We want Locatio to work for everyone looking for a place to live — and we've tried to follow best practice as much as we can.

Locatio is map based, and maps are known to be one of the hardest things on the web to make accessible. But we've worked through the site, measured what we found, and fixed what we could. What we share here explains what we are aiming for, what we think works, what doesn't yet, and how to tell us when something gets in your way.

What we aim for

We aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA — this is the standard most UK websites are measured against. We're not there, and we want to be honest about the gaps rather than hide them away.

What we've done

We tested the app's screens on a desktop and on a phone — using automated checks, to look at how well things worked using a keyboard only, with the "reduce motion" setting switched on, at heavy zoom, and with colour-blindness simulated on the map. We used those findings to make some improvements:

• Screen controls are named suitably for screen readers.
• You can use a keyboard to navigate (use the Escape key to close).
• Error messages can be read out.
• We follow requests for less motion.
• We made small text darker, so that it's easier to read.
• We chose colours that are friendly for the commonest kinds of colour-blindness.
• We adjust the way we render the site at extreme ends of the 'zoom' scale.

What doesn't work as well yet

• Choosing an area on the map needs a mouse or a finger. With a keyboard you can move and zoom the map, but you can't land on the area pins or the streets themselves. Search, Matches and My areas all work fully by keyboard, and lead to the same places.
• Colour still carries a lot of meaning on the map. The area panel and Matches always give the score in words and numbers, so nothing relies on colour alone — but the map itself is easiest to read with full colour vision.
• Your browser's own text-size setting isn't followed. Zooming the page (Ctrl or ⌘ and +) works throughout; the separate text-size setting doesn't change Locatio's text yet.
• On a phone, an open panel doesn't stop the keyboard reaching the map behind it. This only matters if you use a keyboard with a phone or tablet.
• Signing in uses a form provided by our account partner. We haven't been able to test it as thoroughly as our own screens.

Tell us

If anything on Locatio gets in your way — or there's information you need in a different form — email us at hello@locatio.uk. We're real people, we read everything, and we'll do our best to help, and to fix it.