Accessibility

Our commitment

We are building this website toward WCAG 2.2 Level AA, the widely used standard for a web page that works with a screen reader, a keyboard alone, and a range of vision and motor abilities. Section 40 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 asks that a service provider work toward accessibility standards for its electronic content, and this is how we are doing that.

This matters here in a way it would not on a purely informational website, because two different things have to work rather than one. The website itself has to work: a customer using a screen reader should be able to read the tariff, choose a vehicle class, fill in the enquiry form and receive her confirmation, on her own, without needing somebody else to do it on her behalf. And the service the website exists to book has to work too: a customer who needs a wheelchair-accessible vehicle for the trip itself should be able to say so plainly, on the same enquiry form everybody else uses, and have that requirement actually reach the person who allocates the vehicle rather than get lost between the website and the yard.

We treat both as one commitment rather than two. A booking made with a keyboard alone, a booking made with a screen reader, and a booking that includes a wheelchair-accessible vehicle are, to us, three ordinary bookings and not three exceptions somebody has to make time for. The standard we are building this website toward, and the standard we hold ourselves to when a driver is briefed for a trip, are meant to be the same standard, applied once to the page and once to the pick-up.

What's implemented

These are practices this build follows today. Where we can point at something specific rather than assert a general claim, we have:

• Keyboard navigation. Every link, button and form field on this site can be reached and used without a mouse, in an order that follows the page rather than jumping around it.
• Visible focus indicators. Moving between elements with the keyboard shows a clear, high-contrast outline around whichever one is active, built into the site itself rather than left to whatever a browser happens to do by default.
• Semantic structure. Headings, lists, tables and form labels are marked up as what they structurally are rather than merely styled to look that way, so a screen reader announces a heading as a heading and a list as a list instead of reading a page of undifferentiated text.
• Meaningful alt text on informational images. A photograph that carries information of its own, such as the scenes across the fleet pages showing what a class of vehicle is actually used for, carries a written description of what is happening in it, never a file name and never a blank description. Where a picture only repeats a fact already printed as visible text beside it, the description is deliberately left empty so a screen reader does not read the same fact twice.
• Form errors identified in more than one way. On the enquiry form, an invalid field is marked for a screen reader and linked to its own error message in the underlying code, and it is never shown through colour alone: the outline changes, the field is tinted, a warning mark appears beside it, and the message states in words what to correct.
• Reduced motion respected, effect by effect. Where your device is set to prefer reduced motion, the scroll animations used across the site are skipped and content simply appears in place, and specific effects, such as the vehicle photograph that scales slightly on hover, a rotating mark, and the sliding indicator behind the trip-type toggle, are switched off individually rather than left running under one general rule that misses them.
• Decorative elements hidden from assistive technology. Icons, arrows and ornamental marks that carry no information of their own are hidden from a screen reader, so it announces the words that matter rather than a string of unlabelled graphics between them.
• Readable contrast. Type is set against a background dark or light enough to read at a glance, including on a phone screen in direct sunlight, which is how a good many of our customers are actually looking at this site when they book.

Known limitations

We have not yet had this website formally audited for accessibility by an independent assessor. What the section above describes is what we know we have built in, checked by our own review, and there will be gaps we have not found ourselves. This statement will be updated once a formal audit has been carried out, and the version and effective date above will change when it is.

Some of what appears on this site is not code we wrote ourselves, and we cannot promise it to the same standard. The map on our contact page, for instance, is a Google Maps embed rather than something built here, and how accessible it is depends on Google rather than on us. Where an embedded service like this falls short of the standard we are building the rest of the site to, our fallback is to keep the same information available in ordinary text on the same page, our address and the way to reach it, so a limitation in an embedded map does not become a limitation in finding us.

Coverage is likely to be uneven, and we have tested against a limited set of browsers, screen readers and devices rather than every combination in use. If you are using a combination we have not tested and something does not work the way it should, that is exactly the kind of gap we want to hear about, and Feedback below tells you how.

Accessible travel services

A wheelchair-accessible vehicle is available on request. The quickest way to ask is the enquiry form at /enquiry, which carries a field headed "Anything we should know" for exactly this kind of requirement: tell us there, in your own words, what you need, whether that is a wheelchair-accessible vehicle, a driver who can help fold and load a wheelchair or a walking frame, or extra time at the kerb, and we will confirm what we can arrange for your dates before you book. If you would rather speak to somebody directly, /contact carries our phone number and WhatsApp, and either does the same job as the form.

The same applies to anything else that would make the trip work better for you: a service animal travelling with you, a stop along the route for a reason we would not otherwise know about, help getting luggage into the vehicle, or a particular way you would like to be addressed or assisted at pick-up. Tell us in advance and we will brief the driver before the trip rather than leaving him to work it out at your doorstep; we would rather ask a question in advance and get it right than assume and get it wrong. The disability protections that govern how we serve you are set out in full at /legal/non-discrimination, which this page defers to rather than repeats.

Alternative channels

If any part of this website is difficult for you to use, you do not have to use it. Call or WhatsApp us on +91 99966 69190 and we will take your enquiry, and the whole booking if you would rather not use the form at all, over the phone, working from the same tariff and the same vehicle classes as the site. The line is answered at any hour, not only during office hours. A written quotation follows the same day, 9 am to 9 pm; if you reach us outside that window it follows by 9:30 the next morning instead.

You can also write to us at info@om-travels.in if putting your requirement in writing suits you better than a call, and we will reply the same way.

Feedback

If this website does not work for you in some way, tell us. We would rather hear it from you directly than have you find a workaround, and a message to us reaches a person, not a queue.

We will provide any itinerary, quotation, invoice or policy in an accessible format on request within 3 working days, in accordance with Section 42 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016.

That three working-day commitment covers any document you need in another form. Larger type, plain text by email instead of a PDF, or read aloud to you over a phone call are the three we can act on immediately; tell us which document and what would help when you write in.

For anything else, whether that is a page that does not work with your screen reader, a control your assistive technology cannot operate, or a colour combination you find hard to read, tell us which page, what you were trying to do, and what happened instead. Telling us the browser or screen reader you were using helps us reproduce the problem, though it is not required, and we will act on a report either way.

Write to our Grievance Officer, Sachin Jaglan, at sachin@om-travels.in or +91 99966 69190, or by post to Grand Trunk Road, Panipat, Haryana. The timelines for acknowledgement and resolution are the same ones set out for every complaint at /grievance-redressal, which this page does not repeat.

Review

We review this statement periodically, and whenever a formal accessibility audit is completed. Each review is reflected in the version number and effective date above, so you can tell at a glance whether you are reading the current statement.