Accessibility Statement

1. Our commitment

Hike Lanka is committed to making hikelanka.com usable by as many people as possible, including hikers who use assistive technology, hikers on low-bandwidth connections in remote trail towns, and hikers planning a trip from older devices. We design and build with accessibility in mind and treat reported barriers as bugs to be fixed.

2. Conformance standard

We aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA. WCAG defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. There are three levels of conformance: A, AA, and AAA. We target Level AA across the public site and the enquiry flow.

3. Measures we take

To support accessibility we:

• Use semantic HTML and ARIA landmarks so screen readers can navigate the site by region (header, navigation, main content, footer).
• Provide a “Skip to main content” link at the top of every page for keyboard users.
• Maintain colour-contrast ratios that meet WCAG AA for body text (4.5:1) and large text (3:1) against background, including the forest-on-cream body palette and the yellow CTA buttons.
• Make all interactive controls, including the cart icon, the cookie preferences shield, the WhatsApp chat link, and the mobile dropdown, operable by keyboard.
• Provide visible focus indicators on all interactive elements using :focus-visible styles in the child theme.
• Use alt attributes on trip product images, trail-guide photos, and educational graphics, and mark purely decorative graphics with empty alt or aria-hidden.
• Honour prefers-reduced-motion so visitors who have requested reduced animation get a calmer experience, including a still hero image instead of subtle parallax.
• Offer a Low Data Mode toggle (bottom-left of every page) that strips web fonts and heavy imagery for hikers on metered or slow connections.
• Avoid auto-playing audio or video, and avoid content that flashes more than three times per second.

4. Known limitations

We are transparent about what is not perfect yet:

• Third-party widgets. Embedded tools we do not control may have their own accessibility quirks. This includes the Stripe checkout iframe and the Leaflet trail map on the Pekoe Trail page. We choose vendors with reasonable accessibility records but cannot guarantee 100% conformance for these elements.
• Trail-guide and blog gallery alt text. Some older trail photos carry generic alt text. We are progressively replacing these with descriptive captions that name the trail, the segment, and any visible landmarks.
• Interactive maps. The Pekoe Trail stage map relies on a visual interface that is difficult to expose fully to screen readers. The same stage information is available as plain text on each individual stage post, and we list those text links beneath the map.
• PDFs and downloadable documents. We do not currently distribute downloadable PDFs. If we add itinerary downloads in the future, we will provide accessible HTML alternatives.

5. Feedback and contact

If you encounter an accessibility barrier on Hike Lanka, a link you cannot activate by keyboard, a contrast issue, text that is hard to read, or a screen reader that gets lost, please tell us. Email info@hikelanka.com with:

• The URL of the page where you encountered the issue.
• A description of what did not work and, if you can, the assistive technology you were using.
• What you were trying to accomplish, for example browsing trail guides or completing a booking.

We aim to respond within 5 business days and to fix critical accessibility issues within 30 days of a confirmed report.

6. Assessment approach

Our accessibility status is monitored using a combination of automated tooling (Lighthouse, axe DevTools, WAVE) and manual testing on screen readers (NVDA and VoiceOver) for the key flows: browsing trail guides, viewing a trip page, adding a trip to cart, completing checkout, and accessing the my-account dashboard.

7. About this statement

This Accessibility Statement applies to hikelanka.com, operated by Harker International (Private) Limited (Registration No. PV 00338032, Kandy, Sri Lanka). It was last reviewed on 30 May 2026 and will be revisited at least annually or whenever we make significant changes to the platform.