Domestic violence has gotten worse during the pandemic. But a local rapid response team for survivors and their children is expanding to meet the growing need.
The Domestic Violence Enhanced Response Team provides 24/7, trauma-focused, on-call response to domestic violence situations in Cincinnati and some surrounding areas.
The program has served more than 5,700 survivors since 2018, according to Women Helping Women, a local organization working to address gender-based and intimate partner violence. That number includes big upswings in 2021 and so far in 2022.
Now, the DVERT program will be able to help more people with an expansion to all 49 municipal jurisdictions in Hamilton County — up from 20 jurisdictions in years past.
Joining Cincinnati Edition to discuss increasing domestic violence calls, DVERT’s expansion and how the program supports survivors are Women Helping Women President and CEO Kristin Shrimplin; DVERT Program Director Callie Ward; and Cincinnati Police Assistant Chief Lt. Colonel Michael John.
Listen to Cincinnati Edition live at noon M-F. Audio for this segment will be uploaded after 4 p.m. ET.
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CINCINNATI — There’s another pandemic that is affecting communities nationwide and it is on the rise: Domestic violence.
What You Need To Know
Domestic violence seen as ‘the other pandemic’ – numbers have increased nationally and locally
Cincinnati has had nine domestic violence-related deaths so far this year. That’s more than the past two years combined.
Women Helping Women is working to make it easier for survivors to come forward
Experts say loved ones should watch for warning signs and be ready for “tough conversations”
Kristin Shrimplin, CEO and president of Women Helping Women (WHW), said domestic or gender-based violence is a “human rights abuse” that has long been and continues to be a public health crisis, especially during the time of isolation during the pandemic.
“The last year-plus has been a real challenge. A lot of the coordinated systems we rely on were fundamentally compromised — health care systems, social services. A lot of us, we were just trying to do the best we could to keep up,” said Shrimplin.
Despite its name, Women Helping Women serves all victims of domestic violence — regardless of gender or sexual identity.
“This is a problem that affects everyone, even if in different ways and capacities,” Shrimplin said.
One in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in their lifetime, according to data from WHW’s website. Those numbers are getting worse during the COVID-19 pandemic.
WHW’s 24-hour support hotline is on pace to review nearly 12,000 calls for crisis support this year. Shrimplin said the text chat function is used around-the-clock.
But sometimes the calls and texts don’t come in time.
The Cincinnati Police Department said the city has already had nine domestic violence-related homicides in the first seven months of 2021. That’s more than the eight reported incidents Cincinnati has seen in the last two years combined.
Assistant Police Chief Lisa Davis said on average 6% to 8% of homicides in Cincinnati are related to domestic violence. This year, that number is closer to 18%.
“That is a big jump,” said Davis, who has been outspoken about the issue the past few weeks. Davis turned to social media to voice her frustrations following the shooting death of 31-year-old Michelle McDonald.
Police said McDonald was pregnant at the time she was gunned down by a man identified as her boyfriend.
She managed to give birth to the child she was carrying, but the newborn, Aaliyah McCoy, passed away Saturday.
“The death of Michelle McDonald and her baby are a true tragedy. [The Cincinnati Police Department] will do everything possible to hold [the suspect] accountable for their deaths,” Davis wrote in a tweet.
Shrimplin said she is not at all surprised, but for the community “this should be a very loud-sounding alarm bell.”
“Unless we enact systemic changes, what is going to keep us from having another domestic violence homicide next month,” she asked.
She explained that violence doesn’t always involve a gun or knife and there isn’t always punching or kicking. It can be verbal or emotional. Sometimes it’s sexual, even stalking.
But none of those is acceptable, Shrimplin said.
Shrimplin said it can be difficult for people experiencing domestic violence to just “pick up and leave.” Many times there are families, children, significant others involved.
WHW reports 81% of survivors report that the perpetrator is either a current or former intimate partner.
