Accessibility

What we aim for

WCAG 2.1 level AA. A guest should be able to read a menu with a screen reader, with the keyboard alone, at any text size, and on a phone held in bright sunlight.

Why the standard matters

In the United States, courts have applied the Americans with Disabilities Act to the websites and apps a restaurant serves customers through. In Robles v. Domino's Pizza the Ninth Circuit held that Title III covered the chain's website and app, because they connected customers to a physical restaurant; the Supreme Court declined to review that ruling in October 2019. A menu a screen reader cannot read is the kind of barrier those cases are about. This is background, not legal advice.

• Robles v. Domino's Pizza LLC, 913 F.3d 898 (9th Cir. 2019)
• Domino's Pizza LLC v. Robles, No. 18-1539, certiorari denied 7 October 2019

What we check, and when

Automated WCAG 2.1 A and AA checks run against the guest menu and the panel on every release, not once a year. The guest menu is also checked at 320, 360, 390, 430 and 1440 pixels wide, in every design, so nothing runs off the side of a small screen.

On the guest menu

Headings follow the menu's own structure. Every page declares its language, so a screen reader pronounces a French menu in French. There is a skip link to the content, a visible focus ring on everything that takes focus, and the section list can be walked with the keyboard. Prices, allergens and dietary notes are text, never an image of text. A photo beside a dish is decorative, because the dish's name is already next to it.

What is not there yet

No independent audit has been carried out; everything here is our own testing. A venue writes its own menu, so the readability of a description is the venue's to get right, not ours. Printed menus are a separate matter: paper cannot be enlarged or read aloud, which is part of why the digital menu exists.

If something is in your way

Tell us what you were trying to read and what happened. A specific report is worth more than a general one, and we would rather hear it than not.