Accessibility Statement

1. Our Commitment

secretary-of-states.org/ is committed to providing a website accessible to the widest possible audience, including users with disabilities. We believe digital accessibility is a civil-rights matter and a basic feature of good publishing. The information on this Site — particularly business filings, elections, and notary processes — has direct legal and financial consequences, and access to it should not depend on the specific technology a reader is using.

We are committed to ongoing improvement, periodic accessibility review, and rapid response to barriers reported by readers.

2. Standards We Follow

Our accessibility work is anchored to internationally recognized standards and applicable US law:

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA — the global benchmark for web accessibility, published by the W3C. We aim for Level AA conformance across the Site.
• Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) — Titles II and III, as interpreted by the US Department of Justice in guidance applicable to commercial and public-accommodation websites. ada.gov
• Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act — the US federal accessibility standard, applied as best practice. section508.gov
• WCAG 2.2 — we monitor newer guidelines and adopt their criteria where compatible with our existing implementation.

3. Accessibility Features Built In

The Site is built with accessibility in mind from the ground up. Specific features include:

4. Browser and Assistive Technology Compatibility

The Site is tested with current versions of major browsers and common assistive technologies:

If you use a different combination of browser and assistive technology and encounter problems, please report them — see Section 7. Compatibility issues are usually fixable once we know they exist.

5. Known Limitations

We are honest about where the Site is not yet fully accessible. Current known limitations include:

• Embedded third-party widgets — advertising units served by Google AdSense and similar networks are controlled by the respective vendor. Their accessibility depends on the vendor’s own implementation, which we cannot directly modify.
• Older content — guides published before our most recent accessibility review may have minor inconsistencies (for example, image alt text written for SEO purposes rather than screen-reader use). These are being remediated on a rolling basis.
• Complex tables — some comparison tables with many columns may be difficult to follow on very small screens. We provide narrative alternatives where possible and continue to improve table markup.
• External links — when a guide links to a state SOS .gov page, the IRS, USPTO, SEC, or another external site, the accessibility of that destination is the destination’s responsibility. We cannot guarantee external site accessibility.
• Color-only signaling in a small number of legacy graphics — we are migrating to use color in combination with text or icons for any meaningful signal.

If you encounter a barrier that is not on this list, please tell us. Reader reports are the main way new limitations get identified and fixed.

6. Third-Party Content

The Site relies on a small number of third-party services — content delivery, analytics, advertising — whose elements appear within our pages. These are configured to minimize accessibility impact, but their behavior is ultimately controlled by the third party. Specifically:

• Advertising units served by Google AdSense follow Google’s accessibility implementation
• Cookie consent prompts use a vendor implementation; if you have difficulty interacting with the prompt, please report it so we can pursue a fix with the vendor
• Embedded videos (where used) are sourced from platforms such as YouTube, which provide their own captions and transcripts

7. How to Report an Accessibility Issue

If you encounter any barrier on secretary-of-states.org/, we want to know. Please email us with as much detail as you can comfortably share.

• Email: info@secretary-of-states.org
• Subject line: “Accessibility — [brief description]”
• The page URL where you encountered the barrier
• What happened — what you were trying to do, and what went wrong
• Your setup — browser, operating system, and any assistive technology in use
• How we should reach you — your preferred contact method

Target response times for accessibility reports:

• Acknowledgement: within five working days
• Substantive update: within fifteen working days for most reports, with longer windows for complex remediation
• Critical barriers (where a reader is unable to access information they need): prioritized for same-week investigation

8. Alternative Formats

If a guide on the Site is not accessible to you in its current form, we will work to provide the information in an alternative format. Options we can offer include:

• Plain-text versions of specific guides on request
• Larger-print or higher-contrast versions of specific guides where reasonable
• Direct text response to a specific question by email, where the underlying information is on the Site
• Pointers to the official .gov source where accessibility may be better supported

Email info@secretary-of-states.org with the subject line “Alternative Format Request” to ask for a specific format.

9. Continuous Improvement

Accessibility is a continuous process. Our ongoing improvement work includes:

• Periodic automated and manual accessibility audits across representative guides
• Annual review of this Accessibility Statement and the standards it references
• Adoption of WCAG 2.2 success criteria where compatible with the existing implementation
• Remediation of barriers reported by readers, with priority based on impact
• Internal training on accessible content authoring for editorial contributors
• Staying current with US Department of Justice ADA guidance for websites