Davis said CPD responds to all domestic violence calls and will arrest or detain suspects per their policies, but there’s only so much they can do.
“That is a crime that until that person is ready to make a move, until they feel supported and able, they’re not going to,” she said. “We will keep going back to let them know that when they’re ready, we will support them. But they’ve got to make that choice themselves.”
Those first few minutes after a domestic violence incident are crucial, Shrimplin said. That’s why WHW created the Domestic Violence Enhanced Response Team (DVERT).
WHW sends DVERT staff to the scene of active domestic violence calls in Greater Cincinnati. They provide on-site resources and support to victims. They will also offer to help the survivors create a safety plan to avoid future violence. About 85% accept, Shrimplin said.
DVERT started in Cincinnati, but recently expanded to work with 15 law enforcement jurisdictions across Hamilton County.
Shrimplin said WHW team members are on pace to appear at 1,400 domestic violence police calls this year. That number is a 40% jump over last year, but Shrimplin is quick to point out it’s in part due to program expansion.
Davis said the issue is far too complex to draw conclusions about the cause of the spike. But she said pandemic-related stressors — things like a lost job, family health issues, or even being stuck at home — may exacerbate existing issues.
Shrimplin said the most important thing a person can do is be there and be aware. If you see something, say something. If someone tells you something, believe them.
“The most critical thing a person can do is listen. They need someone to say, ‘I believe you,'” she said. “Survivors need to hear that. Survivors often fear that no one will believe them so they don’t come forward.”
Domestic violence isn’t something that just happens. Davis said you’ll see “warning signs.”
“Look to see if someone is being controlling, or manipulative. Are they isolating friends and family? Those types of things you want to look for,” she said. “We all have to be willing to ask those tough questions.”
“We see many, many signs leading up to that,” Shrimplin added. “Violence can kill, but so can silence.”
The 24-hour hotline for calls or texts is 513-381-5610. More resources are available on the Women Helping Women website.
Cincinnati City Council will give a quarter-million dollars to a nonprofit that works alongside the police to help survivors of domestic violence – a crime that has spiraled in the city during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Council unanimously voted Wednesday to approve the $250,000 in funding to Women Helping Women to use for the Domestic Violence Enhanced Response Team (DVERT).
Calls about partner violence are up, and more of the violence is life-threatening, said Kristin Shrimplin, the agency’s president and chief executive officer.
“It is staggering,” said Greg Landsman, the council member who proposed giving the financial help to the organization for the DVERT program.
Here’s how DVERT works: When Cincinnati police officers arrive at a domestic violence scene, they secure the scene, do a brief assessment and then call a DVERT advocate. The advocates, Women Helping Women employees who ensure the agency is staffed 24-7, have trauma-informed training. They help survivors get resources they need to be safe. They may go to a hospital with someone who’s hurt, provide shelter, get them legal help and sit in court with the survivor as the case moves forward.
“Most of these survivors have children, and they are survivors too,” Landsman said. “If a survivor has a DVERT advocate there on the scene with our police … it makes an enormous difference in them getting support that they need.”
Calls to a Women Helping Women hotline jumped 53% this year in a 14-week period from March 16-June 30 compared to the same weeks in 2019, an analysis by the nonprofit shows. That came despite the difficulty that those experiencing partner violence had in making phone calls while their partner was in the same home, said Shrimplin said. The agency developed a texting method during this period to help keep callers safe.
Shrimplin said that, with the uncertainty that the pandemic causes, she fully anticipates a continuation of climbing calls. “This is not letting up.”
Women Helping Women advocates have seen more strangulation, more threatened gun use and more gun violence in their response to survivors, Shrimplin said.
Cincinnati in general has seen a rise in violence in general against women this year.
Early this month, the city reached a new high in homicides of women: By Sept. 9, more women had been killed in the city than in any other year since at least 2000.
Not all of the killings were domestic violence related, police said. But an Enquirer analysis of data from last year shows women killed in Cincinnati are more likely to be killed in partner violence or child abuse situations than any other reason.
