The chat widget your visitors use is part of your website's accessibility surface — under the European Accessibility Act (in force since 28 June 2025) an inaccessible embedded widget can make your site non-compliant. This statement covers the SiteHelp visitor widget against WCAG 2.1 Level AA (EN 301 549). Hand it to your auditors; a formal VPAT/ACR document is available on request from hello@example.com.
The launcher, chat panel, composer, attachment control and rating controls are fully keyboard-operable. Escape closes the panel; focus returns to the launcher on close and moves to the message input on open.
The panel is a labelled dialog; the conversation is a live log region announcing new messages politely without stealing focus. Every control carries an accessible name; the decorative typing indicator is hidden from assistive tech.
All widget controls show a high-visibility focus indicator (3px outline, offset) under keyboard navigation.
Text within the widget meets the 4.5:1 ratio for normal text; status and system lines were darkened specifically to pass. No information is conveyed by colour alone — bot messages carry a text "AI" label.
The panel adapts to small viewports and page zoom up to 400% (capped to the viewport with scrollable content, no two-dimensional scrolling).
All widget animations — launcher pulse/bounce, transitions — are disabled when the visitor's system sets prefers-reduced-motion.
Pre-chat survey fields are labelled, required fields are marked, and validation errors are announced in text next to the field they concern.
The panel is non-modal: visitors can tab out to the host page at any time, and Escape always closes it.
Colour customisation is in the operator's hands: if you configure brand colours with insufficient contrast, the widget inherits them — keep your primary colour at 4.5:1 against white for text use. File-upload previews rely on the host browser's native dialog. We test with NVDA + Chrome and VoiceOver + Safari; report issues to hello@example.com and we aim to respond within 5 business days.
Statement version 1.0 — August 2026 · Applies to widget builds from this date.