Accessibility statement
BreakAtlas is built to WCAG 2.2 Level AA. Colour contrast is enforced by the build itself — a page that fails it does not ship.
· Written in plain English on purpose
The standard we build to
The target is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at Level AA, which is the benchmark used under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and the European Accessibility Act. Surf and beach conditions are information people rely on to make a decision about their safety, and information like that has to reach everybody.
What is enforced automatically
Every build runs a contrast check across the full colour system — text, muted text, accents, the masthead and both light and dark themes. Any pairing below the WCAG AA threshold fails the build, so it cannot reach the live site. This runs on each of the project's quality gates, not once a year.
What is built in by design
- Semantic HTML. Real headings, lists, tables and landmarks, so screen readers and reader modes get a structure rather than a wall of boxes.
- Static pages. Content is in the HTML before any script runs. With JavaScript disabled or blocked, every report is still readable.
- Light and dark themes. Both meet the same contrast requirement, and the site follows your operating system preference until you choose otherwise.
- Touch targets. Interactive elements are sized to at least 44 × 44 CSS pixels.
- Relative units and reflow. Text scales with your browser's font size, and pages reflow to narrow viewports without a horizontal scrollbar.
- Text alternatives. Images carry alt text; decorative marks are hidden from assistive technology instead of being announced as noise.
- Data over colour. Where a condition is rated, the rating is written in words as well as shown in colour. Nothing here is communicated by colour alone.
- No motion traps. No autoplaying animation, no carousel, no parallax, no interstitial.
Known gaps
An honest statement lists what is open. As of August 10, 2026:
- No independent audit yet. Conformance is self-assessed, combining the automated contrast gate with manual keyboard and screen reader checks. It has not been verified by an external auditor, so this statement claims a target rather than certified conformance.
- Third-party surf cams. Where a spot page embeds a stream from a municipality, pier or club, that player is the operator's and its accessibility is outside our control. Every embed is accompanied by the same conditions in text, so no information exists only inside a video.
- Data tables. Hourly forecast and tide tables are wide by nature. They carry proper headers and scope, and they scroll inside their own container so the page itself never scrolls sideways — but a very wide table on a very small screen remains harder to read than we would like.
Report a barrier
If something here blocked you, we want to hear it — and a specific report gets fixed far faster than a general one. Write to info@breakatlas.com with the page address, what you were trying to do, and the browser plus assistive technology you were using.
We aim to acknowledge within five business days and to say what we will do and by when. Where a fix takes time, we will offer the information another way in the meantime — if a page is unusable for you, we will send you its content in a format you can read.
Formal complaints
Should our response fall short, you may take the matter to the enforcement body in your jurisdiction — in the United States the Department of Justice's ADA enforcement route, and in the EU or Switzerland the national body for equal access to digital services. We would rather fix it directly, and we will treat a report as the gift it is.