Women Helping Women had a fundraising gap this year of $250,000, due to the pandemic, officials said. Yet the agency’s caseload of survivors has increased by 25%, its analysis shows.
Landsman said the DVERT program has proven to be helpful to mothers and children victimized by domestic assault.
“I think it’s up to us to invest in what we know is working,” he said, “and ensure that we are expanding that work so that no one in the city is left behind.”
Cincinnati police officers used force fewer times in 2019 than in any year since at least 2000, and the number of use-of-force incidents has been steadily declining.
For the first year in two decades, Cincinnati police averaged less than one incident per day in which force had to be used.
The Enquirer examined the use-of-force database maintained by the police department and the city. According to police leadership, it offers evidence that dozens of policy changes and increased training have made a difference on the streets of the city
It also shows the results of a successful grassroots movement to reform the police and a step in the right direction to the larger goal of eliminating all unnecessary or excessive force, reformers say.
In policing, force can mean a variety of things. When an officer uses a Taser or forces a person to the ground to compel someone to submit, that is reported as a use-of-force.
But the term covers a wide range of actions – from shooting and killing someone to an injury a person may have suffered falling during foot pursuit.
Along with fewer use-of-force incidents, total arrests were at historic lows. And in 2019, one-tenth the number of juveniles were arrested on misdemeanor and felony charges when compared in 2000.
Serious violent and property crimes have also decreased, while police “calls for service,” a measure of how many interaction police have with citizens, has remained steady.
From 2017 to 2019, Cincinnati police averaged each year about 295,000 calls for service that required a police response, about 22,800 arrests and 366 use-of-force incidents.
That means force is used in about one in every 1,000 police contacts, and about 8% of police contacts result in an arrest.
John Vespucci is a national expert on use-of-force at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
He said Cincinnati’s trend is similar to many other large metropolitan agencies as training increases and “zero tolerance” policies are eliminated.
“With more education, police have more tools,” Vespucci said. “Having more education, police are less likely to use excessive force.”
He also said there was a “Ferguson Effect,” a nationwide drop in use-of-force following the civil unrest in Missouri in 2014. The shooting of 18-year-old, unarmed Michael Brown sparked days of civil unrest and nationwide protests. The incident added significant momentum to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac credits better training and tools along with a focus on crime data and a fundamental shift toward accountability, transparency and improvement.
These issues are being talked about all over the country right now, he said, but it started in Cincinnati nearly 20 years ago.
“We had our Ferguson. We had a George Floyd effect here with Timothy Thomas,” Isaac said. “That’s where you saw a major transition in our agency.”
Civil unrest followed the 2001 death of Thomas, just one in a string of unarmed Black men who died at the hands of police. Then came federal intervention and a mandate from the Department of Justice to reform. Eventually, the Collaborative Agreement was struck, a contract between the police and the citizens they serve.
“It is very evident that there were things that were done wrong in the past. … That’s not hard for me to admit at all. We need to learn from those things,” Isaac said. “This department has owned that. We are not the same police department that we were prior to the Collaborative Agreement.”
Fewer arrests mean less force
Attorney Al Gerhardstein represented the community during the Collaborative Agreement negotiation and has remained a watchdog of the Cincinnati Police Department.
He said his strategy from the beginning has been to push for fewer arrests and fewer encounters with police. This will inevitably reduce harm, he explained.
And Gerhardstein’s work appears to have paid off. Arrests in 2019 were down 54% compared to 2000 and 32% compared to 2001.
Isaac supports the philosophy of reduced arrests.
“We cannot reduce crime by … mass arrest. That’s an ineffective and antiquated way to reduce crime in the city,” Isaac said. “We did more harm than good by making large numbers of arrests, decimating a community. Look at the African American community.”
Now data leads investigators to specific crime hotspots and specific criminals instead of casting a broad net over entire communities, Issac said.
