Client login
03.1AccessibilityWCAG 2.2 Level AA

We build accessibility in from the first component.

We believe a website for a public place should welcome everyone who wants to visit, whatever device they use and however they take in a page. So we settle contrast, focus and page structure in the design system before anyone designs a page, and every page built from it starts accessible. Below, you can see this site through ten simulated views and run a check on this page yourself.

We tested this site on October 7, 2026.

  • Automated tests with axe Deque Systems publishes axe as an open-source testing engine. It checks a page’s code against WCAG rules and powers the accessibility audit in Lighthouse. found no violations on any of the 15 pages we checked at desktop and phone widths.

  • Lighthouse Lighthouse is an audit tool that Google builds into Chrome. It scores a page for accessibility and speed, and by default it simulates a mid-range phone. gave every page an accessibility score of 100 on a simulated phone.

  • Every page fit a screen 320 pixels wide without scrolling sideways.

  • At 200 percent browser zoom, text on every page stayed readable and none of it overlapped or got cut off.

The W3C’s Nu HTML Checker found no errors in any page’s markup. Our accessibility statement lists every test.

Every text colour in this site’s palette clears the 4.5:1 line.

Each chip shows a pair in its real colours on a scale that runs logarithmically from 1:1 to 21:1. Your browser measures every pair from this page’s own colours, so the numbers follow the theme you’re using.

These colours sit on the paper.

  • Ink16.75 to 1
  • Grey text6.78 to 1
  • Accessibility blue7.34 to 1
  • Work red7.28 to 1
  • Capture green5.89 to 1
  • Studio purple7.96 to 1
  • Contact amber6.05 to 1

White text sits on each floor colour.

  • Accessibility blue7.96 to 1
  • Work red7.90 to 1
  • Capture green6.39 to 1
  • Studio purple8.63 to 1
  • Contact amber6.56 to 1

WCAG 2.2 Level AA The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines come from the W3C, and version 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation in October 2023. A page meets Level AA when it passes every Level A and Level AA success criterion. asks for text contrast of at least 4.5:1, targets of at least 24 by 24 pixels, text that can grow to 200 percent and pages that Reflow A page reflows when its content fits a window 320 pixels wide without scrolling sideways. That matches a small phone, or a desktop browser zoomed to 400 percent. at 320 pixels wide.

03.2Try it10 views of one sample

Use this page the way other people do.

Choose a view, and the sample changes to show how someone with that kind of sight or setup meets it. We built the sample from this site’s own components and colours. Every view is a simulation that runs in your browser.

View the sample as
Colour vision
Low vision
Keyboard and screen reader
02Work4 of 5 case studies

Wildcoast Adventures

Sea kayakers return to Orca Camp at sunset on Johnstone Strait.

Guests walk a boat-access camp before they book it.

The Still · 50°29′ N 126°30′ W

See all our work

Each floor has a colour and a name.

  • Work
  • Accessibility
  • Capture
  • Studio
  • Contact
The sample copies part of this site down to its floor colours.Each grid square measures 24 pixels because WCAG 2.2 Level AA sets that as the minimum size for a target.

A screen reader announces the sample in this order.

  1. link The Still, home
  2. button, collapsed Accessibility settings
  3. button, collapsed Menu
  4. text 02
  5. text Work
  6. text 4 of 5 case studies
  7. heading level 3, link Wildcoast Adventures
  8. image Sea kayakers return to Orca Camp at sunset on Johnstone Strait.
  9. text Guests walk a boat-access camp before they book it.
  10. text The Still · 50°29′ N 126°30′ W
  11. link See all our work
  12. text Each floor has a colour and a name.
  13. list, 5 items
  14. text Work
  15. text Accessibility
  16. text Capture
  17. text Studio
  18. text Contact
  19. end of list

This view shows the sample in this site’s own type and colours as most visitors see it.

With protanopia, the red of the Work floor darkens to an olive grey, and the Accessibility blue and the Studio purple become almost the same blue. Each floor still carries its name beside its colour, so visitors can find it without telling the colours apart.

With deuteranopia, three of the five floors turn a similar olive brown. Each floor’s name sits next to its colour, so nobody has to tell those three apart.

With tritanopia, the Accessibility blue and the Capture green turn into the same teal. The underlined links and the bordered button still stand out without any help from colour.

Without colour, all five floors turn into greys of nearly the same lightness. The text keeps its contrast, because contrast measures the difference in lightness between text and its background.

Blurred sight wipes out fine detail first. We keep body text at 18 pixels or more and set headings far larger, so the page’s structure still shows through the blur.

Here the text is twice its usual size in a column as narrow as a phone. We set the sample’s breakpoints in ems, so its layout rearranges around the bigger text and every word stays on screen.

High-contrast settings replace a site’s colours with a set the visitor picks, and this view uses black and yellow. Our buttons carry borders that show up in these modes, and the heading link keeps its underline.

Keyboard users move with the Tab key, and the numbers show the order focus takes through the sample. On a computer, press Tab now and a thick ring follows you from stop to stop.

A screen reader turns the sample into speech, and the list shows what it announces in order. We build that list from the sample’s code as you watch, and each screen reader words some of those lines in its own way.

03.3NectarKlue · Design system

Klue’s teams built more with Nectar once it became simpler to use.

Klue’s design team simplified Nectar until the right component was the obvious one, and it held office hours for the teams building with it. Designers and engineers used the system more and shipped faster. For Klue’s customers, the product grew more consistent and took less effort to move through.

