A clinic everyone can actually use
A regulated medical practice has to be reachable by the people who need it most — including patients with vision, hearing, motor, or cognitive disability. This page sets out what we've done, what we know is still imperfect, and how to tell us about a barrier you've hit.
Effective 13 May 2026 · Version 1.0
Our standard
We work to WCAG 2.2 Level AA
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 at Level AA are the benchmark Australian government and health services aim for. We treat AA as the floor, not the ceiling, and audit the marketing site and patient portal against it at every release. Where we fall short of AA on a particular control, we say so in the “known limitations” list below and tell you what we are doing about it.
What we've done
Built in, not bolted on
Visual accessibility
Text and interactive elements meet WCAG 2.2 contrast ratios on the dark default theme. The site is usable at 200% zoom without horizontal scrolling. Decorative imagery is marked aria-hidden; informative imagery carries descriptive alt text.
Keyboard accessibility
Every interactive element — links, buttons, the navigation menu, the FAQ accordions, the booking form — is reachable and operable with the keyboard alone. A persistent skip-to-content link is the first focusable element on every page.
Screen-reader compatibility
Pages use semantic HTML5 landmarks, proper heading hierarchy, and labelled form controls. Dynamic state changes — opening the mobile menu, expanding an FAQ — announce themselves via aria-expanded and aria-controls so screen readers stay in sync.
Motion and animation
Non-essential motion respects the prefers-reduced-motion media query: if your operating system asks for reduced motion, our scroll, fade and translate effects fall back to instant transitions.
The detail
Specific things we hold ourselves to
- Text contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for body copy and 3:1 for large text and UI components (WCAG 1.4.3, 1.4.11).
- Page content reflows at 320 CSS pixels of width without loss of information (WCAG 1.4.10).
- Focus indicators are visible with at least 3:1 contrast against adjacent colours (WCAG 2.4.11).
- No information conveyed by colour alone — icons accompany every status colour, and form errors are announced in text (WCAG 1.4.1).
- No content that flashes more than three times per second (WCAG 2.3.1).
- Every form field has a programmatically associated label and an autocomplete attribute where one is meaningful (WCAG 1.3.5, 3.3.2).
- The site is operable end-to-end with the keyboard alone, with no keyboard traps (WCAG 2.1.1, 2.1.2).
- Page titles, language attribute, and heading hierarchy are correct on every route (WCAG 2.4.2, 3.1.1, 2.4.6).
Honest list
Where we are still imperfect
No site of any meaningful size is ever finished on accessibility. These are the gaps we know about today, with the work plan for each.
- Some Self-Love Letters articles published before May 2026 contain inline images without long-form descriptions; we are auditing these and adding extended descriptions article by article.
- The patient portal's clinical-record viewer is an active area of work. Some legacy widgets in the portal have not yet completed our full accessibility audit; if you encounter a barrier inside the portal, please use the contact route below and we will work around it for your specific session.
- Third-party video provider used for the consultation call is independently assessed and meets industry accessibility benchmarks, but its in-call controls are outside our direct control. If you need an alternative (for example, phone-only consultation), we will arrange it without question.
Reasonable adjustments
If you need information in a different format
Under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth), you have the right to a reasonable adjustment when interacting with a public service. In practice that means we will work with you to make sure you can access the practice, regardless of disability or assistive technology.
Things we routinely arrange on request:
- phone-only consultations as an alternative to video;
- large-print or plain-text versions of any document we send you;
- the National Relay Service or other assistive call routing for hearing-impaired patients;
- longer appointment duration where communication needs call for it, at no additional charge;
- a support person on the call with you, with no pre-approval required.
If we have not listed what you need, the answer is almost certainly still yes — just ask.
Report a barrier
Tell us if something is in your way
Specific reports help us fix specific things. If you hit a barrier — a button you can't focus, contrast that isn't enough, a screen-reader label that doesn't make sense — please tell us. We treat accessibility reports as a priority class of feedback and aim to acknowledge them within one business day.
If we haven't resolved your accessibility concern to your satisfaction, you can raise it as a complaint under our Complaints policy or with the Australian Human Rights Commission.