However, Gerhardstein said racial disparities and other problematic trends still exist when it comes to the department’s use of force.
For instance, police used force against juveniles 40 times in 2019. In 36 of those instances, the juveniles were Black.
Gerhardstein said the last three people shot – Omar Santa Perez, James Clay and Jawari Porter – and killed by Cincinnati police all suffered from mental health issues.
The Enquirer previously reported that Porter and Clay had a history of mental illness. In 2018, Isaac said Santa – who killed three people in the Fifth Third Center mass shooting – might have struggled with mental health issues.
“The police are dealing with people who are unstable and armed. I understand why they have to use deadly force,” he said. “While those shootings were deemed justified, that should not be the end of the inquiry. The work of collaborative policing asks … how the police ended up there.”
Use-of-force research
There were 308 use-of-force incidents in Cincinnati in 2019.
None were deadly. Three were shootings.
A Taser report was the most common type of report filed, but the basic data doesn’t show if less severe types of force were used alongside the Taser.
Robin S. Engel is the director of the University of Cincinnati Center for Police Research and Policy. She recently completed a report with her fellow researcher Amanda Shoulberg and the University of Texas at San Antonio researchers Michael Smith and Rob Tillyer.
The research looks at use-of-force in Cincinnati in an unprecedented way, Engel said.
Unlike the data that is reported in public databases, Engel’s team looked through every individual report, including the narrative of what happened as written by a police supervisor.
Her team developed a new way to code every single action documented in the report along with the usual demographic data. She was particularly interested in resistance and force demonstrated by the citizen and how officers reacted to that.
“The race of the suspect doesn’t predict the level of force that an officer will use,” Engel said. “It’s the level of resistance. Black and Hispanic suspects were not more likely to have higher levels of force used against them compared to white suspects. There was not a race effect there.”
She said there is some racial disparity among suspects who resist. The research did not have an answer as to why.
Engel also said the research showed officers are not escalating force. When a person begins resisting police, officers often meet that resistance with less force than the suspect is using.
Have police ever acted on racial bias when it comes to force?
Engel said her data does not go back far enough to show if this has always been the case, but she’s been researching police and looking at the data for a long time.
“My speculation is that this is related to the training of officers in use-of-force,” Engel said. “We are training them in de-escalation and it appears to be working.”
She said this report also shows there are factors outside of an individual officer’s response that play a role in the racial disparities that appear in use-of-force statistics.
She emphasized that if everyone is focused on the potential bias at the officer-level, then other problems are ignored.
Gerhardstein said that distrust, fear and a perceived lack of legitimacy about why a person is being stopped all contribute to resistance. He added that how officers make their initial approach also dictates how people will react.
“Resistance is police speak,” Gerhardstein said. “It’s not very useful in addressing abuse of force and community trust.”
Engel is working on other projects that could yield even more detail about how force happens in police encounters. She’s examining officer and citizen injury rates and working to develop a way to code body camera footage, so the recorded events can be analyzed statistically, as well.
She hopes these projects might be more free from bias that could be present in the police reports, which are written by police officers.
Engel also noted there’s a limit to what the data can say about policing in general. The report used data gathered from Tulsa and Cincinnati, and Engel said it was even difficult comparing those two similarly-sized cities.
There are about 18,000 police agencies in the United States. The majority are small. According to the Department of Justice, more than two-thirds of local police departments serve populations of less than 10,000 residents.
There are different policies, different populations, different reporting standards. Engel said this makes taking police reform on at a national level very difficult.
“We need more engagement at the state-level for police reform,” she said. “We can start to even out some of these inconsistencies across agencies.”
Cincinnati Chief Isaac said he knows there’s more work to do.
“We still see disparities along racial lines,” Isaac said. “We’re not perfect, but we have a very strong foundation. There has been a tremendous amount of work done over the past decade and a half that I don’t want to see lost.”
