Accessibility, by design.

Commitment

Our commitment.

Counsolero LLC is committed to making the Counsolero service usable by the broadest possible range of students, including those who navigate by keyboard, use screen readers or speech-recognition software, magnify content, prefer reduced motion, rely on captions, or use any other assistive technology. Accessibility is a baseline requirement — not a feature we add after the fact.

We design and review the service with accessibility in mind at every meaningful UI change, and we treat any reported barrier to access as a defect that deserves a fix on the same priority track as a functional bug.

Standards

Standards we follow.

We design and build Counsolero to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, Level AA, published by the W3C and adopted as ISO/IEC 40500:2025. WCAG 2.2 is a strict superset of WCAG 2.1: a site that conforms to 2.2 also conforms to 2.1, and WCAG 2.1 AA remains the binding regulatory floor under the U.S. Department of Justice's April 2024 final rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act for state and local government services. WCAG 2.1 AA is also the standard most commonly cited under Title III case law for private entities, the level adopted as the Section 508 standard for U.S. federal agencies, and the practical benchmark applied under California's Unruh Civil Rights Act (Cal. Civ. Code §§ 51, 52) — the law most likely to apply to Counsolero LLC as a California business serving California residents.

We treat WCAG 2.2 AA as our voluntary target and WCAG 2.1 AA as our baseline benchmark. On our legal, informational, and marketing pages — this page, the Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, FERPA Transparency, User Policy, Contact, and the public landing page, which share one typographic design system — body text measures approximately 11.7:1 contrast in light mode and 8.9:1 in dark mode against their backgrounds, both comfortably clearing the WCAG AAA 7:1 enhanced-contrast threshold (Success Criterion 1.4.6) for normal text. That is a property of this page family's specific color tokens, not a sitewide guarantee: the authenticated application (dashboard, planner, academics, AI chat, subscription, settings) is tuned to WCAG AA contrast (roughly 4.5:1–5.5:1 by design), not AAA. The full measured token pairs are documented in our VPAT Accessibility Conformance Report, available on request by emailing [email protected]. No federal regulation currently mandates a specific web-accessibility standard for a private service like Counsolero: the Title II rule above binds state and local governments, and Section 508 binds federal agencies and their contractors — neither governs Counsolero directly. We adopt WCAG voluntarily because it is the level most commonly applied in Title III case law and under California's Unruh Civil Rights Act.

Status

Where we are today.

Counsolero is in active development. As of the date at the top of this page, the dashboard, account, course, AI chat, degree-planning, account-deletion, and public-facing surfaces have been built with WCAG 2.2 AA design principles in mind — semantic HTML, ARIA landmarks, keyboard reachability, and visible focus rings. We completed a full manual source-level audit against the WCAG 2.2 AA success-criteria set on both our student and school-admin experiences (June 2026), remediated the systemic issues it found across five follow-up waves, and re-ran our automated axe-core test suite against every core surface in both light and dark themes — that run is currently clean (zero critical, serious, moderate, or minor violations). We characterize our current conformance as self-assessed, in-progress: automated tooling only detects roughly a third of WCAG issues, so a clean automated run is not the same as complete conformance. We have not yet completed a dedicated, exhaustive keyboard-only pass across every flow, testing with assistive technologies such as screen readers, or an independent third-party audit — and we know there are real gaps. The "Known limitations" section below documents the specific gaps we are aware of so far, and our self-assessed VPAT Accessibility Conformance Report (Section 4) has the full detail, evidence, and methodology.

Every account defaults to Standard, our presentation designed to meet strict WCAG 2.2 AA — the color contrast described throughout this page. Signed-in users can optionally switch to a Stylised presentation from Settings, which relaxes color contrast only and preserves the product's earlier, softer color palette; every other property this Statement describes (semantic HTML, ARIA landmarks, keyboard reachability, focus visibility, and page structure) is shared code and stays strict WCAG 2.2 AA in both presentations. Stylised is off by default, opt-in per account, and reversible from Settings at any time.

What we have implemented today:

• Semantic HTML and ARIA landmarks on every primary user-facing page (header, nav, main, footer)
• Skip-to-main-content links on every primary user-facing page
• Visible keyboard focus rings on interactive elements (currently a blue outline)
• Color contrast at WCAG AA on body text in both light and dark themes
• prefers-reduced-motion support — when set, transitions and animations are reduced to imperceptible durations
• Form labels associated with inputs, error messages tied to the field they describe

Known gaps

Known limitations.

