Accessibility

The booking path is built and tested to WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Ontario requires public websites of larger employers to meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA; we hold a higher bar from the start because retrofitting a booking flow costs far more than building it correctly.

We are working towards WCAG 2.2 Level AA and are not there yet. The gap is named below rather than left for you to find.

Every page of the booking path was checked against WCAG 2.1 Level AA with axe-core, at phone and desktop widths: the front page, the lists of activities, events and restaurants, destination pages, every kind of listing, the planner, checkout with a real trip in hand, checkout after a failed submit, the confirmation, your trips, and the legal pages. It reports no violations.

The path was also walked with the keyboard alone, checking that every stop shows a visible focus ring and that the order matches the page. It was checked at 320 pixels wide, where no page scrolls sideways. And it was run from a listing through to a confirmation on the engines behind both phone browsers our guests will use: WebKit, which is Safari, and Chromium, which is Chrome.

Every interactive element has a visible focus ring, and a component can no longer remove one by accident. Every form field has a persistent label rather than a placeholder standing in for one. Submitting an incomplete checkout says out loud how many things need fixing, lists them, and puts the cursor on the first one, rather than a red border and silence. Every icon-only button has an accessible name. Colour is never the only way something is communicated. Animation is switched off for anyone whose system asks for reduced motion. The whole path from planning a trip to holding one can be completed with a keyboard.

No site is accessible because an automated tool says so, and automated checks catch only part of what matters. A pass with a real screen reader, by a person using one properly, has not been done. It is the next thing on this list.

One control is smaller than WCAG 2.2 asks for: the tick boxes at checkout. They have a larger label beside them that does the same thing, and they meet WCAG 2.1. They are on the list for the 2.2 pass.

If you hit a barrier here, tell us at hello@havaro.ca. We will fix it and tell you when it is done.

This is the part that matters more than the website. These are small, independent Ontario businesses in old buildings, and step-free access varies enormously. Where we know a place is step-free we say so on its listing. Where you have specific requirements, email us before you book and we will phone the operator and confirm rather than guess.