Accessibility conformance statement

The standard we hold ourselves to

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA. This is the standard referenced by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and by the Department of Justice's web accessibility rule for state and local government entities. Where those bind you, the obligation is already met. Where they do not, an employee who cannot operate the form still cannot get reimbursed, so we hold to the same standard either way. It applies to both this marketing site and the Travel & Expense application behind it.

How we hold to it

• Accessibility is part of the acceptance criteria for every user interface change, not a remediation pass scheduled afterwards. A change that is not keyboard operable is not finished.
• Every interactive element is reachable and operable by keyboard alone, with a visible focus indicator, and the tab order follows the visual order of the page.
• Text and interface colours are checked against the 4.5:1 and 3:1 contrast ratios that Level AA requires, and no information is carried by colour alone.
• Form fields have real labels rather than placeholder text; validation errors are associated with the field they belong to and are announced, not only coloured red.
• Pages are usable at 360 pixels wide and at 200% zoom without loss of content or function, and without horizontal scrolling.
• Animation respects the operating system's reduced-motion preference.

What we have not yet done

We do not yet publish a VPAT. A Voluntary Product Accessibility Template completed against Section 508 and EN 301 549 is in preparation. We would rather tell you it is not finished than hand you one that has not been done properly. If your procurement process requires a VPAT, contact us and we will tell you honestly where it stands and when you can expect it.

We have not commissioned an independent audit. Our conformance claim rests on our own testing—automated checks in the build, plus manual keyboard and screen reader testing—not on a third-party assessment. Treat it accordingly, and ask us to demonstrate anything you want to see for yourself.

Documents produced by the application—the audit packet PDF, the documentation PDF that merges uploaded receipts—inherit the accessibility of the files put into them. A scanned paper receipt uploaded by a traveler is an image, and we cannot make it readable by a screen reader after the fact. The application's own generated content is tagged; content passed through from an upload is not.

Reporting a barrier

If you encounter something in this site or in the application that you cannot use, we want to hear about it, and we treat it as a defect rather than a feature request. Please tell us the page or screen, what you were trying to do, and the assistive technology and browser you were using.

This statement applies to sanderwell.com and to the Sanderwell Travel & Expense application. It is reviewed whenever the conformance position materially changes.