Accessibility

Effective May 17, 2026.

This page describes the accessibility of my office and my site. It also explains how to request accommodations, which is the more important thing.

Office accessibility

My office is at 226 Summit Ave E, Office B-03, Capitol Hill, Seattle. I want to be direct about the practical accessibility picture because the building's limitations matter to a real decision a prospective client might make.

The building was constructed in 1917 and has no elevator. My office is on the lower level, twelve stairs down from the street entrance. There's no alternative route to my office; the stairs are the only way in and out.

There is a bathroom on the street-level floor (the entry level) and a second bathroom twelve stairs above street level, on the building's top floor. There is no bathroom on the lower level where my office is. A client who needs to use the bathroom during a session climbs the twelve stairs from my office up to street level.

The practical implication: if you use a wheelchair, my office isn't accessible. If stairs are a significant barrier for any reason — mobility, cardiac, pulmonary, joint, energy, post-surgical recovery, late pregnancy, chronic illness — my in-person office is likely not the right fit, and I want you to know that before scheduling rather than after.

I take this seriously enough that I'd rather lose a prospective client to honest information than have someone discover the stairs at the door. If accessibility is a concern, please mention it during the consultation and we'll figure out the right format together.

Telehealth as the accessible alternative

For anyone for whom my office isn't workable, telehealth is available across Washington State and is functionally equivalent to in-person work for most of what I do. EMDR, Brainspotting, Flash Technique, talk therapy, and existential-phenomenological work all run well over video. Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy has specific in-person requirements during dosing sessions but preparation and integration sessions can be telehealth.

I'm comfortable working entirely by telehealth with clients who choose that for accessibility reasons or any other reason. Telehealth isn't a lesser version of in-person therapy in my practice; it's a parallel option with different practical advantages.

Requesting accommodations

If you need an accommodation that isn't covered above — a different format for intake paperwork, alternate communication channels, scheduling flexibility, anything else — contact me and we'll work it out. You don't need to justify the request or provide documentation. The goal is for the practical structure of working together to not be the barrier.

Contact: matt@matthewsorg.com or (206) 580-4841.

Website accessibility

I built my site to target WCAG 2.2 Level AA conformance. In practice that means: pages use semantic HTML structure with proper heading hierarchy, color contrast meets minimum ratios for body text and most other content, images include text descriptions where they convey meaningful content, my site is navigable by keyboard, and animations respect the operating system's reduced-motion preference.

Several individual criteria are met at AAA: body text contrast is 7.45:1 against the page background (the AAA threshold is 7:1); focus indicators meet WCAG 2.4.13 Focus Appearance — a 2 CSS-pixel ember-colored outline at 3 CSS-pixel offset, contrast above 6:1 against the page background; mobile touch targets are 44×44 CSS pixels (the WCAG 2.5.5 Target Size Enhanced threshold, more generous than the 24×24 AA minimum); and animations honor prefers-reduced-motion at the operating-system level. Literary epigraphs sit on darkened atmospheric photographs; the quote text contrasts above 8.7:1 against each photo's measured mean luminance under the 72% cedar overlay (AAA), and the attribution caption meets AA. Where the site falls short of AAA across the board is reading level — clinical and phenomenological writing reads above the AAA's lower-secondary-school threshold by design, and simplifying the prose would distort what my practice is.

I've also designed my site to remain usable without JavaScript or with JavaScript disabled, with the exception of the contact form (which requires JavaScript to submit). If you can't use the form, you can reach me directly by phone at (206) 580-4841 or by email at matt@matthewsorg.com — both routes work without any JavaScript and reach me the same way.

All alt text on this site has been written to describe what's literally in the image, not to convey mood or interpretation. Mood and interpretation belong in the figcaption beneath, which sighted readers see. If you encounter alt text that misrepresents an image or could be clearer, let me know.

Reporting an accessibility issue

If something on my site is broken or inaccessible — a link that doesn't work with your screen reader, contrast that's too low to read, a form that fails with your assistive technology, anything else — please tell me. I'll fix it. Most issues can be addressed within a few days of being flagged.