Accessibility

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA. That is the target for every page here, and pages are checked against it before they go up rather than afterwards. Accessibility is treated as part of the build, not as a cleanup pass.

• A palette split by job. The rose (#c4826d) and the sage (#8f9b84) are decorative only: they are used for rules, marks, and frames, never as text on the ivory background, because they do not clear the required contrast ratio. Body text is set in ink (#3a2e30) and secondary text in a lighter ink (#63514f), both of which do.
• Links are set in #8e5641 and are always underlined, so color is never the only signal that something is a link.
• A visible focus state on every interactive element: links, buttons, form fields, and expandable questions, so the keyboard route through a page is never invisible.
• Full keyboard operation, with a skip-to-content link as the first stop on every page.
• Semantic structure: one h1 per page, headings in order, real landmarks, real lists, and form fields with real labels.
• Alternative text on images that carry meaning, and empty alt text on the ones that are pure decoration, so a screen reader is not made to read out ornament.
• Motion is minimal by design, and the reduce-motion setting in your operating system switches off what little remains. Nothing autoplays, flashes, or moves on its own.
• Text reflows and stays readable at 200 percent zoom and down to a 320 pixel viewport, with no horizontal scrolling to read a sentence.

Every guide is a tagged PDF built from real text with the fonts embedded, not a scan of a printed page and not a stack of images. Headings, reading order, and lists are exposed to assistive technology, and the text can be selected, searched, resized, or read aloud. Worksheets and letter templates print cleanly in black and white, so nothing in them depends on seeing a color.

If a guide does not work with the software you use, write and you will be sent the content another way at no charge, whether or not you have bought it yet.

Stating this honestly is more useful than a compliance badge would be. As of the date at the top of this page:

• Product preview videos do not have captions or transcripts yet. Nothing in them is essential to understanding or buying a guide, but that is not the same as being accessible.
• Preview images show pages of typeset text. Their alternative text describes what the page is rather than reproducing every word on it, so a sighted visitor still gets more from those images than a screen reader user does.
• The tagging in the guides has not been checked page by page against every screen reader and PDF reader in use. If a heading, a table, or a reading order comes out wrong for you, say so and it gets fixed.
• This site has not been through a formal third-party audit. What is described above is the result of my own testing with a keyboard, a screen reader, and contrast tools, which catches most problems but not all of them.

Write to [email protected] and include the address of the page, or the name of the guide, what you were trying to do, and what you were using: browser, screen reader or other assistive technology, and whether you were on a phone or a computer.

Accessibility reports go to the front of the queue. You will get a reply within two business days telling you what the fix is and when it will land. If the fix will take longer than that, you get the content another way in the meantime, at no charge.

This statement covers The Parent Edge and is reviewed whenever the site changes in a way that affects it, and at least once a year. The date at the top is the date of the last review, not the date it was first written.