Accessibility statement

What this is about

imami exists so that people find one another. Anyone looking for a professional, or hoping to be found, should be able to do that with a keyboard, at heavy magnification or with a screen reader just as well as with a mouse and a pair of eyes.

We write this statement because a service that matches people must not shut out the people it means to match.

State of play

Both surfaces are partly accessible. We work to the success criteria of WCAG 2.2 at level AA and to EN 301 549.

This assessment is a self-assessment. No independent body has audited it so far. As long as that is the case, the state of play is a statement about our own work, not an audit result.

What is in place

Measured, not claimed:

• Every operable element shows a visible focus ring — three pixels wide, two pixels clear of the element — as soon as the keyboard reaches it. On the dark bands it changes colour instead of disappearing into them.
• Contrast is measured and held by the automated test suite: headings, actions and wordmarks at 4.5:1 or better, outlines and symbols at 3:1 or better — in light and dark, and for buttons under the pointer as well.
• The site exists in German, English, Turkish, Arabic, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Swedish. Each version carries its language and its reading direction in the document; Arabic runs right to left throughout.
• Light and dark can be switched, and the choice takes effect before the first paint — nobody who chose dark is hit by a white flash. With no choice made, the page follows the system setting, and the button leads back there too.
• If your operating system asks for less motion, you get it: animations and transitions all but stop, and in-page jumps jump instead of gliding.
• Messages sit in regions a screen reader announces: the note about a running search politely, an error immediately. Their meaning is in the wording, not in the colour alone.
• Decorative images are hidden from assistive technology instead of being read out as a file name.
• Apart from the map images on the results page, this website loads nothing from third parties; the fonts sit on our own server, and everything needed to read a page is already in the page as delivered.

What is not accessible yet

These points are known to us:

• There is no skip link to the content. Working by keyboard means going through the header on every page before the content's turn comes.
• The map on the results page is a canvas; a screen reader cannot read what it shows. The same results sit beside it as a list, so nobody depends on the map — which does not make the map accessible.
• The map deliberately zooms only with the Ctrl or Command key held down, and on touch devices only with two fingers. That prevents accidental zooming while scrolling, but it is an extra hurdle for one-handed use.
• The signed-in application paints its interface onto a canvas rather than as HTML. It does report its structure to assistive technology, but how well that arrives depends more on the tool in use than it would on a classic website. We have not played this through with every common combination.
• There is no video or audio content at present. As soon as any arrives, it will need captions and a text version.

How we check

Contrast, focus behaviour and the completeness of the nine language versions are held by an automated test suite that runs on every change. The pages are compared as images on top of that, so a layout change cannot quietly push text under an edge.

An external audit and a test with people who use assistive technology daily are still outstanding. Both are planned before imami goes into public production; this statement will then be updated with the result.

If something does not work

If you hit a barrier, write to us. Please describe where it happened and what you are working with — browser, operating system, assistive technology. That is the fastest way to get it fixed.

We answer as quickly as we can. If our answer does not help, you can turn to the German federal states' market surveillance authority for the accessibility of products and services.