Accessibility

studenttrustee.net aims to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AAA, the strictest level. This page says what that covers, how it is checked, and where the site still falls short.

What the site does

• Text meets the AAA contrast ratio of 7:1 against its background (4.5:1 for large text). Colour is never the only signal: every vote says Passed or Failed in words, and every record is labelled Federal, State or County.
• Everything works from the keyboard. A skip link leads to the main content, focus is always visible as a thick outline, and in the Legislation section focus moves to the new page heading when you follow a link. The map of states is a set of links in order from west to east, row by row, and each one says what the state has, for example "TX, Texas: federal and county votes". The shade of a tile is never the only cue: three bars under each code show which levels have votes.
• Links and buttons that are not part of a sentence are at least 44 by 44 pixels, so they are easy to hit on a phone or with a tremor.
• Pages reflow to a 320 pixel wide screen without sideways scrolling, and text can be enlarged to 200 percent.
• Animation is turned off when your device asks for reduced motion.
• Times are shown with their time zone (PT or ET) and dates in words, so they do not depend on locale.
• Tables have captions and header cells; vote positions can be filtered by position, name, party or district.
• Filters never move you without asking. On a state or county page, the level chips (All levels, Federal, State, County) change the list at once: focus stays on the chip you pressed and the new count is announced. The More filters drawer is a button that opens a form; nothing in it changes the page until you press Apply, focus then moves to the list's count, and the button says how many filters are on. The three doors (How they voted, Who represents me, What's coming up) are links, and the one you are on is marked as the current page. Where a list filters in place (vote positions), focus stays in the control and the number of matches is announced.
• On a phone the map of states becomes a grid of the states from A to Z, each tile at least 64 pixels wide, because the map's eleven columns would make the tiles too small to hit. The doors stack, and the filter drawer is as wide as the screen.
• "Show more" at the end of a list adds the next votes, loading older months when needed, and moves focus to the first one added.

How it is checked

Every change runs an automated suite before it can be merged. Each page is loaded at 1440, 768 and 390 pixels wide and checked with axe-core against the WCAG 2.x A, AA and AAA rules, including the enhanced contrast rule. A second scan measures every piece of text for contrast and size and every link and button for target size, and the layout is checked for sideways scrolling at 320 pixels. The Legislation section is also walked through with the keyboard alone, by an automated test that goes from the map to a state, its doors, a county, a level chip and the filter drawer using only Tab, the arrow keys and Enter. Automated tools do not catch everything, so reports from people who use assistive technology are the most useful check there is.

Known limitations

• The volunteer site, volunteer.studenttrustee.net, has not been brought up to AAA yet. Some of its text is below the 7:1 contrast ratio and a few of its controls are smaller than 44 pixels.
• The district map is a visual aid. Every district, trustee and link on it is also in the list beside the map and on the Districts pages, which work with a screen reader.
• Agendas, minutes, bill text and calendars that this site links to are published by the Legislature, Congress and county governments. Their accessibility is outside this site's control; many are PDFs.
• Vote records are shown as the official source publishes them, so some motion titles from the California Legislature are in capital letters or abbreviated.
• County websites outside California come from Wikidata and are linked as they are. Their accessibility is outside this site's control.

Report a problem

If something on this site is hard or impossible to use, email studenttrustee@4cd.edu with the page address and what you were trying to do. You will get a reply, and the fix will be tested the same way as everything else on the site.

Last reviewed September 28, 2026.