Accessibility
What we have measured, what we have not, and how to tell us about a barrier.
This is a measured position, not a declaration of conformance. No lawyer qualified in this jurisdiction has reviewed a conformance statement for EN 301 549 or WCAG 2.1 AA, and automated testing cannot produce one. What follows is what we ran, what it returned, and what is still untested.
The standard we work to
EN 301 549 — the European standard for accessible ICT — which carries WCAG 2.1 Level AA. The European Accessibility Act, Directive (EU) 2019/882, has applied since 28 June 2025 across the European Union.
The European Accessibility Act does not apply in the United Kingdom. We hold the product to the same standard here regardless, because it is one engine serving five markets and because our duties to make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010 do not go away for want of an EU directive.
What we measured, and when
On 26 August 2026 we ran axe-core inside a real Chromium browser — not a simulated DOM, so computed colour is real colour — over:
- every page of this website, and of the other four — 113 pages across the five markets, not only the front pages;
- the product as it is served, at legal.avantwerk.com;
- the product’s four case-visualisation views — calendar, matter stages, litigation timeline and case map — in all five market bundles and in both the light and the dark theme;
- the colour of every mark those views use to carry meaning: four calendar layers, five timeline lanes, nine case-map node types and six link types. 204 colour pairs, each scored against the background it is actually drawn on;
- a keyboard-only walk of the three actions in those views that used to need a mouse — selecting a node on the case map, moving a key date, and changing a matter’s status.
What it returned. No critical or serious automated finding remains on any of those surfaces. Every colour pair meets the 3:1 non-text contrast threshold, the lowest measuring 4.22:1. All three keyboard actions complete, in all five markets. Where the tool declined to judge a pair — text drawn over shapes it cannot see behind — we resolved it rather than leaving it: each of those pairs was re-measured against the background it is actually painted on, and every one clears the threshold its own text size earns, the lowest at 4.88:1 in the product and 4.95:1 across the sites.
What the same run found before we fixed it, recorded here so the change is legible rather than asserted: 122 serious contrast failures across the five market sites and the product’s front door; 96 across the case-visualisation views; 24 colour pairs below the threshold — among them the case map’s centre node, the matter itself, which measured 1.06:1 in the dark theme and was to all intents invisible.
And what widening the sweep found, which is the point of widening it: 20 more serious contrast failures, on the two pages a firm books a call and starts a trial on, across all five markets. The price block on those pages inverts the page — dark panel, light text — and two colours that had only ever been measured on a white background were being read on a near-black one. They measured 3.71:1 and 3.83:1 against a 4.5:1 requirement. Both are now measured where they are actually drawn.
What we have not measured
Automated tooling reaches roughly a third of accessibility failures. These are open, and we would rather say so than let a clean automated run stand in for them:
- Screen-reader comprehension. No session with JAWS, NVDA or VoiceOver has taken place. The litigation timeline publishes its whole chronology as an ordered list, and every case-map node is a labelled, focusable control — but whether what is announced is enough to use those views has not been tested with a person who relies on one.
- A conformance statement. Nobody qualified has reviewed one. Until that happens this page reports measurements.
Known limitations
- The case map and the litigation timeline are drawings, and colour is one of the ways they carry meaning. Every mark also carries a text label, and the timeline’s full chronology is available as a list — but the picture is not a substitute for the list, and we do not pretend otherwise.
- Automatic storage of case files on your device requires Chrome, Edge, Brave or Arc. Other browsers run the product; there it asks you to save a backup file instead.
Tell us about a barrier
If any part of the product or this site is unusable for you, write to legal@avantwerk.com with “Accessibility” in the subject line. Tell us the page or the screen, what you were trying to do, and which assistive technology you use — that is usually enough for us to reproduce it. Every report is logged and answered.
You can also call +44 20 4538 7989.
If our answer does not resolve it, you may raise the matter with the authority responsible for enforcing accessibility requirements where you live.
How this page is kept honest
Every figure above comes from a measurement that can be re-run, and the deterministic half of it runs on every change we make to the product. If a number here stops matching what the measurement returns, this page is the thing that is wrong.