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Accessibility Statement

Last reviewed: 2026-05-01

The Autism Universe serves autistic individuals, their families, and providers. The people we serve include screen-reader users, keyboard-only users, low-vision users, and people with cognitive, motor, and sensory differences. Accessibility is a baseline requirement, not a feature.

We target WCAG 2.2 Level AA across our public site, signed-in family app, provider dashboard, and admin tools. Where we fall short of that bar today, the specifics and the remediation plan are listed below.

Our commitments

  • Keyboard-accessible navigation with visible focus indicators on every interactive element
  • Semantic HTML structure and screen-reader friendly labels (aria-live for chat, aria-label for icon buttons)
  • Color contrast ≥ 4.5:1 for body text and ≥ 3:1 for large text and UI components
  • Touch targets ≥ 44 × 44 px on mobile
  • prefers-reduced-motion respected on all animated transitions
  • No reliance on color alone to communicate meaning
  • Form labels are explicit (no placeholder-only labeling)

Known limitations

We publish what we know is broken, with a target remediation date. If you find something we haven't listed, please tell us — see Reporting an issue below.

  • Provider map clustering markers do not yet expose individual provider info to screen readers

    Plan: Replace marker cluster aria-label with a per-provider list view alongside the map

    Target: Q2 2026

  • IEP goal progress charts use color and shape together but the shape variation is subtle on mobile

    Plan: Increase shape contrast and add explicit text labels at each data point

    Target: Q2 2026

  • Some PDF exports (treatment tracker, IEP) have not been audited with screen readers

    Plan: Tagged-PDF audit + remediation pass with NVDA + JAWS testing

    Target: Q3 2026

Reporting an issue

Email accessibility@theautismuniverse.com with:

  • The page URL where you encountered the issue
  • Your device, browser, and assistive technology (if any)
  • What you were trying to do and what happened instead

Response SLA: we acknowledge accessibility reports within 3 business days. We share a remediation timeline within 10 business days. Critical-path issues (a user blocked from a core flow) are treated as Sev 2 incidents and prioritized accordingly.

User-controllable accessibility settings

In addition to respecting your browser and OS preferences, The Autism Universe offers the following in-app controls:

  • Sensory mode — reduces visual stimulation: mutes the colour palette, removes non-essential transitions, and simplifies layout density. Toggle available in the top navigation bar.
  • Font scaling — choose between four base sizes: Small (14 px), Medium (16 px, default), Large (18 px), and Extra Large (22 px). Toggle available in the top navigation bar.
  • Reduced motion — when your operating system or browser has prefers-reduced-motion enabled, all animated transitions are replaced with instant or opacity-only changes. You can also enable sensory mode manually to achieve the same effect regardless of your system setting.
  • Dyslexia-friendly font — switch to Atkinson Hyperlegible for improved letter-shape differentiation. Toggle available in the top navigation bar.

Testing

We test with axe-core in CI, manual keyboard-only walkthroughs on every release, and screen-reader spot checks (NVDA on Windows, VoiceOver on macOS / iOS) on the critical paths: signup, provider search, IEP upload, agent chat, billing.

Standards

We follow WCAG 2.2 AA. We do not currently claim WCAG 2.2 AAA conformance. For US users, our target also satisfies the substantive requirements of Section 508 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Title III for public-accommodation websites.