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Wellington Puppetry Festival logo: silhouette of a hand holding a bird rod puppet. The rod is held between the first finger and thumb. The bird has it's wings extended and a long flowing tail.Wellington
Puppetry Festival

Accessibility report

What we test on this website, how it is doing, and what we have not sorted yet.

Last tested 7 August 2026 against the live build. We publish the open items alongside the fixed ones. If something here is wrong, or you hit a problem we have not listed, please tell us.

Summary

  • 25

    pages tested

  • 3

    screen widths each

  • 0

    automated errors left

  • 18

    issues fixed

What we tested

10 of 13 checks are passing.

  • Keyboard-only navigation

    Passing

    Every page was walked start to finish with the Tab key and no mouse. Every stop is reachable, every stop shows a visible focus ring, and the order follows the page as it reads.

    A "Skip to content" link is now the first stop on every page, so you are not tabbing through the logo and four nav links before you reach anything. The mobile menu opens with Enter, reports its open/closed state, and closes with Escape.

  • Automated checker (axe-core, WCAG 2.2 AA)

    Passing

    Every public page checked at desktop, phone and 320px widths. 25 pages, 75 page loads. Zero errors outstanding.

    This caught 267 colour-contrast failures and a run of heading-order problems. All are fixed. Worth saying plainly: automated tools only catch roughly a quarter of real accessibility problems, so a clean run is a floor, not a finish line.

  • Zoom to 400%

    Passing

    Checked at a 320px-wide viewport, which is what a 1280px desktop looks like at 400% zoom. No content is cut off and nothing has to be scrolled sideways to read.

    The header used to overflow by 41px at this size, which made every page scroll horizontally. The "Tix soon" pill now steps out of the way on very narrow screens.

  • Colour contrast

    Passing

    All text meets the WCAG AA minimum (4.5:1 for body text). Ratios were calculated directly rather than eyeballed.

    The brand green was the root cause of most failures: white text on it reached only 4.31:1. It has been darkened slightly to clear AA in both directions without changing the look of the site.

  • Motion and animation

    Passing

    Nothing on the site animates on its own, nothing flashes, and there is no infinite scroll. The one animation is the "You!" tile on the sponsor wall, which plays when you hover or focus it.

    Verified that it is fully suppressed when the operating system is set to reduce motion, with the whole rig removed rather than merely slowed down. It also runs on keyboard focus, so it is not mouse-only.

  • No accessibility overlay

    Passing

    This site uses no overlay plugin: no UserWay, no AccessiBe, nothing of that kind. Accessibility is built into the pages themselves.

  • Form labels

    Passing

    The newsletter sign-up fields have real, properly associated labels and autocomplete hints.

    They previously relied on placeholder text alone, which gives a screen reader an unreliable name and disappears for everyone the moment you start typing.

  • Tap target sizes

    Passing

    Every link and button is at least 24x24px on a phone, meeting WCAG 2.5.8.

    The footer links were 19px tall and have been given more room.

  • Ticketing platform

    Passing

    Ticket links point at Humanitix, which was preferred over Eventbrite for the booking flow.

  • Screen reader pass

    Open

    Not done yet. An accessibility consultant will run this once the site is ready for it, and that testing will find things the automated tools cannot.

    Landmarks, heading structure and alt text are all in place to give that pass a sensible starting point, but none of that substitutes for someone actually listening to the site.

  • Te reo Māori pronunciation

    Passing

    Words like whānau, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa and Ngā Maunga Rū are marked up so a screen reader pronounces them as te reo rather than reading them as English.

    This happens automatically as the page is built, rather than being typed in by hand, so it keeps working as the programme is edited, so nobody has to remember to do it. It currently recognises a dozen words and phrases, including the ones in show titles and artist bios.

  • Accessible ticket options at booking

    Not yet started

    Access requirements need to be selectable individually at booking, each as its own proper checkbox rather than one box covering several options.

    Booking happens on Humanitix rather than on this site, so this is a setup task there. Flagged here so it does not get lost.

  • Cabaret access information

    Not yet started

    Pre-show notes, wayfinding, drop-off points, entrance and ramp descriptions, and named support volunteers are not on the site yet.

    The plan is to fold this into the ordinary event listing rather than putting it in a separate access post, so it reaches everyone and reads as normal information.

How we test

  • A scripted pass with axe-core against WCAG 2.2 A and AA, across every public page at three screen widths.
  • A keyboard walk of each page, recording every stop, its order, and whether it shows a focus ring.
  • A reflow check at 320px, equivalent to 400% zoom on a desktop screen.
  • Contrast ratios calculated directly from the colour values, rather than judged by eye.
  • A reduced-motion check, confirming animation is genuinely removed and not just shortened.
  • Still to come: a screen reader pass with someone who uses one daily.

Changelog

7 August 2026

  • The "You!" tile on the sponsor wall is now a proper link to a Support page, rather than a button that only did something visual. Its animation plays on hover and on keyboard focus.
  • Te reo Māori is now marked up across the whole site so screen readers pronounce it as te reo, not as English. It is applied automatically as pages are built, rather than typed in by hand, so it keeps working as the programme changes.
  • Access information folded into the programme itself, instead of living only on this section of the site.
  • Moved the "audio described" tag next to the show it describes. On a phone it had been sitting adrift in the row above.
  • The day is now repeated inside each programme card, so you can tell whether you are looking at Saturday or Sunday once a card is open.
  • Added the shows that offer audio description and touch tours, with their times.

6 August 2026

  • Added a "Skip to content" link as the first stop on every page.
  • Darkened the brand green so white text on it reads at 5.6:1 instead of 4.3:1. This alone cleared most of the site's contrast failures.
  • Replaced the faded "Tix on sale soon" pill, which sat at 1.9:1, with a bordered blush version at 7.5:1.
  • Swapped see-through white footer text for solid tints (was 2.5:1 at its worst, now 4.7:1 or better).
  • Turned the contact page newsletter panel white-on-deep-green; its label was previously 2.2:1.
  • Moved small bold "kicker" labels to the deeper pink so they clear 4.5:1 on butter-yellow cards.
  • Brightened the Cabaret ticket button and its footnote, which were 4.4:1 and 3.8:1.
  • Gave the newsletter fields real labels, ids and names instead of relying on placeholder text.
  • Added open/closed state to the mobile menu button, and made Escape close it and return focus.
  • Fixed heading order on the accessibility, team and volunteers pages, where h3s appeared with no h2 above them.
  • Stopped the header overflowing at 320px, which had been forcing every page to scroll sideways at high zoom.
  • Enlarged footer links to meet the 24px minimum tap target.
  • Marked Pōneke as te reo in the footer and on the about page.

Earlier

  • Alt text added across the site and made editable in the admin tool.
  • Wheelchair access noted on every Ridgway School Hall listing.
  • Venue names linked to maps in the programme.
  • Reduced-motion support added, so the sponsor-wall animation is removed entirely for anyone who asks their device to limit motion.
Access info for festival-goers