Accessibility

Accessibility Statement

Voting information should be available to everyone. We are committed to making Ballot Awareness usable for people of all abilities, including those who rely on assistive technology.

Our commitment

We want every voter to be able to find and understand the races on their ballot. We aim to meet the spirit of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA, which are the widely recognized standard for making web content more accessible to people with visual, hearing, motor, and cognitive disabilities.

What we do

As we build and maintain the site, we work to:

• Use clear, readable text with strong color contrast.
• Provide meaningful structure (headings, labels, and landmarks) so screen readers can navigate the guide.
• Support keyboard navigation, so the site can be used without a mouse.
• Label interactive elements such as the state selector, race cards, and the district lookup.
• Keep the design simple and avoid clutter, so the guide is easier to understand.
• Avoid relying on color alone to convey meaning.

Testing we have done

In September 2026 we audited every page of this site with axe-core, an open-source accessibility testing engine, against the WCAG 2.1 Level A and AA rule sets, on both a desktop and a mobile viewport. The audit found, and we corrected: 35 instances of text or interface colour that did not meet the AA contrast minimum; two incorrect ARIA relationships, in the race lists and the category tabs; an unlabelled progress indicator in the candidate quiz; and a closed mobile menu whose links could still be reached by keyboard. Every page now reports zero violations under those rule sets.

Automated testing catches many problems but not all of them. It cannot judge whether our wording is clear, or whether what a screen reader announces makes sense in context. We also test by keyboard, and we welcome reports from people using assistive technology.

Ongoing work

Accessibility is an ongoing effort, not a one-time task. This is an independent project maintained by a small team, and some areas may not yet fully meet our goals. We test the site regularly and continue to make improvements, and we treat accessibility issues as high priority.

Third-party content

Some links lead to external sites we do not control, such as official state election offices, Ballotpedia, and news sources. We cannot guarantee the accessibility of those sites, though we try to link to reputable, official sources wherever possible.

Tell us how we can improve

If you encounter any barrier using this site, or you use assistive technology and something did not work for you, we want to know. Your feedback directly helps us fix problems. Please contact us at ballotawareness@gmail.com and, if you can, describe the page and what happened. We will do our best to respond and, where possible, provide the information you need in an accessible way.