---
title: "Accessibility — WCAG 2.1 AA, every page, every build — TechTailors"
description: "TechTailors' approach to web accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AA, semantic HTML, reduced-motion, forced-colors mode, inclusive design from day one."
canonical: https://techtailors.agency/accessibility/
---

# Accessibility

We build accessibility in from the first commit: a site that doesn't work for everyone isn't finished.

Tax credit and legal risk

## The accessibility tax credit most agencies forget

- Up to *$5,000* off your federal tax bill, every year Because we build every TechTailors site to WCAG 2.1 AA (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1, Level AA: the accessibility standard the ADA effectively expects) standards, eligible small businesses can claim the federal **Disabled Access Credit** (IRS Form 8826). It's a **non-refundable tax credit, not a deduction**: **50% of eligible access expenditures between $250 and $10,250**, capped at **$5,000 a year**. **How to claim it** And it isn't a one-time break: any year you put money into keeping the site accessible, you can claim it again. Most agencies never bring it up. We build to the standard that makes you eligible, then hand you the documentation your accountant needs to file [Form 8826](https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-8826).
- An inaccessible site is a *real lawsuit* In *Robles v. Domino's Pizza*, a blind customer sued because the company's website and app didn't work with his screen reader. In 2019 the Ninth Circuit held that the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act, the US civil-rights law barring discrimination on the basis of disability) applies to that website and app, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Domino's appeal, so the ruling stands. **How common is it?** Courts now treat the ADA as covering business websites, not just physical storefronts, and an inaccessible site is a real legal liability. In 2025, plaintiffs filed more than **5,000** ADA digital-accessibility lawsuits in federal and state courts (*[UsableNet, 2025](https://info.usablenet.com/2025-year-end-report-on-web-accessibility-lawsuits)*), plus the demand letters that settle before a filing. No single federal regulation spells out the web standards for private companies, but courts and the U.S. Department of Justice keep pointing to the same benchmark: **WCAG 2.1 AA**, which is what we build every site to meet.

**Eligibility & the fine print**

You count as an eligible small business if you had **$1M or less in gross receipts**, or **30 or fewer full-time employees**, in the prior tax year. Estimate yours in our [pricing calculator](https://techtailors.agency/pricing/calculator/). This is general information and an estimate, not legal or tax advice. Confirm with your accountant.

Source: *[Robles v. Domino's Pizza, LLC](https://adasoutheast.org/legal/court/robles-v-dominos-pizza-llc/)*, U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit (2019); U.S. Supreme Court certiorari denied, October 2019.

Native HTML elements

## Semantic HTML first

Every page starts with *meaningful markup*. We use native HTML elements for what they're actually for: `<nav>` for navigation, `<main>` for the primary content, `<article>` for self-contained pieces, and `<details>`/`<summary>` for things like our FAQ accordions, which run without a line of JavaScript.

**Why semantic HTML matters**

Screen readers, search engines, and assistive tech all lean on semantic structure to make sense of your content. A `<div>` with a click handler isn't a button: it never lands in the keyboard tab order, never announces its role, and ignores Enter and Space. So we use actual `<button>` elements, a proper heading hierarchy, and real landmark regions, and *every user* finds their way around the same way.

Headings run in order, `h1` through `h6`, and every section heading carries a deep-linkable anchor ID. Screen reader users can jump around by heading, and everyone else gets a shareable link straight to a section.

Every control by keyboard

## Keyboard navigation

Every interactive element works with the keyboard alone. No mouse required.

**How we handle keyboard access**

Our *skip link* lets keyboard users jump straight to the main content instead of tabbing through the whole nav first. It stays hidden until it's focused, then shows up with a high-contrast outline you can't miss.

Navigation dropdowns take full arrow-key control: Up and Down move between links, Home and End jump to the first and last, Escape closes the menu, and Tab moves focus out the way you'd expect. The focus ring (The visible ring that appears around interactive elements when navigating by keyboard) uses `:focus-visible` everywhere, a 2px outline with a 2px offset, so keyboard focus is always visible but never clutters things for mouse users.

On every animation

## Respecting motion preferences

Animation adds warmth and polish, but it can make people with vestibular disorders feel ill. So we honour the *prefers-reduced-motion* media query on every animation we ship.

**What we disable and how**

When someone's OS is set to reduce motion, we switch off the scroll-reveal animations (fade-up, scale-in, the staggered cascades), the hover micro-interactions, and the CTA rainbow. Everything stays fully visible. Nothing hides behind an animation that never plays.

