Accessibility Statement

Last updated: July 22, 2026

Our Commitment

The PAAL Program is committed to ensuring that our website is accessible to all visitors, including individuals with disabilities. As an organization that serves individuals with autism and their families, accessibility is central to our mission — not just in our programs, but in every way we communicate.

Standards We Follow

This website is designed to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at the AA level — the standard we target for every page. These guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible to people with a wide range of disabilities, including:

• Visual impairments (blindness, low vision, color blindness)
• Hearing impairments
• Motor and mobility impairments
• Cognitive and learning disabilities

Accessibility Features

Our website includes the following accessibility features:

• Semantic HTML — proper heading hierarchy, landmark regions, and ARIA attributes for assistive technology
• Keyboard-accessible navigation — every link, button, menu, and form control can be reached and operated by keyboard, with visible focus indicators throughout and a "Skip to main content" link on every page
• Accessible menus — the navigation dropdowns and mobile menu announce their open and closed states to assistive technology (ARIA expanded states), close with the Escape key, and manage keyboard focus
• Color contrast — text colors are chosen to meet WCAG AA contrast ratios against their backgrounds
• Reduced motion honored — when your device or browser requests reduced motion (prefers-reduced-motion), scroll animations and movement effects are turned off
• Simple, transparent forms — our contact and referral forms open a pre-addressed draft in your own email app rather than submitting data behind the scenes, and each form also lists a direct email address as a fallback
• Descriptive alt text — images include meaningful alternative text
• Responsive design — the site adapts to different screen sizes, zoom levels, and orientations
• Form labels — all form fields have associated labels for screen reader users
• No auto-playing media — no audio or video plays automatically

Known Limitations

While we strive for full accessibility, some areas may have limitations:

• Some images may carry brief or generic alternative text; we review and improve alt text as content is updated
• Embedded third-party content (such as Google Maps or PayPal donation forms) may have accessibility limitations outside our control
• Older PDF documents may not be fully accessible; we are working to remediate these

Assistive Technology Compatibility

Our website is designed to be compatible with the following assistive technologies:

• Screen readers (JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, TalkBack)
• Screen magnification software
• Speech recognition software (Dragon NaturallySpeaking)
• Keyboard-only navigation
• Browser zoom up to 200%

Feedback and Support

We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of our website. If you encounter any barriers or have suggestions for improvement, please contact us:

PAAL Program — MECA
Downingtown, PA
Email: info@paalprogram.org

We will make reasonable efforts to respond to your feedback within 5 business days and to address accessibility concerns as quickly as possible.

Continuous Improvement

Accessibility is an ongoing effort. We regularly review our website to identify and fix accessibility issues, train our team on accessibility best practices, and incorporate accessibility into the development of all new content and features.