Accessibility

Commitment

This site targets WCAG 2.2 Level AA conformance on every route, and reaches for AAA on the core routes — Home, Work, About, Contact, and Resume. Accessibility is not a one-time checklist here; it is part of the build pipeline alongside performance and security.

Standard

The reference standard is the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, version 2.2, Level AA. WCAG 2.2 introduces additional success criteria over 2.1 — notably target size minimum (2.5.8), focus appearance, and accessible authentication — all of which are covered by the audit baseline.

What we test

• Color contrast in both light and dark themes
• Keyboard-only navigation and visible focus rings on every interactive element
• Screen reader compatibility — landmarks, headings, alt text, ARIA semantics
• Reduced-motion preferences honored at the CSS and motion-library level
• Touch target sizes at or above 44 by 44 CSS pixels
• Heading hierarchy without skipped levels
• Skip-to-content link as the first focusable element
• Language attribute declared on the document
• External links flagged for screen-reader users

Tools used

The baseline audit was a structured manual review of every route in both themes against WCAG 2.2 AA criteria. Future audit cycles will add automated coverage via axe-core run through Playwright and Lighthouse accessibility budgets in CI. Findings are tracked in the project repository.

Known limitations

The animated typewriter in the hero is decorative and is hidden from assistive technology; an equivalent screen-reader-only heading carries the same content. The ambient aurora backdrop is purely visual and is paused under prefers-reduced-motion. The Ask Timothy chat widget delivers assistant replies in a single shot after server-side safety filtering rather than streaming raw tokens — screen-reader users get one complete announcement per turn rather than partial fragments. The message list is an aria-live polite region that updates only with the cleaned final response. The blinking cursor that marks the in-progress message is decorative and hidden from assistive technology. If you encounter anything that does not meet AA, tell me — see below.

Reporting issues

If you hit an accessibility barrier on this site, please email contact@timothychoice.com with the subject prefix [a11y]. A short description of the page, the browser or assistive technology you used, and what went wrong is plenty. You can also reach me on LinkedIn (opens in a new tab). I respond within a couple of business days and treat accessibility reports as priority bugs.

Compliance attestation

This statement is a self-attestation of WCAG 2.2 Level AA conformance based on internal review. It is not a third-party certification. The site is reviewed periodically and after any significant change to layout, navigation, or content rendering.