Our Commitment to Web Accessibility

Design TLC is committed to providing a fully accessible website experience for all users of all abilities, including those who rely on assistive technologies like screen readers, screen enlargement software, and alternative keyboard input devices to navigate the web.

Ongoing Efforts to Ensure Accessibility

We follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1 as our guiding principle for determining accessibility. These are internationally agreed-upon standards that cover a wide range of recommendations and best practices for making content useable. As we add new pages and functionality to our website, all designs, code, and content entry practices are checked against these standards.

Website accessibility is an ongoing process. We continually test content and features for WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance and remediate any issues to ensure we meet or exceed the standards. Testing of our website is performed by our team members using industry-standard tools such as the Accessibility Checker WordPress Plugin, color contrast analyzers, keyboard-only navigation techniques, and Flesch-Kincaid readability tests.

Accessibility Features On Our Website

The following is a list of items we have included in our website to improve its accessibility:

• Our website design has a mobile-responsive version with appropriately sized tap-targets.
• We have thoughtfully selected a font that has marked differences in commonly ambiguous characters, such as the number 1, lowercase l, and uppercase I.
• We created versions of our brand colors for color contrast and meet AAA requirements, even for small text.
• Our website declares a language in the header.
• Skip navigation links have been incorporated to facilitate keyboard navigation and to bypass content on a page, allowing users to jump directly to the primary navigation, main content, and footer.
• All images and other non-text elements have appropriate alternative text associated with them.
• Structural markup to indicate expected section containers, headings, lists, and buttons has been provided to make our content more understandable and “skim-able” by all users, regardless of device.
• Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA)  screen-reader only text is present when links, buttons, icons, or images require additional context to understand their meaning.
• A warning is provided before links open in a new tab or window.

Where We’re Improving

In our efforts to bring our website up to standard, we are targeting the following areas:

• Making PDFs and Video Transcripts accessible is in process.
• Removing empty paragraph text is in process.

This is part of our broader effort to make everyone’s experience at Design TLC a welcoming and enjoyable one. Please note that while we make every effort to provide information accessible for all users, we cannot guarantee the accessibility of third party websites to which we may link.

Accessibility Support Contact

We welcome comments, questions, and feedback on our website. If you are using assistive technologies and are having difficulty using our website, please email [email protected] or give us a call at 703-981-3588. We will do our best to assist you and resolve issues.