Terms of Use & Badge License

By using this website or requesting an assessment, you agree to these terms. If you are using the site on behalf of an organization, you confirm you are authorized to accept these terms for that organization. If you don't agree, please don't use the site.

Uplift Accredited is an independent digital accessibility recognition program (the Program, “we,” “us”). Today the Program offers free website accessibility assessments and evidence-backed findings reports. The recognition program — the standing, the verified badge, public verification pages, and the directory — is launching soon. Nothing on this site is an offer to sell a product, and no fee is charged for an assessment or for a standing.

You agree to use this site lawfully and in good faith. You will not:

• Submit an assessment request for a website you don't own or aren't authorized to represent.
• Provide false or misleading information in a request or complaint.
• Attempt to disrupt, overload, probe, or gain unauthorized access to the site or its systems.
• Scrape, copy, or republish site content except as permitted by these terms or applicable law.
• Use the site to harass any person or to submit unlawful content.

We may suspend access for conduct that violates these terms or that threatens the integrity or availability of the site.

We assess a representative sample of your publicly accessible pages against WCAG 2.1 AA and send you a findings report, as described in our published standards. The assessment and report are provided free of charge and for informational purposes.

A findings report describes what our assessment detected at a point in time. It is not legal advice, not a determination of legal compliance, and not a guarantee that your website is fully accessible to every user. Automated testing detects only a portion of accessibility issues, and websites change after they are assessed. You are responsible for decisions you make based on a report.

When the recognition program launches, an organization that earns a standing will be granted a limited, non-exclusive, revocable, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, royalty-free license to display the Uplift Accredited badge for the term of its standing. The license is subject to these conditions:

• Only to designate the standing. The badge may be used only to indicate that the assessed website holds a current Uplift Accredited standing — not to promote the badge itself, and not on merchandise or affinity items.
• Only on the assessed domain. The badge must not be displayed on any website or domain that was not part of the assessment the standing was issued for.
• It must link to the verification page. Each displayed badge must link to the organization's public verification page, so anyone can confirm the standing is current.
• It is served live. The badge is served from our systems and reflects current status. You may not substitute a static image, cache the badge to defeat status updates, or otherwise display the badge in a way that misrepresents a standing.
• It ends when the standing ends. On expiration, revocation, or termination, the license ends immediately and you must stop displaying the badge. Continued use after that point is unauthorized and may infringe our rights.

We may set reasonable display and usage guidelines for the badge and update them from time to time. We reserve the right to revoke a standing and the associated license under the process described in our standards and in section 8.

An Uplift Accredited standing is a recognition of demonstrated work against our published methodology. It is not a government certification, not a determination of legal compliance with the ADA, Section 504, or any other law, and not a guarantee that a website is accessible to every person. See our published standards for exactly what a verification claims and does not claim.

The site, its content, the Uplift Accredited name, and the badge design are ours (or our licensors') and are protected by intellectual-property law. Your findings report is yours to use for your own purposes. The badge license in section 5 is the only right to use the Uplift Accredited name or badge granted by these terms; no other license is implied.

A standing may be revoked for an uncured accessibility barrier that would have failed verification, material regression, misleading badge display, or misrepresentation, with written notice and an opportunity to cure a curable barrier first — the same process published in our standards.

If a dispute arises between you and us, we ask that you first contact us so we can try to resolve it directly. The governing law and any formal dispute-resolution procedure will be finalized before the recognition program issues standings; until then, these terms are interpreted under the law of the operator's home jurisdiction in the United States.

The site, the assessment, and the findings report are provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the site will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that a findings report identifies every accessibility issue on a website.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits or lost data, arising from your use of the site, the assessment, a findings report, or the badge — even if we were advised such damages were possible. Because the assessment and standing are provided at no charge, our total liability for any claim relating to them is limited to the greatest extent permitted by applicable law.

We may update these terms as the Program develops. Material changes will be reflected in the “last updated” date above and, where a standing is affected, communicated to the organization. Continued use of the site after an update means you accept the revised terms.

Questions about these terms? Reach us through the contact page.