Accessibility Statement

Last updated: April 25, 2026

Our Commitment

STRATUM is committed to making our website and online course accessible to every writer who comes to us — including those who navigate the digital world with assistive technology, low vision, hearing impairment, motor limitations, or cognitive differences. Accessibility isn't an afterthought in our work. It's part of how we design.

We recognize that accessibility is a continuous process. Standards evolve, assistive technologies advance, and learners themselves identify gaps that no internal review will catch. We treat accessibility as ongoing operational work, not as a checkbox completed at launch.

The Standard We Hold Ourselves To

We design and develop our website and course to align with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA — the standard cited by U.S. federal regulators and the courts as the technical benchmark for digital accessibility.

WCAG 2.1 AA is built on four principles. We apply each of them to our work:

Perceivable. Information and interface elements are presented in ways every learner can perceive. This includes alternative text for meaningful images, accurate captions and transcripts for video, color contrast that meets or exceeds the 4.5:1 ratio for body text, and content that doesn't rely on color alone to convey meaning.

Operable. Every learner can navigate and interact with our content. All buttons, links, and form controls are operable by keyboard alone, without requiring a mouse or touch input. Visible focus indicators show keyboard users where they are on the page. Reduced-motion preferences set at the operating system level are detected and respected.

Understandable. Both content and interface behavior are predictable. Navigation is consistent across pages. Form labels and error messages explain themselves clearly. Plain language is used where possible.

Robust. Content works reliably across the assistive technologies our learners actually use — screen readers, Braille displays, speech-output software, and voice control. Our pages are built with semantic HTML so assistive tools can interpret structure correctly.

What We Have Implemented

The following describes accessibility work currently in place across the STRATUM website and course:

Visual design and readability. Color contrast ratios meet or exceed WCAG 2.1 AA thresholds across our cream and brown palette. Typography is sized for comfortable reading on both desktop and mobile, with line height and line length tuned for low-vision and dyslexic readers. No content relies on color alone to convey meaning.

Video and audio content. Every lesson video is accompanied by a full text transcript that learners can expand inline on the page. Captions are delivered as a toggleable track through the video player so learners can turn them on or off, restyle them, and use them with their assistive tools. Captions are derived from the original scripts written for each lesson rather than from automated speech recognition.

Navigation and interaction. All interactive elements are operable via keyboard alone. Visible focus indicators show keyboard users exactly where they are on each page. Menus and accordions follow the keyboard interaction patterns recommended by the W3C, including arrow-key navigation and Escape-to-close. Reduced-motion preferences are detected and honored.

Structure and assistive technology compatibility. Lessons and pages are built with semantic HTML — proper heading hierarchy, ordered and unordered lists used correctly, landmark regions for navigation, content, and footer. Decorative graphics are hidden from screen readers so they don't clutter the listening experience. Meaningful images carry descriptive alt text. Form labels, button text, and link text are written to be self-describing when read aloud out of context.

Pedagogical design. STRATUM's instructional methodology is itself accessibility-conscious. The Socratic coaching model relies on text-based exchange between learner and AI, which is among the most assistive-technology-friendly modalities available in modern education. Course pacing is fully self-directed — learners control when to pause, replay, return, or advance. Multiple modalities are offered for the same content: video, transcript, structured visual references, and AI dialogue. No learner is forced into a modality that doesn't work for them.

Third-Party Platforms

Our website and course depend on several third-party platforms. We've selected each with accessibility as a consideration, though we don't directly control all aspects of how these platforms render content.

Wistia (video hosting). Wistia's player supports toggleable closed captions, keyboard control of playback, and screen-reader-compatible interface elements.

Jotform (workspace forms). Jotform publishes a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template documenting WCAG 2.1 conformance and provides accessible form components by default.

Systeme.io (course delivery and site hosting). Our course pages are served through Systeme.io with our own accessibility-conscious lesson content embedded within. We control the content of each lesson directly. Where the Systeme.io platform's own header and footer chrome falls short of our internal standard, we have raised those concerns with the vendor and continue to track their response.

Claude (AI coaching partner). Claude's text-based interface is inherently compatible with screen readers, voice control, and other assistive technologies.

Known Limitations

We believe in being transparent about where our work is incomplete:

• Some elements of the Systeme.io platform header and footer that wrap our content have accessibility issues we cannot fix from inside our pages. We are in dialogue with Systeme.io about their roadmap for platform-level conformance.

• Older PDF documents that pre-date our accessibility work may not yet meet our current standard. We are working through these and will update this page as remediation progresses.

• Some third-party content embedded in the course (external links, supplementary resources) may not meet our standard. Where this is the case, we provide alternatives wherever possible.

If you encounter a barrier not listed here, please tell us. Your report helps us improve.

Reporting Accessibility Issues

If you experience any difficulty accessing content on our website or course, we want to know. Your report is treated as a priority.

Email: accessibility@myaiwritingcoach.com

When you contact us, please include:

• The page or lesson where you encountered the issue

• A description of the barrier (what you were trying to do, what happened instead)

• The assistive technology or browser you were using, if relevant

We commit to acknowledging every accessibility report and working with you to find a solution. If a barrier exists in content under our direct control, we will document the issue and work to resolve it as quickly as we reasonably can.

Continuous Improvement

We periodically audit our website and course against WCAG 2.1 AA using both automated tools (such as WAVE and Lighthouse) and structural review. New lessons and pages are reviewed before publication. We track the development of WCAG 2.2 and the eventual WCAG 3.0 standard so that our work continues to align with where the field is moving.

This statement will be updated as our work progresses.

STRATUM is committed to ensuring that the writers we serve include every writer — and that the methodology we teach is available to anyone who comes to learn it.

Ted Baker · Founder, STRATUM accessibility@myaiwritingcoach.com