Accessibility statement

This is a real statement about a real build, not a template. Where something falls short, it is named below rather than left for you to discover.

1. The standard we build to

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2, level AA. The site is substantially conformant: the gaps we know about are listed in section four, and none of them blocks access to information.

2. What is checked on every single build

These are not aspirations. Each one is a gate in the build script, and the site does not publish if one fails.

Colour contrast

Every text colour is measured against every background it can appear on. One inherited brand grey failed at 4.07:1 against white and was darkened to 4.82:1 before launch; the build now refuses to compile if anyone reverts it. Our warm bronze is permitted for large headings and accents but is blocked from body copy, and the amber is restricted to non-text interface elements, because neither clears the small-text threshold.

Heading order

Headings never skip a level. The content gate reads the markup of every page and fails the build on an h2 followed by an h4, because a screen-reader user navigating by heading level should not fall through a hole in the outline.

Heading rhythm

The space above a heading always exceeds the space below it. This sounds cosmetic. It is not: when the gap is the wrong way round, every section reads as a caption for the block above it, and the page loses its structure for a sighted reader in the same way a skipped level loses it for a screen-reader user.

Line length

Body text is capped at roughly sixty-eight characters per line. Beyond that the eye loses the return sweep, which is a comprehension problem long before it is a taste problem, and a much larger one for dyslexic readers.

Motion

Everything that animates respects the reduced-motion setting in your operating system. Camera moves on the relief model become instant cuts, transitions collapse, and nothing on the site parallaxes or auto-plays. Transitions animate transforms and opacity rather than layout properties, so text never reflows underneath a pointer.

3. How the harder parts work

The relief model of the island

The three-dimensional island is drawn on a canvas, and a canvas is opaque to assistive technology. So it is never the only route to anything. Every place marked on it is also a link in the list beside it; a select control moves the camera and updates a live region with the same facts the marker shows; and the whole towns section works with the canvas ignored entirely. The canvas carries a label describing what it is and pointing at the list.

The assessment quiz

Options are real buttons with radio or checkbox semantics, reachable and operable by keyboard, and the letter keys A to F select an option directly. Progress is announced as text as well as drawn as a bar. When the result is ready, a live region announces it. If JavaScript does not run, a message explains where to find the same material written out as guides, with links.

The calculators

Every field is a labelled native input. Results render into a polite live region, so a screen reader announces the new total without interrupting what you are doing. Nothing depends on colour alone: a figure that is higher or lower than yours says so in words as well as in red or green.

Figures and their sources

Numbers in guides are links to the source that published them, marked with an asterisk. Screen readers get the full citation — publisher, period and the date we read it — as text inside the link, so the source is available without hovering anything.

4. Known gaps

• The relief model cannot be explored spatially without sight. The text equivalent gives every fact about every place, but not the shape of the terrain. We have not solved that and are not going to pretend otherwise.
• Some third-party documents we link to, Portuguese gazettes and authority PDFs in particular, are not accessible, and we do not control them. Where a rule matters we describe it in accessible text on our own page rather than sending you to the PDF for the substance.
• The site has not yet been formally audited by an independent third party, and it has been tested with keyboard navigation and automated checks rather than with a full range of assistive technologies. Reports from real users are worth more than either.

5. Reporting a barrier

Email access@madeiraatlanticproperty.com. Tell us the page, what you were trying to do, and what happened instead. Your browser and assistive technology help, but do not wait to gather them — a rough report now is more useful than a precise one never.

We aim to acknowledge within five working days and to say what we will do and when. If a fix is going to take time, we will offer the information another way in the meantime.

6. This statement

Prepared on 26 August 2026, based on a self-assessment of the site as built. It is reviewed when a significant feature ships, and the date at the top changes when it is.