Our commitment

Shield Dental Care is committed to making our website accessible to as many people as possible, including patients who use screen readers, navigate by keyboard, rely on captions, or browse with text enlarged. Accessibility is part of how we treat patients, so we treat it as ongoing work rather than a one-time project.

Standard we work to

We aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA, the standard most widely referenced in the United States. We consider this site partially conformant with WCAG 2.1 Level AA: most of the site meets the standard, and we are actively working through the areas that do not yet.

What we have done

Recent accessibility work on this site includes:

  • A “Skip to main content” link at the top of every page, so keyboard and screen-reader users can bypass the navigation.
  • Landmark structure on every page (banner, navigation, main, contentinfo) with distinct names for each navigation region.
  • A programmatic label and an autocomplete hint on every field in every form, so assistive technology announces each field's purpose and browsers can autofill it.
  • A visible keyboard focus indicator on every link, button, form field and accordion.
  • Descriptive alternative text on images.
  • Menus, accordions and the mobile navigation drawer that can be operated by keyboard, close on Esc, and return focus where you left it.
  • Text that reflows without horizontal scrolling down to a 320 px viewport, and honours the operating system's reduced-motion setting.

Known limitations

We would rather tell you where the gaps are than imply there are none. At present:

  • Some third-party services we link to — the patient login portal and the online payment page — are operated by other companies, and we do not control their accessibility. If one of them blocks you, call us and we will complete the task with you directly.
  • Some older images carry alternative text that describes the subject but could be more specific. We are revising these as we review each page.
  • We have not yet completed an independent audit of every page on the site, so there may be issues we have not found. Reports from patients are genuinely useful to us.

Tell us about a problem

If you cannot access something on this site, or something here is hard to use, please contact us and describe what happened and the page you were on. We aim to respond within two business days.

We will also give you the information you were looking for in another format — over the phone, by email, or in the office — at no cost, whether or not we have fixed the underlying issue yet.

Accessibility in our office

Our Burke office has step-free access from the parking lot and accessible restroom facilities. If you have a specific access need for your visit — mobility, hearing, vision, sensory, or anything else that would make your appointment easier — please tell us when you book on (703) 250-5072 and we will make arrangements before you arrive.