He said his department will continue to voluntarily engage with Engel and other researchers to better understand the use-of-force.
The department also uses a mobile crisis unit, which allows mental health professionals to respond alongside police when someone is experiencing mental illness. A police partnership with the non-profit Women Helping Women dispatches social service workers alongside police in domestic violence situations.
When it comes to reviewing force when it happens, Isaac said, “When things are functioning normally, we have parallel and independent body that takes a look at that… the CCA. They have had some challenges with staffing and some of those things.”
Between 2014 and 2019, the CCA “sustained” 12 different complaints against Cincinnati police officers regarding use-of-force. Funding issues have created a backlog in their investigations.
Gerhardstein, the lawyer who worked on the Collaborative Agreement, said that properly addressing mental health is the “next frontier” in policing. He said a coalition of mental health stakeholders formed last year as part of the national Stepping Up initiative, and that Cincinnati police need to connect with that community.
“Cincinnati police have improved, but not enough,” Gerhardstein said, arguing the mobile crisis unit should be expanded.
Gerhardstein said the Cincinnati Black United Front and the Children’s Law Center are also working to find solutions to the racial disparities in use-of-force against young people. The young leaders who have emerged during recent protests and working with Cincinnati Black United Front leader Iris Roley and should be heard, he said.
Isaac said reform and change will occur.
“We are looking for opportunities to be better,” he said. “I’ve been in the profession for over 30 years now. This is extremely different than when I started in the late ’80s. I think it’s a natural expectation that people should expect the police department to evolve and transform over time.”
An upswing of domestic violence was a feared consequence of the coronavirus pandemic. Now Hamilton County has evidence for it.
Women Helping Women, the southwest Ohio nonprofit that advocates and cares for victims of gender-based violence, reported Thursday it had registered a 23% increase in the number of clients from March 16 to June 30 compared to the same period a year ago.
The agency’s analysis also showed calls to its hotline jumped 53% this year over the same 14 weeks when compared to the 2019 time frame.
“COVID doesn’t cause gender-based violence. Economic stress doesn’t cause gender violence,” said Kristin Shrimplin, the agency’s president and chief executive officer. “It just adds fuel to the fire.”
In March, Shrimplin said, calls for help rose rapidly, about 20%. After the stay-at-home order was issued in mid-month, the calls dropped because, Shrimplin said, fewer domestic violence survivors could feel safe calling a hotline while at home full time with a perpetrator.
Lt. Col. Mike John of the Cincinnati Police Department works with Shrimplin on a dedicated unit that responds to domestic violence calls with police and WHW advocates. John said that even though police haven’t seen a jump in criminal reports, he is not surprised by the increase in hotline calls.
“It’s not like a simple assault at a bar,” he said. “We are very much dedicated to finding who that aggressor is and removing him from that situation. They (Women Helping Women advocates) are left to pick up the pieces.”
Women Helping Women provides that support, he said, no matter if the survivor decides to press charges.
Domestic incidents have been more violent
Shrimplin said she found another cause for alarm. More people calling the hotline had experienced brutal assaults that can be omens of fatal violence in intimate relationships.
“Strangulation, sexual assault, use of weapons, they were all up,” Shrimplin said.
Women Helping Women, like many such agencies in the United States, uses the Danger Assessment tool, a system of identifying particular domestic violence – non-fatal strangulation, for example – that can lead to femicide, the killing of a woman.
The dedicated group of WHW advocates and Cincinnati police working together is called Domestic Violence Enhanced Response Team, or DVERT. Advocates go on domestic violence calls with police to help survivors.
“What we were hearing on those calls, what we were seeing on scene with survivors, they were getting increased red flags to be killed compared to last year,” Shrimplin said.
New victims
The Women Helping Women report also found people who’d never before experienced physical violence at home now calling for help.
