How accessible this is

Last updated 3 September 2026

What we are aiming for

The standard we build to is WCAG 2.2 at level AA. This statement covers paddocks.mrdansicare.workers.dev and the booking flow on it.

It was written by the team who built the site, on the basis of our own testing. It has not yet been through an independent audit. When it has, we will say so here and give the date.

What has been done

• Real HTML underneath: proper headings in order, one first-level heading per page, lists that are lists, and prices in a table rather than in a picture.
• A skip link to the main content, and a genuine main landmark on every page, so a screen reader does not have to walk the menu each time.
• Everything can be done from the keyboard, in a sensible order, with a gold focus ring you can actually see against both cream and photography.
• Colour contrast at AA or better, including white text over photographs and over the glass panels. The panels are darkened behind the text rather than left to chance.
• If your system asks for reduced transparency, the glass is replaced with a solid panel instead of being blurred.
• If your system asks for reduced motion, nothing moves: the scroll reveals stay put and the film behind the home page does not play.
• Every form field has a real label rather than a placeholder pretending to be one, and errors are written in words beside the field they belong to.
• Photographs carry alt text that says what is in them; decorative images are hidden from screen readers rather than described pointlessly.
• Nothing auto-plays with sound, no carousel moves on its own, and no page has a timer on it.
• The layout works from a 360 px phone upwards and at 200% zoom without losing anything.
• Every price is text. It can be enlarged, selected, read aloud and copied, because it is never baked into an image.

What is not right yet

• A lot of the photography is old and low resolution, and the alt text on those archive pictures is more general than we would like — nobody can now say exactly who is in them. A professional shoot is the first thing on the list.
• The date and time picker in the booking flow is dense on a small screen. It works with a keyboard and with a screen reader, but it takes more steps than it should.
• Anything loaded from Facebook arrives with Meta’s own markup, and we cannot fix what that markup does.
• The payment page is Stripe’s, not ours. Stripe publishes its own accessibility information.
• The short film of the yard has no captions. There is no speech in it — only the yard, the trail and the arena — but a described track would still be better, and it is on the list.
• Testing so far has been keyboard-only navigation and VoiceOver. We have not yet tested with NVDA or JAWS.

Getting around the yard itself

This part matters more than the website, and it is the part we can promise least about.

The Paddocks is a working farm on the side of a hill. The yard in front of the stables is concrete and broadly level, and parking is free and close to the office. Beyond that the ground is not level: there are slopes, gravel, mud for a good part of the year, and a gate to get through before the trail starts. The arena is covered.

Rather than publish a list that might be wrong on the day you come, ring the yard before you travel. Tell us who is coming and what they need, and we will tell you honestly what the ground is like that week and what we can do about it — where to park, where to wait, and how close we can get you to the mounting block.

Riding itself

Walkouts are led at walking pace on a lead rein, with somebody at the horse’s head the whole way. That suits a good many riders who would not manage a lesson in the arena.

We are not a specialist therapeutic riding centre and we do not hold ourselves out as one. Ring us, tell us what is needed, and we will be straight with you about whether this is the right yard. If it is not, we will say so.

Maximum rider weight 95 kg (15 stone), for the horses’ welfare. It applies to everybody, on every activity. It is about the horses’ backs and legs, and nothing to do with the rider.

Assistance dogs are welcome. Tell us when you book so we can plan where you meet the horses, because most of them are not used to dogs.

Telling us something is wrong

If a page will not work for you, we want to hear it. Email info@paddocks.ie or ring +353 87 223 7981. Say which page it was, what you were trying to do and what happened instead. If you use a screen reader or another assistive technology, telling us which one helps a great deal. We reply within one working day.

If we do not put it right

We are a small private business rather than a public body, so no regulator supervises this statement. That is exactly why we would rather you told us directly. If something is reported and not fixed, ring the yard and ask for whoever is running it that day.