Accessibility
Built for everyone who visits.
Heart & Science International (HSI) wants every visitor to be able to use this site, including people who rely on a keyboard, a screen reader, magnification, or reduced motion. This page says what the site does, where it still falls short, and how to tell HSI when something does not work.
Last reviewed September 13, 2026
The standard
This site is built to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA, and to align with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, whose technical standards incorporate WCAG Level A and AA. Pages are checked against that standard as they are built.
What the site does
- Keyboard. Every page, the menu and its dropdowns, and every form can be operated with a keyboard alone, and the element that has focus always shows a visible focus ring. A “Skip to main content” link is the first thing the Tab key reaches.
- Structure. Each page has one main heading, headings in order, and header, navigation, main and footer landmarks, so a screen reader can move through it by section.
- Contrast. Text and small labels use colors that meet the Level AA contrast ratio. The gold and steel accent colors are darkened wherever they are used for small text on a light background.
- Motion. Nothing moves, animates, or reveals itself as you scroll, and no video plays on its own. The one slow decorative animation, on the home page, stops when your device asks for reduced motion.
- Images. Photographs and book covers have text alternatives. Decorative icons are hidden from assistive technology.
- Video. Videos are links to YouTube with a preview image hosted here, not embedded players, so nothing plays or loads until you choose to watch.
- Forms. Every field has a visible label, required fields are marked with an asterisk, and the browser’s own messages explain what is missing before a form is sent.
- Text. Fonts are hosted on this site, text can be enlarged to at least 200 percent, and every page reflows to a single column on narrow screens without sideways scrolling.
- No script required. Every page, link and menu works with JavaScript turned off.
Known limitations
- PDF documents. The capability statement and the three overview PDFs are supplied documents that have not yet been checked for tagged reading order and image descriptions. If you need any of them in another format, ask and HSI will provide one.
- Video captions. Videos are hosted on YouTube, so caption availability and accuracy depend on YouTube.
How it is checked
The site is checked with keyboard-only navigation and browser accessibility audits as pages are built, and a build step rejects inline scripts and styles, third-party scripts, and broken links before anything is published.
Report a problem
If something on this site is hard to use with assistive technology, or you need any content in another format, email info@hsiorg.com with the page address and what happened. HSI responds within two business days.