Accessibility Statement

Standards followed: Per the State of NH Accessibility Policy, this application is built to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. This build has also been reviewed against the Document Accessibility Checklist for State Vendors and the NHDES Vendor Public Information Guidelines (Oct. 8, 2025 edition), both supplied directly by the team.

Per the Vendor Guidelines, the app now uses NHDES's official brand colors — blue #353895 and green #316735 — instead of an earlier guess based on the live des.nh.gov website's CSS. The font stack was changed to Calibri (the NHDES standard) with rounder, evenly-spaced fallbacks (Segoe UI, Tahoma), avoiding Arial, which the guidelines flag as harder to read for low-vision and neurodiverse users.

One item is still outstanding: the guidelines require the official NHDES logo on any document or page created for the department, and explicitly prohibit copying it from the website or recreating it — official logo files must come from NHDES's Public Information and Communications Unit (PIC). No logo has been placed in the app yet for that reason.

What this application does today

Semantic landmarks (header, nav, main) and a logical heading structure on every page.
A "skip to main content" link for keyboard users.
Focus moves to each page's heading on navigation.
All map markers are operable by keyboard (Tab + Enter/Space), not just mouse click.
The map is paired with an equivalent text list of the same projects, so the map is never the only way to reach project information. Map markers are placed at town centers, and the page says so.
Every chart has a plain-language summary sentence and a data table with the same figures.
Layouts reflow down to a 320-pixel-wide screen without horizontal scrolling, and buttons and links on small screens are at least 44 pixels tall for touch.
Every photo has descriptive alt text, and the upload form won't accept a photo without it.
Every video has captions, a transcript or both — the upload form won't publish a video without at least one — plus a text description of what it shows.
Motion (map fly-to animations, fade-ins) is suppressed for users with prefers-reduced-motion set, per WCAG 2.3.3.
Form fields (search, filters) have associated visible labels.
Categories, sectors and import results use text labels and icons, not color alone.
Data tables have a descriptive header row and no split or merged cells, per the vendor checklist.
All hyperlinks in body content are colored and underlined, and use descriptive text rather than raw URLs or "click here," per the Vendor Guidelines' Web Addresses and Descriptive Links section.
Body text uses a dark charcoal rather than pure black, and text never sits on a color gradient or background image, per the guidelines' color and contrast guidance.
Brand colors (#353895 blue, #316735 green) were verified against a minimum 4.5:1 contrast ratio for body text and 3:1 for headings/graphics — all pairs used in the app exceed those minimums.

Known gaps / follow-ups

The official NHDES logo file has not been placed in the app — it must come from PIC directly (see above).
No screen reader (JAWS/NVDA) pass has been run yet; keyboard-only testing was used during development.
Caption files are checked for the correct format (WebVTT) but not for accuracy; staff should review auto-generated captions before uploading.
This app has not yet gone through NHDES's Public Information and Communications Unit (PIC) review, which the Vendor Guidelines require before any vendor-created web app is posted.

Feedback

If you use assistive technology and encounter a barrier anywhere in this application, please contact the project team so it can be corrected.