Accessibility
Everyone who wants to adopt, foster, volunteer or give should be able to use this website. Here is what we aim for, what we have checked, and how to tell us when something does not work for you.
Our goal
Golden Retriever Freedom Rescue aims for this website to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA. These guidelines describe how to make web content usable for people with disabilities, including people who use screen readers, keyboard navigation, magnification or voice control, and people with low vision, color blindness, or cognitive or motor disabilities.
We are a 100% volunteer organization. Accessibility is ongoing work, not a one-time project, and we fix problems as we learn about them.
How we tested
On October 20, 2026 we audited the public pages of this website: the home page, Adopt, Available Dogs, a dog profile, Adoption Application Instructions, Foster, Volunteer, Surrender, Donate, Events, Stories, Resources, a resource article, Instagram, About, Contact and Privacy.
- Automated testing with the axe-core accessibility engine (version 4.10.2), using the WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 level A and AA rules, in a desktop browser window (1440 pixels wide) and a phone-sized window (390 pixels wide).
- Scripted checks that tabbed through each page with the keyboard to confirm every link and button shows a visible focus outline, that the "Skip to content" link works, that every image has alternative text, that each page has one main heading with no skipped heading levels, that form fields have labels, and that tap targets are large enough or spaced far enough apart.
- Color contrast of the site's color palette, measured for every text and background combination the site uses.
The problems this audit found in our own code (some text colors with too little contrast, a focus outline that was hard to see on white, and a skipped heading level) have been fixed.
We have not yet tested with screen readers or other assistive technology by hand. That is next on our list.
Known limitations
- The running dog on the home page. The golden retriever in the home page banner chases a tennis ball that follows your mouse or the spot you tap, and she moves for every visitor, including people whose device asks for reduced motion. Press the Stay, Chase button in the banner to make her lie down and stop moving. The site remembers that choice on your device. The animation is decorative; nothing on the page depends on it.
- Content added over time. Volunteers update pages, stories and photos often. We ask everyone who edits the site to write alternative text for images and to use headings in order, but new content can introduce new problems before we catch them.
- Dog photos and descriptions come from our animal records system. Photo descriptions name the dog but may not describe everything in the picture.
Services run by other companies
Some things you reach from this website are run by other companies. We chose them, but we do not control how they are built, and we cannot fix accessibility problems in them ourselves:
- Applications and forms for adoption, fostering, volunteering and owner surrender are hosted by ShelterLuv.
- Donations and payments are processed on ShelterLuv's checkout pages.
- Instagram and Facebook pages and posts we link to are hosted by Meta.
If one of these gets in your way, please contact us. We can help you another way, such as by phone or email, and we will pass the problem on to the company that runs it.
Report a problem
If any part of this website is hard or impossible for you to use, we want to know. Please email staff@goldenretrieverfreedom.org with "Accessibility" in the subject line and tell us:
- the page address (URL) or the name of the page,
- what you were trying to do,
- what went wrong, and
- if you are comfortable sharing it, the device, browser and any assistive technology you use.
We aim to reply within [RESPONSE TIME]. If you need information from a page you cannot use, tell us and we will get it to you in another way.