Accessibility
Everyone should be able to use this site
People often arrive here in the worst week of their lives. Grief affects concentration, reading, and memory. A site that is hard to use is one more thing to carry, so we have tried hard to make this one easy.
We hold this site to WCAG 2.1 Level AA as a hard floor, reach Level AAA for colour contrast, and additionally check every pairing against APCA, the perceptual contrast model being developed for the next version of the guidelines. These checks run automatically on every build, so they cannot quietly rot. Here is specifically what that means.
Colour contrast
Every text and background pairing is measured on each build, sampling the pixels actually painted rather than the colours we intended. We check against two standards: the familiar WCAG ratio, and APCA, which — unlike WCAG — accounts for the fact that light text on a dark background is harder to read than the same ratio the other way round. Several pairings on this site scored AAA under WCAG while failing APCA, and those were the ones people told us were hard to read. All of them have been corrected.
Keyboard navigation
Every interactive element is reachable and operable by keyboard alone, with a visible focus ring that is never suppressed. A skip link is the first focusable element on every page. Menus close on Escape and return focus to the control that opened them. The ring is measured against the surface it actually lands on: on dark sections it was 2.51:1 against the navy behind it — under the 3:1 the guidelines require — and is now a warm sand measuring 15.93:1. Where a table has to scroll sideways on a narrow screen, as the session rates do, the scroll region itself takes focus, so the price columns can be reached without a mouse.
Screen readers
Pages use a single H1 and a logical heading order. Images carry descriptive alternative text, or empty alt text when purely decorative. Form fields have programmatically associated labels, and each validation message is tied to its own field with aria-describedby — so the problem is announced along with the field it belongs to, never left for colour to carry.
Text size
Nothing on this site is set below 14 pixels, and text meant to be read rather than glanced at is 16 pixels or larger. Small type is a common accessibility failure that contrast ratios alone will never catch — a 12-pixel label can measure perfectly and still be unreadable.
Colour blindness
No information on this site is carried by colour alone. Provider availability, form errors, and required fields are all conveyed by text and by shape as well as hue. We render the site through simulations of protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia, and full colour blindness to confirm nothing collapses into ambiguity.
Target size
Every button, link, checkbox, and radio meets the WCAG 2.2 minimum target of 24 by 24 pixels, and most are considerably larger. Checkboxes and radios are enlarged well past the browser default.
Motion
Entrance animations are subtle, brief, and removed entirely for anyone whose system requests reduced motion. Nothing on this site auto-plays, flashes, or moves without your input.
Works without JavaScript
The site is statically rendered. All content, navigation, and reading is available with JavaScript disabled. Scripts only add optional conveniences such as filtering the provider list.
Self-hosted type
Both typefaces are served from this domain rather than fetched from a font host. No request goes to Google to render the words on this page, so the type still arrives on a network that blocks third-party requests, and nothing about your visit is handed to a font host in order to display it.
Zoom and reflow
Layouts are built with relative units and reflow cleanly at 200% zoom without horizontal scrolling or clipped content.
Found a barrier?
Accessibility is never finished, and we would genuinely rather know. If any part of this site is difficult or impossible for you to use, tell us what happened and we will fix it.
Email info@thecenterforcompassion.com or call/text 480-530-6441.
If you need information from this site in another format — large print, plain text, or read aloud over the phone — just ask. We will provide it at no cost.