Accessibility statement

The Texas Defense Innovation Forum is committed to making texasdefenseinnovation.org accessible to the widest possible audience. Accessibility is not a compliance checkbox for us — a research institution that works on federal programs should be usable by everyone who works on those programs.

We target Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA. WCAG 2.1 Level AA is also the standard incorporated by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. § 794d) for federal information and communication technology.

This site is currently partially conformant with WCAG 2.1 Level AA. “Partially conformant” means most of the site meets the standard, but some content does not yet fully conform. The specific exceptions we know about are listed in section 5.

Accessibility was built into this site rather than retrofitted onto it. Specific measures include:

• Keyboard access. Every interactive element — navigation, dropdown menus, the mobile menu, and all links and buttons — is reachable and operable by keyboard alone, with a visible focus indicator that meets the 3:1 non-text contrast requirement on both our light and dark page sections.
• Skip navigation.A “Skip to main content” link is the first focusable item on every page.
• Color contrast. All body text meets or exceeds a 4.5:1 contrast ratio, and large text and interface boundaries meet or exceed 3:1. We audit our brand palette programmatically rather than by eye.
• Structure. Pages use real heading hierarchy, landmark regions, and list semantics, so assistive technology can navigate by structure instead of by reading everything in order.
• Text alternatives. Meaningful images have descriptive alternative text; decorative graphics are hidden from assistive technology so they do not add noise.
• Reduced motion. If your operating system is set to reduce motion, we suppress transitions and animated scrolling.
• Resizable text. Content reflows and remains readable at 200% zoom and at a 320 px viewport width, without horizontal scrolling.
• No color-only meaning. We never use color as the sole way of conveying information.

We evaluated this site by self-assessment. Specifically:

• an automated audit using the axe accessibility engine against WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 Level A and AA rules, run on every page at both desktop and mobile viewport sizes, including with menus expanded;
• a programmatic contrast audit of every foreground and background color pair in our design system, rather than spot-checking by eye; and
• a manual review of keyboard operation, focus order, heading structure, and landmark structure.

At the last audit, the automated scan reported no violations in markup we author. The only issues it found were inside the third-party video player we embed on our home and booking pages, which we do not control — see section 5.

Two honest caveats. We have not yet completed testing with real screen readers and assistive technology in the hands of the people who rely on them; automated tools reliably catch only a portion of real barriers. And we have not commissioned a third-party accessibility audit or a formal VPAT / Accessibility Conformance Report. If you need one for a procurement or evaluation process, contact us and we will tell you plainly where we stand.

We would rather name these than let you discover them. As of the date above:

• Scheduling widget (Calendly). Our booking calendar is a third-party embed we do not control and cannot directly remediate. If any part of it prevents you from scheduling, email us and we will book the call for you by email — that route is always available and is not a lesser option.
• Video player.Our videos are hosted on YouTube and rely on its player. Our automated audit found accessibility defects inside that player's own controls — an unlabeled button and an invalid ARIA attribute — which we cannot fix from our side. Separately, captions and transcripts have not yet been reviewed for accuracy and we have not added audio description. If a video is not usable for you, email us and we will send you the content another way.
• Auto-play after booking. After you complete a booking, a short intro video is brought into view and may begin playing. It can be paused or stopped with the player controls, and it never plays before you have taken an action.
• Documents and downloads. Some linked PDFs and reference documents have not yet been remediated for tagged-PDF accessibility. We will provide an accessible alternative format on request.
• Site under active development. This site is being built and revised. New pages are checked before release, but a regression is always possible — please tell us if you hit one.

If you encounter a barrier on this site, we want to hear about it. Email info@texasdefenseinnovation.org with the subject line “Website accessibility.” It helps if you can tell us the page, what you were trying to do, and what assistive technology and browser you were using — but please write to us even if you can only describe the problem loosely.

We aim to acknowledge accessibility reports within two business days and to give you a plan or a fix within ten business days. If a fix will take longer, we will tell you that and offer another way to get what you needed.

You can also request any information on this site in an alternative format, at no cost.