Accessibility Statement

Our commitment

BenchPath (LegalDraft Technologies LLC) is committed to court information that attorneys, law firms, self-represented litigants, and courthouse kiosk visitors can all use. Accessibility barriers are treated as defects, fixed at the most reusable layer, and recorded — never patched over with an overlay widget.

Conformance target

BenchPath targets WCAG 2.2 Level AA for the whole product, and engineers the courthouse kiosk and self-represented guides to that grade because a court that deploys them is a public entity. We say “target” deliberately: conformance is evidenced criterion by criterion in our evidence ledger and accessibility conformance report, not claimed as a one-time certification. Crosswalks to WCAG 2.1 AA and Section 508 are kept in the conformance report.

What is in place

• Accessibility settings on every page (the universal-access symbol in the header): text size up to 150 %, light or dark theme, increased contrast, reduced motion, always-underlined links, and increased text spacing — remembered on your device only, built on our own design tokens, never a third-party overlay. Your browser's zoom and your phone's text-size setting work as well.
• Landmarks on every page: a skip-to-content link, one main region, labelled navigation, and a consistent header and footer.
• Keyboard operability across the shell — command palette (combobox with arrow keys), mobile menu, state switcher, tabs, wizards, calculator, and forms — with a visible focus ring in both themes and a sticky header that never covers the focused element.
• Dialogs move focus in, keep Tab inside, close on Escape, make the page behind them inert, and return focus to the control that opened them.
• Every text input, select, and textarea carries a programmatic label; required, help, and error text are attached to the control; sign-in fields declare autocomplete for password managers.
• Text and control-boundary colors are computed against WCAG ratios in the light and dark themes and pinned by an automated guard; links inside running text carry an underline; buttons and links meet the 24-pixel target floor.
• Locked members-only sections stay out of the keyboard order and out of assistive-technology reach; keyboard, screen-reader, and sighted visitors meet the same members-only card.
• Status changes are announced once per phase — search counts, the case-type scan, the onboarding wizard, and the kiosk — never once per second.
• The courthouse kiosk warns 30 seconds before its privacy reset, extends on any key or touch or a Continue button, and announces the reset. Spanish and Kreyòl interface text is marked with its language.
• Reduced-motion preferences disable entrance and hover animation; the homepage dossier rotation pauses on hover, focus, and by control.
• Data tables carry captions and header scope; scrollable tables are reachable by keyboard; horizontally scrolling code samples are named.
• Report emails carry a language, headings, and a plain-text part; the printed report is a browser print of the accessible HTML.

How we evaluate

• Automated checks run on every code change before it can reach production: axe-core (WCAG 2.2 A/AA rules) on 52 representative pages covering every route family, in light and dark themes, at desktop and phone widths, plus the sign-in error state; keyboard journeys (skip link, dialogs, search, judge questionnaire, locked report, kiosk, deadline calculator); reflow at 320 CSS pixels, WCAG text-spacing overrides, forced-colors mode, and reduced motion; and unit guards that recompute color contrast from the design tokens.
• Human assistive-technology sessions (NVDA + Chrome, VoiceOver + Safari on macOS and iOS) follow a written script and are recorded per task. As of this statement's date those sessions have not yet been run; the results will be recorded here when they are.
• Testing with disabled users has not yet been performed.

Known limitations

Each limitation lists what you can do instead. This list is maintained with every release.

• Court websites and PDF orders reached through source links are third-party and vary widely; many scanned orders carry no text layer.

  Alternative — The rule card quotes the operative text; use the correction intake if the quoted text is missing.

• The checkout page is hosted by the payment vendor and is outside this statement's scope.

  Alternative — Pricing and welcome pages are ours; email us for help completing a purchase.

• Screen-reader combinations not yet run are marked not run rather than assumed.

  Alternative — The keyboard journeys and axe checks above run on every change; report anything a screen reader mis-announces.

• The printed report depends on the browser's own PDF tagging; there is no separately tagged PDF pipeline.

  Alternative — The on-screen report is the accessible primary; ask us for a plain-text export if you need one.

• A few judge portraits are low resolution at the official source.

  Alternative — The alternative text names the judge in every case.

Adjust the display for you

If you read better with larger text, stronger contrast, fewer animations, underlined links, or more space between letters and lines, use the accessibility symbol in the header on any page (or the button below), set it once, and BenchPath remembers it in this browser. Nothing here replaces your own screen reader, keyboard, or system settings — they already work on every page.

Compatibility

BenchPath is built for current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari on desktop, and Safari on iOS and Chrome on Android. Screen-reader results are recorded per combination in our assistive-technology run log as sessions are completed. The site works at 400 % zoom and in Windows high-contrast (forced-colors) mode.

Report a barrier

Tell us the page, what you were trying to do, and the assistive technology or settings you use. We acknowledge accessibility reports within two business days and record the outcome in our findings register.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may also file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, at civilrights.justice.gov.

Statement history

• v1 published 2026-07-22, reviewed 2026-07-31.
• v2 published 2026-08-16 with the accessibility program (form-control primitive, control contrast token, dialog contract, kiosk timing, language of parts, table semantics, and the expanded automated evaluation).
• Next scheduled review: 2026-11-16 (quarterly), or sooner after any major redesign.

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