Accessibility

memo.tax is committed to making Canadian tax research usable by everyone, including practitioners with disabilities. We target conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA.

What we’ve built in

• Semantic HTML with proper landmark regions (<header>, <nav>, <main>, <footer>)
• Logical heading hierarchy — one <h1> per page, sub-sections in <h2> and <h3>
• Skip-to-main-content link as the first focusable element on every page
• Visible focus indicators on every interactive element
• Form labels properly associated with inputs (<label for>)
• Descriptive error messages on form validation failures
• ARIA attributes on dynamic regions (loading spinners, live updates)
• Colour contrast ratio of 4.5:1 or higher for body text; 3:1 for large text
• Text resizes to 200% without loss of content or functionality
• Keyboard navigation works throughout — no mouse-only interactions
• Touch targets minimum 44×44px on mobile
• Respects prefers-reduced-motion for users who disable animations
• No content flashes more than three times per second
• Citations are real <a> elements with descriptive link text — not “click here”

How we test

• Automated: axe DevTools in CI
• Automated: Lighthouse accessibility audits
• Manual: keyboard-only navigation pass on each new feature
• Manual: screen-reader testing with VoiceOver (macOS) and NVDA (Windows)
• Manual: zoom-to-200% smoke test on each release

Known limitations

• External primary-source links (laws-lois.justice.gc.ca, canada.ca, decision sites) are operated by the Department of Justice, CRA, and Canadian courts — their accessibility is outside our control. The Government of Canada operates these sites to its own standards.
• The model-generated answer prose is checked for citation accuracy by an automated verifier, but we don’t individually audit every answer for plain-language readability. We’re working on this.
• Some PDF citations (Finance Canada explanatory notes, certain CRA archives) are scanned PDFs without OCR. We surface them as best we can but the underlying PDF accessibility is the publisher’s responsibility.

Browser and assistive-technology support

memo.tax is tested on:

• Latest two stable versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge on desktop and mobile
• VoiceOver on macOS / iOS
• NVDA on Windows

If you use a different combination and hit a barrier, please report it — we want to know.

Reporting an accessibility issue

If you encounter an accessibility barrier on memo.tax, email accessibility@memo.tax with:

• The page or feature affected (URL)
• What you tried to do
• What blocked you (screen reader said X, contrast was unreadable, keyboard didn’t reach Y, etc.)
• Your assistive technology and browser, if relevant

We commit to acknowledging accessibility reports within 2 business days and providing a remediation timeline within 10 business days.

Standards we follow

• WCAG 2.1 Level AA — Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
• AODA — Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (we operate from Ontario)