Accessibility
Fathom is built on the idea that a patient should feel known by their doctor. That orientation extends to this website: we want the people who land here to be able to read it, navigate it, and reach us — regardless of how they're accessing it.
What we're aiming for
This site is designed against WCAG 2.1 Level AA, the conformance level that most US accessibility law and policy treats as the reference point. We don't claim full conformance — that's a stronger statement than we've earned without a formal audit — but it's the standard we're building toward, and the practices below are what that looks like in implementation.
What we've done
- Semantic HTML — pages are built with structural elements (headings, lists, landmarks) so screen readers can navigate them in the order intended
- Keyboard navigation — every interactive element on the site can be reached and operated with the keyboard alone
- Color contrast — most text and interactive elements meet WCAG AA contrast ratios against their backgrounds
- Reduced motion — the site respects
prefers-reduced-motion; if your operating system is set to reduce motion, the entrance animations and scroll-triggered reveals are disabled - Alt text — meaningful images carry text alternatives; decorative imagery (watermarks, background textures) is marked so assistive technology can skip past it
- Responsive layouts — pages reflow cleanly from small phones up to large desktops, with tap targets sized appropriately for touch
- No autoplay — no audio or video plays without your input; no carousels rotate on their own
Known limitations
A few things worth being upfront about:
- Accent text readability — Some of the text accent elements do not meet WCAG AA's 4.5:1 contrast for normal text against their backgrounds. These are retained as a brand choice.
- Third-party tools — the patient portal is run by our EMR vendor; its accessibility is governed by their implementation, not ours. The contact form is processed by Formspree.
- Manual review only — we've evaluated this site ourselves; a third-party audit hasn't been done. If you find something that doesn't work, please tell us.
If something isn't working
If you run into an accessibility barrier on this site — a page that doesn't read correctly with your screen reader, an element you can't reach with the keyboard, anything — please let us know. We aim to respond within five business days and to either fix the issue or find a workaround that gets you the information you needed.
Contact: hello@fathommedicine.com · [TODO: phone]
Please include the page URL, what you were trying to do, and the assistive technology you're using. That detail helps us reproduce and fix the issue quickly.