[ctidd]

I feel compelled to step in here and hopefully provide some insight on what that report means, because it doesn't appear to be what you implied.

* Edit: The header image failed to load for me and complicates much of what I said in the following paragraph; it isn't as cut and dry as it first appeared.

First off, that automated WAVE report is stellar for GetCalFresh. The color contrast here is an excellent example of strict conformance to WCAG 2.0 AA contrast requirements. (Most of the site is hitting AAA contrast requirements, which is above and beyond.) The report identifies a issue for an image element's contrast in the footer. Please note that this is a false positive; the actual visual contrast meets the requirement.

Heading levels are always a bit of a mess as projects get larger, but as the linked report shows, they could easily be improved slightly in this case. That's not going to outright break the site or render it inaccessible; however, it is a slightly less navigable experience for a user.

Finally, it's important to look at both the spirit and practice of conformance to accessibility standards. In spirit, these are usability standards. You can build something that checks all the automatically enforceable, auditable boxes in the standards, but is unusable in practice. Or you can focus on delivering a strong experience to users, focusing on the POUR principles, and I'd argue that's what an accessible experience should look like (not to exclude ensuring the more baseline elements of conformance, of course).

[bberenberg]

Thanks for clarifying! I am not an accessibility expert so sounds like I misread the report :D

What GCF did is commendable, and I am happy to hear that they did well on the accessibility side. At the same time my goal was less to point out an issue with GCF, but rather to point out that government websites may not feel as slick as we're used to for a variety of reasons that a quick look may not reveal.