Accessibility Statement

1. Our commitment, stated honestly

We want SmartKourse to be usable by people with disabilities, including people who use screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, magnification, voice control, or reduced-motion settings. Accessibility is treated as part of building the product rather than as a retrofit.

What follows is a description of where we are, not a compliance badge. Accessibility statements are often written to sound finished; this one is written to be accurate, because a learner who relies on assistive technology is better served by knowing what works than by a reassuring paragraph.

2. The standard we are working toward

Our target is WCAG 2.2 Level AA (aspirational target; not a claim of full conformance).

We use the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as our reference because they are the most widely adopted framework and because they map onto the requirements most jurisdictions apply. Treating it as a target means we use it to prioritize work and to decide what counts as a defect — not that we have measured ourselves against every success criterion and passed.

3. What we are not claiming

To be unambiguous:

• We do not claim full conformance with WCAG at any level.
• We have not completed an independent third-party accessibility audit, and we have no VPAT or Accessibility Conformance Report to offer.
• We do not claim compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 508, EN 301 549, or any other legal standard.
• We cannot guarantee that every page, every component, or every course works correctly with every combination of browser and assistive technology.

If we complete a formal audit, we will publish its scope, date, and findings — including what failed.

4. What we have done so far

• Semantic HTML structure with headings, landmarks, and lists used for meaning.
• Keyboard operability for primary flows including navigation, forms, checkout, and the course player, with visible focus indicators.
• Labeled form controls, with errors reported in text rather than by color alone.
• Accessible names for interactive controls, including icon-only buttons.
• Attention to text contrast in our color system, in both light and dark themes.
• Responsive layouts that support zoom and reflow at smaller viewports.
• Alternative text support for images, including instructor-uploaded artwork.
• Respect for reduced-motion preferences where animation is used.
• Table-of-contents navigation and stable heading anchors on long documents such as this one.

5. Known limitations

Areas where we know the experience is imperfect or unverified. This list is not exhaustive — it is what we currently know:

• Captions and transcripts depend on the instructor and on the video platform. Many lessons have no reviewed captions, and auto-generated captions vary in quality.
• Audio descriptions for visual-only content in lesson video are generally not provided.
• The embedded video player’s controls and keyboard behavior are supplied by a third party and are not fully under our control.
• Complex creator-studio interfaces, including curriculum editing and drag-and-drop reordering, have not been fully validated with screen readers, and drag interactions may lack complete keyboard equivalents.
• PDFs and downloadable files supplied by instructors are frequently not tagged for accessibility.
• Color contrast has been designed with care but not exhaustively verified on every state of every component.
• We have not systematically tested every page against every major screen reader.

6. Third-party components we do not control

Parts of the experience are delivered by third parties whose accessibility we can influence but not determine: the embedded video player used for lesson playback, Stripe’s hosted checkout pages, and content loaded from links instructors provide. Where a third-party component creates a barrier, we will raise it with the provider and look for an alternative path for you in the meantime.

7. Instructor-supplied content

This is the most important limitation to understand. SmartKourse controls the platform; independent instructors create the courses. We can make the player keyboard-operable, but we cannot make a video that never states aloud what is on screen accessible to a blind learner, and we cannot caption thousands of lessons we did not produce.

If a specific course presents a barrier, tell us. We will contact the instructor, and if the course cannot be made usable for you, we will treat it as a material-access problem and refund it under the Refund Policy regardless of the standard refund window. You should not be out of pocket for a course you cannot access.

8. Guidance for instructors

If you teach here, a few habits make a large difference: enable and correct captions on your videos; say aloud what you are showing rather than relying on “as you can see here”; use readable font sizes and strong contrast in slides; provide written summaries or transcripts for key lessons; avoid conveying meaning by color alone; write descriptive alt text for images; and use real headings in written material. These also help learners on phones, in noisy places, and in a second language.

9. Assistive technology compatibility

We aim to support current versions of major browsers used with common assistive technology, including screen readers, screen magnification, speech recognition, and browser zoom to at least 200 percent. We test primarily with keyboard navigation and spot-check with screen readers. We do not maintain a certified compatibility matrix, and older browsers or unusual combinations may work less well.

10. How we assess accessibility

Our current approach is internal: automated checks during development, manual keyboard testing of primary flows, and review of reported barriers. We have not engaged an external auditor.

A date of last formal accessibility review has not yet been recorded. Rather than invent one, we are leaving this blank until a documented review takes place, and we will publish the date and scope when it does.

11. Report a barrier

If something on SmartKourse is difficult or impossible to use, please tell us at Contact form on this website (email address pending owner configuration) or through the contact form. Reports from people who actually rely on assistive technology are the single most useful input we get, and they change what we prioritize.

Helpful details, if you have them:

• The page or feature, and a link if possible.
• What you were trying to do and what happened instead.
• Your browser, operating system, and assistive technology, including versions.

We will acknowledge your report and tell you what we can do and roughly when. We do not promise a fix deadline, because pretending to a service-level commitment we have not resourced would be worse than being straight with you. Barriers that block core functionality — signing in, buying, or watching a course you paid for — are treated as urgent.

12. Getting help another way

If a part of the site is unusable for you, contact Contact form on this website (email address pending owner configuration) and we will try to help through another route: assisting with an account action, providing information in a different format, helping locate content, or processing a refund where a course is not accessible to you. Ask — we would rather find a workaround than have you give up on the platform.

13. What we are working on

• Broader screen-reader testing across the creator studio and admin flows.
• Keyboard equivalents for every drag-and-drop interaction.
• Encouraging and eventually requiring captions on published lesson video.
• Surfacing caption and transcript availability on course listings before purchase.
• A documented internal audit, with the date and findings published here.
• Accessibility guidance built into the course authoring flow.

These are intentions and priorities, not commitments to a date. We will update this section as items ship.

14. Contact

Accessibility feedback: Contact form on this website (email address pending owner configuration), or the contact form. This statement is reviewed as the product changes, and like our other policies it is pending review by qualified counsel before any of it is treated as a legal representation.