Accessibility

How Mangrove achieves web accessibility

• Invest in our team’s knowledge of accessibility through online training, resources and certification.
• Create and maintain a content guide for our contributors and employees to follow best practices in creating inclusive content, images and language.
• Create and maintain an accessible design guide to ensure accessibility is considered during the design phase and before a project reaches development.
• Regularly monitor our own website via tools by Equalize Digital and maintain conformance to WCAG 2.2 Level AA guidelines as closely as possible. Address features that are not conformant to WCAG 2.2 Level AA and amend them as soon as feasible.
• Perform manual accessibility testing to ensure good keyboard navigation and general access.
• Audit internal company practices every two years to assess accessibility and inclusivity across all departments and communication platforms.

Our current site

We re-launched this website and our updated visual identity in June 2024 with accessibility top of mind. This update included a thorough overhaul of the Mangrove Web brand colors with an emphasis on improving color contrast, and selection of new typefaces and typesetting for better readability. You can read more about the update here.

In addition to the design and styling updates, we reviewed and updated our website’s accessibility to conform as closely as possible to WCAG 2.2 Level AA. We also transitioned our automated accessibility system to Equalize Digital’s digital platform and began using our in-house manual accessibility testing process.

When auditing our website we specifically review and address the following areas:

• Structural markup
• W3C WAI-Aria landmarks
• Images
• Links
• Forms
• Scripts
• Visual design
• Keyboard navigation
• Screen reader navigation (NVDA)

Current Conformance Status and Audit Data

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. Mangrove’s website is conformant to WCAG 2.2 Level AA with a few minor known issues.

Website:

• Our current marketing website now scores a level of 100/100 for accessibility using Google’s Lighthouse accessibility tool. Prior to July, 2021, our website scored 50/100.
• Technical Specifications: Our website uses HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP

For Products and Services:

Product (Standard WordPress Theme):

• Our base WordPress theme has built-in accessibility features that conform to the best of our ability to WCAG 2.2 Level AA. We use this theme as a starting point for all client projects.
• Browser compatibility: We test our work in the most current stable version of major desktop browsers including those made by Apple (Safari), Google (Chrome), Microsoft (Edge*), and Mozilla Firefox. Enhanced design to provide support for older browser versions, is available upon request. Browsers older than 2 major versions are not included unless specifically requested by the client.

Services:

• When our services include the use of WordPress, we always start from our base theme that has specific accessibility features implemented, but is not fully compliant to standards.
• When our services include the use of Squarespace, we follow accessibility guidelines to the best of our ability within the templates. In Squarespace we have limited control over some code elements that negatively affect accessibility.
• We offer additional packaged and customized services to clients to meet the level of accessibility compliance desired by the client.
• While we are not liable or responsible for any new, updated, and existing web content on websites of our clients, we are responsible for providing information, resources, and support to any clients that are willing and able to invest in accessibility compliance.

Completed goals to date:

• Implement accessibility guidelines at all levels of our company planning, design, development, and consulting
• Make our base-templates and the Mangrove Web Custom plugin comply as closely as possible with WCAG 2.21 AA standards.
• Offer accessibility testing and services to our clients that fit within their budget range and goals.
• Review accessibility best practices in our content development process regardless of if a client has chosen to explicitly comply with WCAG or ADA guidelines. This includes providing links to accessibility guidelines, checklists, and tips within the template for all client manuals
• For clients that do choose to aim for compliance, we support developing a program to maintain compliance to their standards that includes a third-party audit to compliance standards.

We will review this policy yearly. This policy was last reviewed in August 2024 by Daniel Lamb, Andrew Boardman and Maiya Holliday.

Feedback

Like individual human beings, no website is perfect, including this one. If you have any suggestions, comments, or questions regarding the accessibility of this website or our products, please email us at admin {at} mangrove-web.com or fill out our contact form and select “Other” as the reason for reaching out. We will respond within 72-hours to any accessibility related issues on the site and will do what we can to improve your experience on our website.

For information on developing your own accessibility policy, please see Developing Organizational Policies on Web Accessibility and Developing an Accessibility Statement.