Commitment
Accessibility
This site is built to WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Where it falls short of that, we want to hear about it.
What we havebuilt in
A school website is read by grandparents, by parents on old phones, and by students using screen readers. It has to work for all of them.
Keyboard navigation
Every control on this site can be reached and operated from the keyboard alone. A skip link appears on first tab. Dialogs — the announcement poster, the event and achievement panels, the application form — trap focus while open, return it on close, and dismiss with Escape. Focus is always visible, in a gold ring against both light and dark grounds.
Screen readers
Pages use a single H1 and a correct heading order beneath it. Images that carry meaning have alternative text; decorative images are hidden from assistive technology rather than described. Carousels, accordions and dialogs carry the ARIA roles and states their behaviour implies, and the fee and application forms label every field.
Colour and contrast
Body text and interface labels meet or exceed the 4.5:1 contrast ratio Level AA requires; large display text meets 3:1. Colour is never the only way information is conveyed — the active navigation tab carries an underline as well as a colour change, and form errors carry text as well as a red rule.
Motion
The site uses scroll-triggered animation, a rotating hero and a scrolling gallery. All of it is disabled when the visitor's device asks for reduced motion, and the content is shown in its final state instead. No animation flashes, and nothing moves faster than three times a second.
Text and zoom
The layout is fluid and reflows to 320px without horizontal scrolling. Text can be enlarged to 200% without loss of content or function, and line length is held to a readable measure at every width.
Forms
Every field has a visible, permanently associated label — never a placeholder standing in for one. Required fields are marked in text. Errors are announced to assistive technology, explain what went wrong, and say how to put it right.
How this ischecked
Conformance is tested three ways before launch and after every significant change: automated auditing across every template, manual keyboard traversal of every page and dialog, and screen-reader testing with NVDA and VoiceOver.
Automated tools catch perhaps a third of what matters. The remainder — whether alternative text is actually useful, whether a heading order makes sense read aloud, whether a form error is comprehensible — is checked by hand.
Report a problem
If something on this site is difficult or impossible to use, write to info@hillwoodcollege.lk with the page address and what happened. We aim to respond within five working days.