Accessibility

1. Our commitment

Cairn is committed to making cairnguide.ca and the Cairn application usable by everyone — including men using screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, high-contrast modes, magnification, voice control, or any other assistive technology.

We follow the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 (AODA) and the Integrated Accessibility Standards Regulation. We aim to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA.

2. What we've done

• Semantic HTML and ARIA where it adds value, not where it doesn't
• Keyboard navigation across every interactive element
• Visible focus indicators on every focusable control
• Alt text on meaningful images; empty alt on decorative ones
• Colour contrast ratios that meet WCAG 2.1 AA for body text and interactive elements
• Form labels associated with inputs; error messages linked to the field that triggered them
• Headings ordered and used for structure, not styling
• A skip-to-main-content affordance on every page

3. Where we know we have work to do

We'd rather tell you the truth than claim a clean bill of health. Active areas of improvement:

• Our PDF court-form viewer relies on a third-party renderer; some screen-reader compatibility gaps remain and are tracked.
• Long-form interactive workflows (intake, action plan) are being audited for cognitive accessibility, not just technical conformance.
• Some imagery uses generated photographs that may benefit from richer descriptive alt text; we're working through this.

If you hit something that doesn't work for you, please tell us. The list above is what we know; your message helps us find what we don't.

4. Alternate formats

If any part of Cairn isn't accessible to you, we will provide the information in another format — for example, a plain-text summary of a pathway, a readable version of an action plan, or a different way to receive a directory listing.

Alternate-format requests are honoured within a reasonable timeframe and at no cost. Email info@cairnguide.ca with what you need and how to reach you.

5. Tell us when we miss

If something on Cairn is hard to use, broken with your assistive technology, or simply not built with you in mind, please get in touch. We treat accessibility feedback the same as any other bug report — it goes into the queue and we work on it.

6. Review and updates

This statement is reviewed at least once a year and after any material change to the site. Updates are posted here with a new effective date.

See also: Privacy Policy · Terms of Service