Accessibility Statement

Our commitment

Sensible Man Antiques is committed to making our website usable by as many people as possible, regardless of ability or technology. We aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA — the recognised standard for accessible digital content — and to comply with the UK Equality Act 2010.

What we’ve done

Structure and navigation

• Semantic HTML landmarks (header, nav, main, footer, section) throughout every page so screen readers can jump between regions.
• “Skip to main content” link — visible on focus, first in the tab order on every page.
• Consistent, logical heading hierarchy (h1 → h2 → h3) on all public pages.
• Keyboard-operable navigation including the mobile slide-in menu, which closes on Escape and returns focus to the menu button.

Keyboard and focus

• Visible focus rings on every interactive element, enforced globally via :focus-visible.
• Nav link underlines appear on keyboard focus as well as mouse hover — no hover-only affordances.
• All modals and drawers (basket, enquiry panel, image lightbox, chat window) trap focus while open, close on Escape, and return focus to the element that opened them.
• Full keyboard navigation through the product image gallery and fullscreen lightbox.

Forms

• Every form field has an explicit, visible <label> linked via htmlFor — no placeholder-only labels.
• Required fields are marked with a visible asterisk (*), aria-required="true", and the HTML required attribute — consistently across every form.
• Inline validation: errors appear immediately on blur, linked to their field via aria-errormessage and announced via role="alert".
• Success messages are announced to screen readers via role="status" and receive focus automatically.

Images and media

• All product images have descriptive alt text including item title, era, and category where known.
• AI-generated “lifestyle” images describe the item and its setting (e.g. “Victorian mantel clock in a study”).
• Decorative icons and purely visual elements are marked aria-hidden="true".

Colour and motion

• Dark theme foreground-to-background contrast ratio of approximately 15:1 — well above the WCAG AA minimum of 4.5:1.
• Respects prefers-reduced-motion — all CSS transitions and animations are suppressed when you have asked your device to reduce motion.

Other

• Page language declared as lang="en-GB".
• Responsive layouts that work from 320 px upwards, including zoom up to 400%.
• Dynamic content updates (basket count, status messages) are announced via aria-live regions.
• Prices, dates, and quantities use machine-readable formats alongside human-readable text.

Known limitations

We’re honest about the parts of the site we’re still improving:

• Stripe payment form — the card input is rendered by Stripe and follows their accessibility implementation, which we cannot fully control. Stripe publishes their own accessibility notes.
• Bot-protection widget — our spam-protection (Cloudflare Turnstile) is an invisible challenge that runs without user interaction in most cases. On rare occasions it may require completing a challenge; this is controlled by Cloudflare. If you encounter difficulty, email us and we can process your enquiry manually.
• Admin panel — the staff-only backend is not yet fully audited for screen reader use. It is not accessible to the public.

Assistive technology we test with

• VoiceOver on macOS and iOS (Safari)
• NVDA on Windows (Firefox and Chrome)
• Keyboard-only navigation on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari
• 200% and 400% browser zoom
• Automated checks with axe DevTools and Lighthouse on every major release

Tell us if something’s broken

If you find a page, feature, or product you can’t use, we want to hear about it. Email info@sensiblemanantiques.com with:

• The page or feature that isn’t working for you
• What you were trying to do
• The browser, device, and assistive technology you’re using (if you know)

We aim to reply within two working days and to fix serious issues within 14 days. If you’d like an item described to you over email or a photo clarified, just ask — Steve is happy to help directly.

Enforcement

If you contact us and aren’t satisfied with our response, you can escalate to the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS) at equalityadvisoryservice.com.

How this statement was prepared

This statement was last reviewed on 24 April 2026. We test the site in-house on every major release using axe DevTools, Lighthouse, manual keyboard passes, and VoiceOver / NVDA screen reader checks. We’re a small team — if you spot something we’ve missed, please tell us and we’ll put it right.