Accessibility Statement

Our commitment

We aim to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. During a storm this is not a compliance exercise: if someone cannot read a warning because of how we built a page, we have failed at the only job this site has.

What is built in

Accessibility here lives in the markup rather than in an overlay. Every page uses semantic landmarks and a single H1, has a skip link, keeps focus visible and never removes it, labels every control, and meets AA contrast at the design token level. Interactive targets are at least 44 by 44 pixels. The main menu opens on click as well as hover, so it is reachable by keyboard. Data tables have proper headers and scopes.

Preferences you can set

The accessibility button on every page opens controls for text size, high contrast, increased letter and word spacing, permanent link underlines, reduced motion, and light or dark theme. Choices are saved in your browser and applied before the page paints, so there is no flash of the default. Turning on reduced motion also pauses radar and satellite animation.

Known gaps

We would rather name these than imply we are perfect.

• Radar and satellite images come from NOAA with no descriptive alt text available. We supply our own description of what each image shows, but it cannot describe the specific weather in a given frame.
• The interactive model map is a canvas element. It can be operated by keyboard and every underlying figure is also published as text and tables nearby, but the drawing itself is not readable by a screen reader.
• Pages translated with Google Translate may not preserve every label correctly, as the translation is produced by a third party.

Tell us about a barrier

If something here blocks you, please tell us using the contact page and describe the page and the assistive technology you were using. We treat accessibility faults as bugs and prioritise them accordingly.