Company
Klue
Place
Vancouver
Sector
Competitive-intelligence software
The work
A simplified component library, design tokens, accessible patterns, documentation, a guild with office hours and a process for extending the system
Design direction
Adam Bognar
Role
Director of Design at Klue from 2022 to 2025
Design and engineering
Klue’s design and engineering teams
A close view of Klue’s navigation shows the Klue logo, the word nectar in purple, a Dashboard item and the Discover heading.
In a frame from Klue’s short film about the system, the word nectar fades in beside the Klue logo.Klue · Nectar

What they needed

Klue makes competitive-intelligence software in Vancouver, and its designers and engineers build the product side by side. The product had grown quickly, and Nectar had grown along with it. Duplicate components and legacy patterns made the right piece slow to find, and a gap kept widening between what designers drew and what engineering shipped. Klue needed a system both teams would reach for first, and it had to keep improving after release with accessibility in every component.

What Klue’s design team did

The work followed a principle of reduce, then refine.

The team simplified the library until the right component was the obvious one.

Duplicate components came out first. The team then rebuilt the core components that remained so each one did a single job, and the button family below shows how far the cuts went.

Show the button family

This drawing shows each of Klue’s button variants as a plain block.

Accessibility came built into every component.

Each one followed an accessible pattern and took its values from Nectar’s Design tokens Design tokens store design decisions like colours and spacing as named values. Designers and engineers read the same values, so a change in one place reaches every screen. .

The team documented every component and stayed on hand to help.

Each component came with written guidance on when and how to use it, so nobody had to guess. The team formed a guild to look after Nectar and held office hours where the teams using it could bring a question or a problem.

An anatomy diagram of Klue’s navigation uses grey tags to name its logo, button, eyebrow, icon, text, list item and list.
An anatomy drawing names each part of the navigation from the logo to the list items.Klue · Nectar

A formal process let the system grow with the product.

A new component, or a change to an existing one, followed a set path into Nectar, and parts of that path ran automatically. Customers rarely saw the system itself. It sat under the screens they used and let Klue’s teams change those screens faster.

Blue lines draw Klue’s navigation in a short film about Nectar, and the finished interface takes their place.Klue · 12-second loop with no sound
03

What changed

1 of 4

The button family shrank from 63 variants to 12.

03What changed2 of 4

Variants across Klue’s wider component library fell by more than half.

The words “54% less variants” sit over rows of small green circles.
03What changed3 of 4

Designers and engineers used Nectar more, and delivery on the work Klue tracked sped up by about 30 percent.

03What changed4 of 4

Klue built its brand refresh and its vision for the product on Nectar.

Klue’s dashboard has the navigation on the left, an Ask Klue search bar, a grid of competitor cards and a news panel.
The dashboard carries the same navigation as the anatomy drawing.Klue · Nectar
03.4ChecksRuns in your browser

Run a quick check on this page.

The button below reads this page’s code in your browser and reports what a script can measure on its own.

A person checks by hand whether each description suits its image and whether the headings make sense together.

  1. Landmarks

    Looks for the page’s Landmarks Landmarks mark out the main regions of a page, and screen reader users can jump straight from one region to the next. and checks that each navigation region has its own label.

    Not run yet
  2. Headings

    Checks for a single h1 and for heading levels that never skip a step.

    Not run yet
  3. Images

    Makes sure every image has alternative text or is marked as decoration.

    Not run yet
  4. Names

    Confirms that every control has a name a screen reader can announce.

    Not run yet
  5. Contrast

    Measures each text pairing in the palette against 4.5:1.

    Not run yet
  6. Language

    Reads the language the page declares.

    Not run yet
  7. Title

    Reads the page title.

    Not run yet
  8. Target size

    Measures every button and standalone link against 24 by 24 pixels.

    Not run yet
  9. IDs

    Looks for any id that appears twice.

    Not run yet
  10. Motion

    Reads your reduced motion setting.

    Not run yet
03.5PracticeSix stages

Accessibility runs through every stage of our work.

The same small team carries that work from the first workshop to the monthly update.

  1. 1 Discovery

    We learn how people use your current site.

    We read your analytics and walk through the site with the staff who update it. Then we talk with the people who visit it.

  2. 2 Design system

    We design the system before we design the pages.

    We check each colour pairing for contrast before it reaches a page. Each component’s specification includes its focus state and a touch target big enough for a thumb, and body text stays readable on a phone at default zoom.

  3. 3 Build

    We build the theme from the design system’s tokens.

    The code reads the same values as the designs, so visitors get the contrast we checked.

  4. 4 Testing

    We test every template with a keyboard and a screen reader.

    Automated checks run on every template. We also go through each one using only a keyboard, and again with VoiceOver VoiceOver is the screen reader Apple builds into macOS and iOS. It reads a page aloud, and people can jump through it by heading or by link. on a Mac and an iPhone.

  5. 5 Training

    Your editors learn to keep the site accessible.

    The editing tools we set up keep headings in order and ask for alternative text on every image. We train your editors on a copy of your site, so they can practise freely.

  6. 6 Support

    We keep checking the site after launch.

    On a support plan, we test each new page for accessibility and try every monthly update on a staging copy before it reaches the live site.

03.6FeedbackEmail

Tell us if anything on this site gets in your way.

If any part of this site is hard to use, email info@wearethestill.ca. Tell us the page and what got in your way, and we’ll write back.