New Hope Community Church
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Accessibility

New Hope Community Church wants this website to be usable by every person who comes to it, including people who navigate with assistive technology.

Effective Date: May 19, 2026  |  Last Updated: July 21, 2026

1. Our commitment

We work toward the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 Level AA as the practical standard for newhopechurch.net. WCAG is the international reference for making digital content perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust for the widest possible audience, including people who use screen readers, keyboard navigation, voice control, magnification, and other assistive technologies.

Referencing WCAG 2.2 AA as a build target does not constitute a certification or conformance audit, and we do not represent that the site fully conforms to any particular WCAG level. WCAG 2.2 AA is a goal, not a finish line, and we continue to test and improve as we find issues.

We continue to test, fix, and improve, and we welcome reports of barriers from anyone who hits one.

2. What we do

The work toward accessibility on this site includes the practices below. None of them is a silver bullet on its own. Together they are how we try to meet the standard.

  • Semantic HTML. Pages are built with proper headings, landmarks, lists, and form labels so screen readers and other assistive tools can interpret the content.
  • Keyboard navigation. We test the site with a keyboard alone and fix any control that can't be reached or used. Skip links are provided at the top of each page so keyboard users do not have to tab through the full navigation on every page.
  • Alt text. Meaningful images carry descriptive alt text. Decorative images are marked so assistive technology can skip past them rather than reading filler.
  • Color contrast. We test against the WCAG 2.2 AA contrast ratios. We test color choices against the standard during design.
  • Focus indicators. Keyboard focus on links, buttons, and form fields is visible by default. We do not hide the focus ring.
  • Predictable structure. Navigation, page hierarchy, and link wording stay consistent from page to page so the site is learnable.

3. Tools on the site

The site loads a third-party accessibility widget (accessiBe) that offers visitors visual and behavioral adjustments, including text resizing, contrast modes, dyslexia-friendly font, animation pausing, and other on-page accommodations. The widget is one input among several; it is offered as a supplement, not as a substitute for the underlying accessibility work above.

4. Known limitations

A few areas where we are still working toward full WCAG 2.2 AA compliance:

  • Embedded third-party content. Some pages embed video (YouTube), maps (Google), and church-management widgets (Planning Center). We do our best to caption and label these, but the underlying players and embeds are controlled by their respective vendors.
  • Older sermon archive content. Sermon transcripts and historical materials brought over from earlier versions of the site may not yet meet the current accessibility standard. We add captions and transcripts as resources allow.
  • PDF documents. Some bulletins and forms distributed as PDFs may not be fully tagged. We are working to replace PDF-only content with accessible HTML alternatives or to tag PDFs properly.

5. Report a barrier

If something on this site is in your way, please tell us. We want to know.

Please include the page URL where you encountered the barrier and a brief description of what happened. We will follow up with a fix or an interim workaround.

6. Standards we reference

We design and test against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 Level AA, published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). We also keep an eye on Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

7. Continuous improvement

People build, check, and update this site, with help from AI tools. Accessibility is part of the design and review checklist for every new page and every refactor of an existing one. When new content is added, it is reviewed against the practices in Section 2 before publication. When a barrier is reported, we treat the fix as a higher priority than new features.

This statement is reviewed at least once a year and whenever significant changes are made to the site.