13:1 on the dark band.

Red marks a state — a hold point, an item that needs a site visit, a form error — and is never the only signal. Every marked state also carries a word.

The locate colours themselves are never decorative. Blue means potable water and green means sanitary sewer, everywhere, without exception, and each coloured band is accompanied by its APWA code as text and by a screen-reader label naming the utility. Colour is never the only way to know what a row is about.

Keyboard

Everything interactive is reachable and operable from a keyboard in a sensible order. Focus is always visible: a two-pixel outline, offset, in one fixed colour that never changes meaning.

A skip link to the main content is the first thing in the tab order on every page. The navigation on small screens opens from a real button with aria-expanded, and Escape closes it and returns focus to the button. The wide tabulations that scroll sideways become focusable regions so they can be scrolled with arrow keys, and only when they actually overflow.

Screen readers and structure

Every page has one h1 and a heading order that does not skip levels. Landmarks are real: a banner, a primary navigation with a label, a main region, and a footer navigation with its own label.

Every price tabulation is a real table with a caption, a header row and row headers, so it is read as a grid rather than as a run of numbers. Units are in their own column rather than jammed into the price, so a screen reader announces “two hundred and ten to three hundred and ninety-five dollars, linear foot” rather than a string of symbols.

The construction sequence is an ordered list, so it is announced as a sequence with a position and a length rather than as seven unrelated headings.

The drawing on the homepage is SVG with a title and a full text description: the grade line, the water and sewer lines, the manhole and every keynote are described in words rather than announced as an image.

Decorative elements — the painted locate line between sections, the leader rules in the span callouts — are drawn with CSS and hidden from assistive technology.

Motion

There is one authored animation on this site: the painted locate line between sections wipes in once, over seven hundred milliseconds, the way a paint wand lays a line down. It happens once per section and it never repeats or loops. Everything else is a short fade as a section scrolls into view.

If your system asks for reduced motion, all of it is switched off, the locate lines are simply drawn, and the page renders in its finished state. Nothing loops, nothing auto-plays, nothing flashes at a rate that could trigger a seizure.

Without JavaScript

The whole site works. Every page renders, every tabulation is a complete table, the questions open because they are native disclosure elements, the telephone number is a real link, the contact form submits and validates on the server, and the footer carries the complete navigation. JavaScript adds the mobile menu, the fade, and the marking of the current stage in the sequence. Nothing depends on it.

Text, zoom and print

Everything is real text; there are no images of text anywhere, including in the price tables. Type is sized in relative units, so it follows your browser setting, and the layout holds at 200% zoom and at 400% in a single column without horizontal scrolling.

The unit price page is built to print, on purpose. A district taking a budget number to a board meeting needs it on paper, and a table that only works on a screen is useless at exactly the moment it matters most.

What we have not done

We have not had an independent audit. We have not tested with every combination of screen reader and browser. There is no accessibility overlay or widget on this site, deliberately — those tend to interfere with the assistive technology you have already configured.

Telling us something is broken

Telephone (303) 482-3059, Mon–Fri 7:00 AM–4:30 PM MT. Or email [email protected]. Tell us the page and what happened, and what you were using if you know. We will fix it, and if a fix will take time we will tell you how to get the information another way meanwhile.

If something on this site is stopping you sizing a project, telephone and size it with us directly. The website is a convenience; the project does not depend on it.