Accessibility

Our commitment

Juniper Labs LLC is working toward Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA as the standard for this site.

We do not currently claim conformance with that standard. Parts of Juniper — in particular the interactive map — do not meet it today, and no independent accessibility audit has been carried out. This page describes the product as it actually is, so that you can decide whether it is usable for you before you spend time or money on it.

What is usable without the map

Every area the map covers also has a report page built out of ordinary web-page text. If the map is not usable for you, these routes are:

• Area reports. The report pages for a census tract, ZIP code, county and state are rendered as HTML headings, paragraphs and lists — not as a canvas or an image — so their content is exposed to screen readers and is selectable, zoomable and reflowable like any other text. Some report detail sits behind a paid plan; that gate applies to everyone equally, and is not an accessibility restriction.
• A text index of every area. Browse is a plain list of links: states, then the counties within a state, then the ZIP codes and tracts within a county. It reaches the same reports as the map, using only links.
• Site pages. The pricing, methodology, data-source, legal and account pages are standard HTML documents with headings and labelled form fields.

Known gaps we are working on

These are the specific defects we have identified. They are recorded as engineering work, not aspirations, but we are not promising dates for them.

• No “view as table” alternative for the map. There is no way to read the set of areas currently on screen, and their values, as a data table. This is the single change that would most improve screen-reader access to the explorer.
• No keyboard navigation through the map itself. Moving between areas, and selecting one to open its report, cannot be done from the keyboard.
• Colour is what the map uses unless you ask for more. By default an area’s value is shown as a fill colour and nothing else, so two neighbouring steps on a scale can be hard to tell apart with colour-vision deficiency. A Patterns button sits with the map’s display controls and adds a diagonal hatch to every step of the scale — denser as the value rises, and shown the same way in the legend — which lets the map be read without relying on colour. It is shown at every screen size, including on a phone, and the setting is remembered on that device. What is still true: it is off until you turn it on, the setting does not follow you to another device, and we have not had the patterned map tested by readers with colour-vision deficiency. (We also chose blue–orange rather than red–green ramps, which helps but does not resolve it.)
• The colour ramps have not had a contrast audit. We have not yet verified that text drawn over the map meets the 4.5:1 contrast ratio against every shade beneath it.