Accessibility Statement

Status: Draft for board review. Last reviewed: 7 August 2026.

Fish Creek Water Co-op Ltd. wants every member and every neighbour to be able to read this site, whatever they use to read it with. This statement is deliberately divided into what has been measured, what has been built but not tested, and what has not been checked at all. An accessibility statement that claims more than that is worth nothing to the person relying on it.

1. What we aim for

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA. That is the standard Canadian public bodies work to. A small rural co-operative is not bound by the Accessible Canada Act, but our duty not to discriminate in providing a service comes from the Alberta Human Rights Act, and information people can actually read is part of that.

We do not claim to meet WCAG 2.1 AA today. We claim the specific things below.

2. What has been measured

Colour contrast. Every foreground and background pair on the public pages was measured against the WCAG 2.1 formula on 7 August 2026: 27 pairs, including the translucent ones composited against what sits behind them. All 27 meet their threshold, 4.5 to 1 for normal text and 3 to 1 for large text and for non-text parts such as field edges and focus indicators.

Five pairs failed when they were first measured and were corrected the same day: the helper line under the membership form heading, the figure captions beside the membership steps, and the underlines on the membership fields, the newsletter fields and the property dropdown, all of which were too pale against the panels they sat on.

The measurement is a script kept with the site's source, so a colour change that breaks one of these is caught by re-running it rather than by a visitor finding it. This paragraph is the reason the list above is short: it is what we can actually stand behind.

3. What is built in, and inspected, but not tested with assistive technology

• Every field on every public form sits inside its own label.
• Every image that carries meaning has alternative text; decorative images are hidden from screen readers rather than described pointlessly.
• Each page has one first-level heading, with second and third levels beneath it and no levels skipped.
• Every field shows a visible focus indicator, and the change between focused and unfocused is one of the contrasts measured above.
• The layout is built to reflow to a phone screen.
• Nothing flashes, auto-plays, or moves without being asked, and the one animated element respects a reduced-motion preference.

These were confirmed by reading the site's own markup and stylesheet. They were not confirmed by using the site with assistive technology, which is a different and better test.

4. What has not been checked

• No screen reader has been used on this site. Not JAWS, not NVDA, not VoiceOver, not TalkBack.
• No screen magnifier, voice control or switch device has been used.
• No disabled person has been asked to use it. No usability testing of any kind has taken place.
• No external audit has been carried out, and no automated accessibility scanner has been run over the deployed pages.
• Reflow at 400% zoom, and the behaviour of every form under a keyboard alone from first field to submission, have been built for but not verified.

When the co-op can pay for an audit, it will have one, and this section is what that audit will be measured against.

5. Where we know we fall short

• Uploaded documents. Minutes, engineering reports and government correspondence are often PDFs produced by somebody else. Older ones are scanned images with no text layer, so a screen reader cannot read them at all. We add a text layer to new ones as they arrive. Ask for any document and we will produce a readable version.
• Tables of financial data. Some are wide and are hard work on a small screen even when they are technically readable.
• Charts. A chart carries a written total or summary beside it, but the shape of a trend is not available to a screen reader.

6. Alternative formats

Anything published here can be had another way, at no charge: large print, plain text, a readable electronic copy, or read aloud over the telephone. Ask, and tell us which format suits you. We will normally respond within five business days.

7. Tell us where we have got it wrong

If you hit something on this site you cannot use, we want to know. Say what page you were on, what you were trying to do, and what you use to browse with (for example, a screen reader and its version). We will acknowledge within five business days and tell you what we intend to do about it.

info@fishcreekwater.co

If our response does not resolve it, you may take the matter to the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

8. Meetings and notices

Accessibility is not only a website matter. If you need a general meeting notice, an agenda or a ballot in another format, or you need an accommodation to take part in a meeting, tell the secretary in advance and it will be arranged.