We are honest about the gaps we know about. The following are on our roadmap:

• Some AI-generated chat responses contain markdown formatting (tables, lists, code blocks) whose accessibility depends on how the AI provider formats output. We are working on a renderer that imposes consistent ARIA semantics across providers.
• A small number of in-page micro-animations may still play even when reduced motion is requested. We are auditing.
• The file-upload UI provides keyboard access but does not yet announce upload progress via aria-live.
• Images that users upload to the AI chat may lack alt text, since the user — not Counsolero — supplies them. The AI can assist with alt-text generation when asked.
• Color is used as the primary indicator of state in some UI components (for example, status colors and error highlights). WCAG Success Criterion 1.4.1 requires that color not be the only means of conveying information; we are progressively adding redundant cues — icons, text labels, and ARIA descriptions — but the work is incomplete.
• We have not yet completed a systematic keyboard-only navigation audit of the application. We rely on best practices in component design but have not validated every flow with keyboard alone.
• We have not yet completed screen-reader compatibility testing (NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver, TalkBack). This is on our active roadmap; we expect to begin a structured screen-reader testing pass during 2026.
• Automated WCAG 2.2 AA testing runs in our CI (axe-core, with zero tolerance for critical or serious violations) across our core public and authenticated surfaces — landing, sign-in, dashboard, planner, academics, Canvas connections, past courses, subscription, settings, and the school-admin portal — in both light and dark themes (10 page targets, 22 total runs including two admin-portal tab states), extended in August 2026 to cover the expanded course card on the academics page in both themes — the surface a student actually works in, which earlier runs had not reached because they scanned only the collapsed dashboard, backed by a full manual source-level audit (June 2026, ~106 findings) and a five-wave remediation pass. That suite currently reports zero violations of any severity — critical, serious, moderate, or minor. Automated tooling still validates only part of the standard (industry estimates put axe's coverage at roughly a third of WCAG success criteria), so a clean run is not the same as complete conformance: we have not yet completed manual, line-by-line conformance testing of every success criterion — including several new-in-2.2 additions that inherently resist automation, like Dragging Movements and Target Size — nor testing with assistive technologies. Full detail, evidence, and an honest list of what remains untested is in our self-assessed VPAT Accessibility Conformance Report, available on request by emailing [email protected].
• We have not yet completed an independent third-party accessibility audit. We previously stated we would commission one before launching any paid or institutional tier — but the school-sponsorship tier already exists in the product, so that wording amounted to an unfunded precondition blocking work already underway, not a real commitment. What we have actually done: the self-assessed WCAG 2.2 AA conformance work described above and throughout this page, published as a VPAT Accessibility Conformance Report available on request by emailing [email protected]. What we commit to going forward: we will commission an independent third-party WCAG 2.2 AA audit and publish its report either (a) when a specific institutional contract conditions on it, or (b) at our own initiative once our institutional customer base is large enough that independent verification meaningfully de-risks procurement for multiple prospective schools at once — whichever comes first. We will not describe this Statement or the VPAT as independently audited until one of those has actually happened.

This list is not exhaustive. If you find a barrier we have not listed, please tell us using the contact information in Section 5.

Report

Report a barrier.

If you encounter a part of Counsolero you cannot use because of a disability, or you need an accommodation to access content or complete a task, please contact us:

• Email: [email protected] with "ACCESSIBILITY" in the subject line, so the report is routed and prioritized appropriately
• Or via the Contact page

It helps if you include:

• The page or feature affected (the URL is most helpful)
• The assistive technology you are using (for example, NVDA + Chrome, VoiceOver + Safari, JAWS, Dragon, ZoomText)
• What you were trying to do
• What happened instead

We aim to acknowledge accessibility reports within two business days and, where the fix is within our control, to implement a resolution within 30 days. If a fix will take longer, we will tell you why and give you a target date.

Alternatives

Alternative formats and accommodations.

If you need information from Counsolero in an alternative format — large print, plain text, a screen-reader-optimized export, or another format — email [email protected] and we will provide a reasonable alternative at no charge.

If you need an accommodation to complete account setup, payment, account deletion, or any task that requires interactive UI, contact us and we will work with you to find a path that works for you.

Complaints

Formal complaints.

If you have made a good-faith effort to resolve an accessibility concern with us and remain dissatisfied, you may file a complaint with:

• U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division — www.ada.gov/file-a-complaint (federal ADA enforcement)
• California Civil Rights Department — calcivilrights.ca.gov (Unruh Civil Rights Act complaints for California residents)

Nothing in this Statement limits or waives any right you have under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, the California Unruh Civil Rights Act, or applicable state accessibility law.

Changes

Changes to this Statement.

Counsolero LLC reviews this Accessibility Statement at least annually and updates it when our conformance target, audit results, known limitations, or reporting mechanisms change. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page is the date of the most recent revision. Material changes — including a migration from WCAG 2.2 to WCAG 3.0 once it becomes a W3C Recommendation, the publication of a third-party audit report, or a change to our reporting commitments — will be reflected here.

Questions or suggestions about how we describe our accessibility work? Email [email protected] or see Contact.