Last updated: 2026-05-07
Our commitment
Arthea is built for Canadian households planning for retirement. Our users skew older — vision, hearing, motor, and cognitive accessibility are not optional. We aim for WCAG 2.1 Level AA conformance and meet the obligations of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), Arthea’s primary jurisdiction.
What we’ve built for accessibility
- Skip-to-main-content link on every page (keyboard / screen-reader users bypass the sidebar nav).
- Distinct, descriptive page titles (announced by screen readers on every navigation).
- Semantic HTML landmarks —
<main>,<nav>,<header>— on every layout. - ARIA labels on icon-only controls (sidebar toggles, modal close buttons, status indicators).
- Visible keyboard focus rings on every interactive element (with respect for mouse-vs-keyboard via
:focus-visible). - Esc key closes modals and dropdowns.
- Status announcements (forecast running / complete; saved / save failed; sign-in errors) via ARIA live regions.
- Required form fields marked with both a visible asterisk and
aria-required. - Error messages use icon + text together — never colour alone.
- Plan-Risks status indicators carry a status word in addition to colour, so they’re distinguishable in greyscale and for users with colour-vision differences.
- Body-text colour contrast meets WCAG AA (4.5:1) on every page surface.
prefers-reduced-motionrespected — animations and transitions are near-instant for users who request reduced motion.- Hit targets on primary controls meet the WCAG AAA recommendation of 44×44px.
Known limitations
We’re working toward full AA conformance. Areas not yet at our target:
- Forecast fan chart and donut visualisations rely on colour to distinguish percentile bands and segments. We provide a textual summary of the same data on the Forecast page Stat Tiles and Funding Gap card; a pattern-based visual encoding for greyscale users is planned.
- Layout at 200% browser zoom works on most pages but the Forecast page tables (Projection / Retirement Income / After-Tax Income) rely on horizontal scroll at high zoom. Improvement is planned.
- Mobile (small-screen) layouts are not yet optimised. Arthea is desktop-first by design; phone use works for “glance” tasks (signing in, viewing the dashboard) but substantive editing is best done on a larger screen for now.
- Form labels in the setup wizard use placeholder text where a visible label would be clearer for users relying on screen-reader navigation. We’re sweeping the older form surfaces to add explicit labels.
Contact us
If you find an accessibility barrier in Arthea, please tell us so we can fix it. Email accessibility feedback to arthea.ca@gmail.com.