It’s an unsurprising development. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s report on intimate-partner violence during the pandemic notes that loss of jobs, income in general, a disconnect of social services and help groups, a fear of getting COVID-19 and other issues now “may stimulate violence in families where it didn’t exist before and worsen situations in homes where mistreatment and violence has been a problem.”
The April shootings
In April, six female-identified victims were fatally shot in Hamilton County, compared to five for all of 2019. The Women Helping Women report said, “While COVID-19 was not cause of death, the impact on how society functioned greatly increased the harm and lethality of individuals who were already facing long standing system barriers to safety and resources.”
Shrimplin said criminal reports will lag the number of calls to the agency’s hotline. “If people show up to hospitals and work with us, if we show up at different community points, if they call our hotline, that doesn’t mean that the survivors engage with the justice system.”
John of the Cincinnati police said of WHW, “That’s why their expertise is so important.”
How can victims get help
Women Helping Women has stepped up its services.
In April, with no additional funding, the agency added text-ability to its hotline.
Its volunteers bring masks, hand sanitizers and other personal protection products to the survivors it serves.
When possible, the agency provides families gift cards for groceries or Lyft rides.
The state of Ohio is funneling new money to programs for domestic violence survivors.
Attorney General Dave Yost announced $8.75 million from the federal CARES Act would go to support rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters, in addition to $1 million to combat COVID-19 scams throughout the state.
Gov. Mike DeWine also announced that 66 local victim service projects have been awarded a total of $3.2 million to support victims of crime. The projects will be funded by grants through the Family Violence Prevention & Services Act grants program.
If you are threatened or harmed or know someone who may be in danger, call or text the Women Helping Women hotline: 513-381-5610.
The partner of my aunt, an elementary school teacher, once used his meaty fists to break her face, leaving her face a bloody, unrecognizable mess.
This wouldn’t have been the first time he hit her, but it certainly was the most damaging. My aunt suffered grave injuries that required hospitalization. The whole town knew it. Yet, her abuser was walking the streets the next day.
As the pretty young wife of a jealous husband, my aunt’s daughter was a survivor, too. Her skinny husband executed a bloody attack on a hot afternoon in front of a group of terrified and petrified kids. Another cousin’s husband cracked her skull with a brick. Thankfully, she lived. All the of the abusers remained free.
I attended the Women Helping Women 2nd annual breakfast Thursday. Women Helping Women offers resources to deal with domestic violence and sex crimes. If only my kin had such support — especially when they could not count on the law to be on their side. Back then, it was not uncommon for a local lawman to help the abuser “cool off” by driving him around for a while.
Sadly, in Greater Cincinnati, the need is increasingly significant. Women Helping Women in 2017 reported helping nearly 5,800 new survivors. So far this year, it has served nearly 6,000 survivors with more than two months remaining in the year. The #MeToo movement and the U.S. Supreme Court hearing spurred more people to tell their truth. In September, the group helped 1,028 survivors.
President and CEO Kristin Smith Shrimplin reflected on the national conversation around gender-based violence. “The national narrative has changed in its belief of survivors and its treatment for survivors,” Shrimplin said during the breakfast. “Supporting survivors is not open for political debate.”
Women Helping Women volunteers are doing yeoman’s work. They go to victims’ homes with police to remove them. They staff a crisis line 24 hours a day, every day. They meet rape survivors in hospital emergency rooms. They support survivors in court. They train leaders in the workplace to recognize a victim of gender-based violence on their team.
They have campus advocates at Miami University and the University of Cincinnati.
They help families. In February, the organization partnered with the Cincinnati Police Department to start the DVERT program. So far, the program has helped 472 adults and 588 children out of domestic violence.
The insidious thing about gender-based violence is its stealth. Horrified victims don’t tell other people what they are going through. When they miss work or are chronically tardy, an HR issue arises, and the real problem is masked. They may not have visible evidence of abuse, but their scars show up in other ways.
All of us need to be better equipped to spot someone who may be suffering, to engage them and be an advocate for them. The numbers in our community are trending upward across the board. And today, largely because of organizations like Women Helping Women, a strategic approach to help is available.
