Accessibility statement
Version: 1.0, effective 25 August 2026
This statement covers routeround.co.uk, the RouteRound web application, the client portal, and the RouteRound apps for Android and iOS. All are operated by Desultory Ltd.
We want RouteRound to be usable by as many people as possible — including on a phone, in a van, in the rain, with cold hands and one thumb, which turns out to overlap with accessible design more than people expect.
How accessible RouteRound is
We believe RouteRound is partially conformant with WCAG 2.2 level AA. Partially conformant means most of the standard is met but some parts are not, or have not been verified.
We would rather say that than claim full conformance we have not tested for. Two parts of the standard are now checked automatically on every change, and the rest is not — which is why the answer is still "partially".
What has been built deliberately
- Nothing depends on colour alone. Status in the portal's month grid, and each asset type in the app, carries a distinct shape or label as well as a colour — WCAG 1.4.1.
- Text contrast has been tuned rather than assumed. The muted text colour was darkened specifically to meet AA against both surface colours, and button text on the primary colour sits at 5.5:1. Light and dark themes were each checked.
- One accessible dialogue. Every modal and drawer in the app routes through a single wrapper that handles focus trapping and dismissal, so the behaviour is consistent rather than reimplemented per screen.
- Decorative icons are hidden from screen readers rather than read out as noise.
- Controls have accessible names, and some of them are asserted in the automated tests.
- The app works offline, which matters more for accessibility than it sounds — nothing disappears mid-task because a connection dropped.
Known problems
These are the ones we know about. Where we have measured something we say what we measured; where we have not, we say that instead of implying it is fine.
Drag and drop. Planning works by dragging jobs between days. If you cannot use a pointer, tell us — we want to know how badly this affects you before we design the alternative rather than after.
The signature pad is a canvas. Capturing a signature needs a pointer or a finger. There is no keyboard or screen-reader equivalent, and a drawn signature is not something we can offer an alternative to without changing what the record is.
The month grid is a visual layout, not a table. A screen reader gets each day as a labelled region rather than as a row and column with headers. It is navigable; it is not as good as a proper grid would be.
Automated checks do not cover everything, and we are specific about what they miss. They run in a simulated browser with no layout, so anything needing real geometry — target sizes, reflow at 400% zoom, focus-indicator visibility — is not machine-checked. Colour contrast IS checked, by a separate arithmetic test over the theme colours themselves (see How we tested), which is why we can state it rather than hope.
A placeholder counts as a label to the tools, and should not. Automated checking accepts a field labelled only by its placeholder text. We hold that as a known limitation rather than a pass — a placeholder disappears the moment somebody types into it.
No disabled person has tested RouteRound. No screen-reader user, no switch-access user, nobody using voice control. That is the largest gap on this page and no amount of automated checking closes it.
If something does not work for you
Tell us. We will help, and we will fix it.
Tell us the page or screen, what you were trying to do, and what got in the way. We aim to reply within 5 working days.
If you need information from RouteRound in another format — large print, plain text, a different colour scheme, or a report read out — ask, and we will get it to you. There is no charge for this.
Our legal position, plainly
We are a private company selling to businesses, so the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 do not bind us directly.
The Equality Act 2010 does. It requires us to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people, and that duty is anticipatory — we are meant to have thought about it in advance rather than waiting for someone to struggle. WCAG 2.2 AA is not a statutory requirement for a private B2B service, but it is the standard everyone measures against, so it is the one we work to.
If you are a public body, or a contractor working for one: the accessibility duty on a council does not transfer to us automatically, but councils are responsible for what they procure and routinely flow the requirement down. Ask us for whatever your framework needs and we will give you a straight answer, including where the answer is that we have not tested something yet.
If you are not happy with how we have responded, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service.
How we tested
Automated, on every change. Two suites run in the project's continuous integration, so they run on every commit rather than when somebody remembers:
- axe-core over rendered components against WCAG 2.2 A and AA — currently the shared dialog, the report form, the introduction landing page and the legal footer. It carries a positive control: a test that feeds axe known-bad markup and requires it to fail. Without that, a broken harness and a clean bill of health look identical.
- Colour contrast, computed from the theme tokens themselves and checked against WCAG AA (4.5:1 for text, 3:1 for boundaries). Every combination the app can render is covered — light, dark, and both trade palettes in both — including ones nobody would think to open, such as a tree firm's board at night. This is arithmetic on the colour values, not a rendering test, which is what makes it exact.
What has NOT been done. No manual screen-reader pass. No keyboard-only walkthrough of the whole app. No testing with any disabled user. No formal audit by a third party. The automated suites above cover structure, naming and contrast; they do not tell you whether the app is usable.
Tested by: Desultory Ltd, in-house.
Last reviewed: 25 August 2026. We review this statement at least annually and whenever we make a significant change to the interface.
Desultory Ltd, 133 Berrall Way, Billingshurst, England, RH14 9PQ. Registered in England and Wales, company number 17361684.