What we have done deliberately
- Larger body text. 17px base rather than the 15px a marketing site would normally use, and 18px in article copy. Presbyopia is close to universal past 50.
- Contrast above the requirement. Body text targets a 7:1 ratio — WCAG AAA — rather than the 4.5:1 AA minimum, because lens yellowing and reduced pupil size cut effective contrast with age.
- Large touch targets. Every button, link and form control is at least 48 pixels tall. Quiz answers are full-width blocks rather than small radio buttons.
- Visible focus. A three-pixel high-contrast outline follows keyboard navigation everywhere, including into scrollable tables.
- Links are underlined, not just coloured. Colour alone is not a reliable cue for eyes that have been filtering blue light for seventy years.
- Full keyboard operation. Every function, including the quiz and calculator, works without a mouse.
- Text that scales. Zoom to 200% and nothing breaks or overlaps.
- Reduced motion respected. If your system requests reduced motion, animations are switched off.
- Print stylesheets. Pages print cleanly, without navigation, and with disclosures intact — because people print these and hand them to family.
- Semantic markup and ARIA where it helps screen readers, including live announcements when the estimate updates.
The standard we target
WCAG 2.1 Level AA, exceeding it on text contrast and target size. We test with keyboard navigation and screen readers, and we treat any reported barrier as a defect rather than a suggestion.
How we check
Claims are worth nothing without testing, so this site is audited rather than asserted. Every page is checked automatically against the axe accessibility ruleset, at 320 pixels wide (the equivalent of 400% browser zoom), and with the contrast of every rendered piece of text measured against the surface behind it. All 26 pages currently pass all three with no violations.
Known limitations
We would rather name these than pretend they do not exist:
- Wide comparison tables scroll sideways within their own panel on a small screen. Every one is reachable by keyboard as well as by swipe, and announced to screen readers by name, but reaching the far columns is still an extra action.
- Third-party content we embed — analytics and advertising scripts, where enabled — is outside our direct control.
- Inline links inside running text are ordinary text-sized targets rather than the 48-pixel controls used everywhere else. The same destination is always reachable from a full-size link or a navigation item.
Tell us if something does not work
If any part of this site is difficult or impossible for you to use, we want to hear about it and we will fix it. Call 631-926-0592 or email rerath@unitedmortgage.com. Please say which page and what happened, and we will respond within three business days.
If a page is not working for you, that is never a reason to miss out on information. Call and we will walk through it with you, or post you a printed copy.