Accessibility Statement
The Trading Circle is committed to making our websites usable by everyone, including people who use screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, screen magnification, speech input, or other assistive technology.
Conformance target
We are working toward conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA. This is the standard used by U.S. courts in accessibility cases, adopted by the Department of Justice for public-sector sites, and referenced in the State of Maine’s own digital accessibility policy.
Current status
We completed a full accessibility audit of both sites in September 2026 and have remediated the issues it identified. We do not claim perfect conformance. Automated testing and code review cannot catch everything, and we have not yet completed testing with every combination of assistive technology and browser.
If you find something we have missed, please tell us — see “Give us feedback” below. We treat accessibility reports as bugs and fix them.
What we have done
- Semantic HTML with correct heading order, landmarks, and page titles on every page
- “Skip to main content” link as the first item on every page
- All interactive controls are real buttons and links, reachable and operable by keyboard
- Visible focus indicators on every focusable element
- Accessible names on form fields, icon buttons, and links that open in a new tab
- Text and interface colours meeting or exceeding WCAG AA contrast ratios
- Search results announced to screen readers, and reachable by keyboard
- Text alternatives for images; decorative graphics hidden from assistive technology
- Browser zoom is never blocked, and layouts reflow down to small screens
- Motion respects the operating system’s “reduce motion” setting
- No auto-playing audio or video anywhere on either site
Media and captions
Neither site currently contains video or audio, so no captions or transcripts are needed today. If we add video or audio, we will provide synchronised captions for recorded speech, transcripts for audio-only content, and live captions for any live streamed content, as WCAG 2.1 requires. We will not rely on unreviewed automatic captions.
Known limitations
- Some third-party sites we link to — brokers, charting platforms, data providers, regulators — are outside our control and may not be accessible. We have no ability to fix those, but tell us if a link is a barrier and we will look for an accessible alternative.
- Our Discord community runs on Discord’s own platform; its accessibility is determined by Discord.
- Some dense reference tables scroll horizontally on very narrow screens.
We do not use accessibility overlays
We deliberately do not use accessibility overlay widgets or toolbars. Independent research and enforcement action have shown these products do not deliver genuine accessibility and can interfere with the assistive technology people already use. We fix the underlying code instead.
Give us feedback
If you encounter any barrier on either site, we want to hear about it and we will fix it.
- Email: thetradingcircle.help@gmail.com
- Contact form: thetradingcircle.org/contact.html
We aim to respond within 5 business days.
It helps if you can tell us the page address, what you were trying to do, and which browser and assistive technology you were using — but please report it either way, even if you cannot provide those details.
Alternative access
If any content on these sites is not accessible to you, email thetradingcircle.help@gmail.com and we will provide the information in another format at no cost to you.
Formal complaints
If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Maine Human Rights Commission or the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.
How we keep this current
We review accessibility when we make significant changes to either site, and re-audit periodically. This statement is updated when our status changes. It was last reviewed on the date shown at the top of this page.