No one needs to suffer in silence anymore.
Byron McCauley writes about education and family life. He also serves on the Enquirer editorial board. Email: [email protected]. Social: @byronmccauley.
Citing a growing number of reported gender-based violence cases in Greater Cincinnati, Women Helping Women President and CEO Kristin Smith Shrimplin says there is a disturbing pattern with the way victims are treated.
Smith Shrimplin spoke Thursday at the organization’s annual Community Leader breakfast at The Westin Cincinnati. She says Women Helping Women is not a political agency, only commenting on policy and actions that negatively affect survivors.
Referencing the #MeToo movement she said, “The national narrative has changed in its belief of survivors and its treatment of survivors. Supporting survivors is not open for political debate.”
“We have had enough of the fundamental disrespect and disregard, the violation and victimization in our region and in the U.S. of survivors,” Smith Shrimplin told a crowd that broke into applause.
The Numbers Continue To Go Up
So far in 2018, Women Helping Women says it served 5,939 survivors compared to a total of 5,792 in 2017. Smith Shrimplin says this is the new normal. This year a new team of volunteers, DVERT, is helping as they respond to calls with police and take survivors and their children to safe places.
Assistant Cincinnati Police Chief Michael John also spoke Thursday, citing numbers for the last three years. He says in 2015 there were 1,700 reports of gender-based violence; 1,800 in 2016; and 1,943 in 2017. Nine people died in 2017.
Gender-based violence on college campuses also continues to be a problem. Women Helping Women increased its services there by 60 percent.
At the Thursday breakfast, the organization also called for businesses to take on a greater role in identifying possible victims by participating in the program WorkStrong.
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as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
Disability profiles supported in our website
Epilepsy Safe Mode: this profile enables people with epilepsy to use the website safely by eliminating the risk of seizures that result from flashing or blinking animations and risky color combinations.
Visually Impaired Mode: this mode adjusts the website for the convenience of users with visual impairments such as Degrading Eyesight, Tunnel Vision, Cataract, Glaucoma, and others.
Cognitive Disability Mode: this mode provides different assistive options to help users with cognitive impairments such as Dyslexia, Autism, CVA, and others, to focus on the essential elements of the website more easily.
ADHD Friendly Mode: this mode helps users with ADHD and Neurodevelopmental disorders to read, browse, and focus on the main website elements more easily while significantly reducing distractions.
Blindness Mode: this mode configures the website to be compatible with screen-readers such as JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, and TalkBack. A screen-reader is software for blind users that is installed on a computer and smartphone, and websites must be compatible with it.
Keyboard Navigation Profile (Motor-Impaired): this profile enables motor-impaired persons to operate the website using the keyboard Tab, Shift+Tab, and the Enter keys. Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
Additional UI, design, and readability adjustments
Font adjustments – users, can increase and decrease its size, change its family (type), adjust the spacing, alignment, line height, and more.
Color adjustments – users can select various color contrast profiles such as light, dark, inverted, and monochrome. Additionally, users can swap color schemes of titles, texts, and backgrounds, with over seven different coloring options.
Animations – person with epilepsy can stop all running animations with the click of a button. Animations controlled by the interface include videos, GIFs, and CSS flashing transitions.
Content highlighting – users can choose to emphasize important elements such as links and titles. They can also choose to highlight focused or hovered elements only.
Audio muting – users with hearing devices may experience headaches or other issues due to automatic audio playing. This option lets users mute the entire website instantly.
Cognitive disorders – we utilize a search engine that is linked to Wikipedia and Wiktionary, allowing people with cognitive disorders to decipher meanings of phrases, initials, slang, and others.
Additional functions – we provide users the option to change cursor color and size, use a printing mode, enable a virtual keyboard, and many other functions.
Browser and assistive technology compatibility
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Notes, comments, and feedback
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to