We do it in two layers. A global kill-switch in our CSS reset drops `animation-duration` and `transition-duration` to near zero for everything, and individual animation files add their own `prefers-reduced-motion` overrides where we want finer control. The *Sparkles* component goes further, with its own IntersectionObserver motion check that stops spawning particles altogether when reduced motion is on.

Shape, not colour alone

## Windows high contrast & forced colors

When forced-colors mode (A Windows accessibility feature that overrides all colours to improve visibility for users with low vision) is on, the browser overrides every colour on the page. If you don't handle that deliberately, custom borders, focus rings, and decorative bits can vanish and take the site's usability with them.

**Our forced-colors strategy**

We ship a dedicated `@media (forced-colors: active)` block that puts visible borders back on buttons (so they don't disappear into the background), keeps focus indicators distinct, and holds card edges in place. That covers *90%+ of browsers*, meaning every Chromium browser plus Firefox on Windows.

Instead of fighting the user's chosen colour scheme, we work with it. We use transparent borders that show up when the browser swaps in system colours, and we make sure controls stay recognisable by shape and border, not by colour alone.

44 × 44 pixels

## Touch target sizing

Primary controls meet the *WCAG 2.5.5 (AAA)* enhanced touch-target size of 44 × 44 pixels: buttons, navigation, form fields, toggles, heading anchors, and the FAQ accordions. Every interactive element, the small inline ones included, clears the 24×24px WCAG 2.5.8 (AA) minimum.

**How we achieve this without visual bloat**

Take our heading anchor links. The "#" icon looks small, but a `::after` pseudo-element stretches the clickable area to a full 44px. Someone with a motor impairment, or anyone on a touchscreen, can tap it without aiming carefully, and the design still looks clean.

Same goes for navigation links, buttons, toggle switches, and the FAQ accordions. Two element families stay closer to text scale on purpose: inline annotation marks, where a 44px hit area would catch the words around the glyph, and the footer's dense link columns. Both still meet the 24px AA minimum.

Focus lands on the content

## Accessible view transitions

Our sites use Astro's view transitions (Client-side page transitions that swap content without full reloads, providing app-like navigation) for smooth page-to-page navigation. Client-side routing can quietly break accessibility, though, if you don't manage focus carefully.

**How we preserve focus after navigation**

After every swap we move focus to `#main` with `preventScroll: true`, so keyboard users land in the new page's content instead of being stranded at the top of the DOM. It behaves like a normal full page load, but keeps the fluid feel of client-side navigation.

A site that doesn't work for everyone *isn't finished*.

**WCAG 2.1 AA Compliance**

We build every site to **WCAG 2.1 Level AA**, the international standard for web accessibility: colour contrast, keyboard operability, text alternatives for non-text content, consistent navigation.

In several places we go **beyond it**, to the AAA-level 44×44px touch-target size (SC 2.5.5) on primary controls and reduced-motion handling (SC 2.3.3), the newer WCAG 2.2 focus-appearance behaviour, and full Windows High Contrast / forced-colors support.

Most agencies treat WCAG 2.1 AA as a finish line, if they get there at all. We treat it as the floor. We won’t pretend we hit blanket AAA conformance, since almost no real-world site honestly does, but we reach past AA wherever it measurably helps the people using your site.

**Why this matters for your business**

WCAG 2.1 AA is the technical standard courts use to weigh **ADA Title III website-accessibility lawsuits**, which have hit thousands of small businesses every year since federal-court volume started climbing in 2018. A site that clears WCAG 2.1 AA isn’t immune from a complaint, but it removes the technical premise from one. It’s also how the [28.7% of American adults living with a disability](https://www.cdc.gov/disability-and-health/articles-documents/disability-impacts-all-of-us-infographic.html) (CDC, 2022) actually use your site: screen readers, keyboard navigation, colour contrast, and text scaling. That’s more than 70 million people.

Not sure whether your current site clears that bar? Our [free Agency Audit](https://techtailors.agency/agency-audit/) asks whether real visitors can get through it with a screen reader, a keyboard, or larger text without hitting walls.

## Accessibility is the baseline

See your exact monthly price, then talk to us when you’re ready.

[Price Your Build](https://techtailors.agency/pricing/calculator/)

[30-day guarantee on every new plan](https://techtailors.agency/policies/offboarding/#guarantee): an exit, not a refund.

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