Acceptable Use Policy

Conduct and content standards that apply when using TheAccessible.org, and how we enforce them.

Version
1.0
Published
April 21, 2026
Next review
April 21, 2027
Approved by
Larry Anglin

1. Scope

This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") applies to everyone who uses the Service, including end users, administrators, and anyone acting on their behalf. It is incorporated into the Terms of Service by reference. A violation of this AUP is a material breach of the Terms.

We apply the AUP to the content you submit and to how you use the Service — not to your views or opinions.

2. You must not use the Service to

2.1 Violate laws or third-party rights

  • Upload or process content you do not have the right to process.
  • Infringe copyright, trademark, trade secret, patent, or publicity rights. Copyright complaints are handled under our DMCA Policy.
  • Violate privacy or data-protection laws — including submitting another person's personal information without a lawful basis.
  • Violate export controls, sanctions, or anti-money-laundering laws.

2.2 Distribute prohibited content

  • Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) or any content that sexualizes a minor. We report CSAM to the U.S. National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and cooperate with law-enforcement investigations.
  • Content that incites violence, promotes terrorism, or solicits the serious harm of a specific person or group.
  • Malware, ransomware, exploit code intended to cause harm, or content designed to phish or defraud.
  • Credentials, tokens, or API keys stolen from third parties.
  • Content that violates the privacy of another person, such as non-consensual intimate imagery or doxxing.
  • Content designed to harass, threaten, or stalk an individual.

2.3 Abuse the Service itself

  • Reverse engineer, decompile, or probe the Service for vulnerabilities outside the scope of our Vulnerability Disclosure Policy.
  • Circumvent rate limits, quotas, plan boundaries, authentication, or access controls.
  • Use the Service to launch attacks against third parties — spam, credential-stuffing, brute-force, denial-of-service, scraping at scale, etc.
  • Share, resell, or sublicense your account credentials except where we explicitly offer team features for that purpose.
  • Submit content designed to manipulate or poison AI models we use internally (e.g., prompt-injection attacks intended to cause harm).
  • Run the Service as a general-purpose compute or storage platform unrelated to its document-accessibility purpose.

2.4 Interfere with other users

  • Impersonate another person or falsely claim affiliation with a person or organization.
  • Collect personal information about other users of the Service without their consent.
  • Interfere with another user's use of the Service.

3. Bring-your-own-content responsibilities

You are responsible for content you submit. Specifically:

  • You represent that you have the rights needed to submit it.
  • You understand that we process it according to our Privacy Policy, including routing it to AI providers under the conditions in our AI & ML Disclosure, unless you have opted out of AI features.
  • You understand that documents containing personal data carry responsibilities under data-protection law; it is your job to have a lawful basis for processing that data through the Service.

4. Automated use

Automated access through our public API is permitted and encouraged. When automating:

  • Honor rate limits and quotas.
  • Set a meaningful User-Agent that identifies your application.
  • Handle errors gracefully; do not retry failed requests in tight loops.
  • Do not attempt to bypass rate limits by distributing requests across many accounts.

5. Bulk processing

If you expect to submit very large volumes of content, contact sales@theaccessible.org in advance. We are happy to accommodate legitimate bulk use, but unannounced bulk activity can look like abuse and may be rate-limited automatically.

6. Enforcement

We may, at our sole discretion:

  • Warn you and ask for correction.
  • Remove or disable specific content.
  • Throttle or rate-limit your account.
  • Suspend your account, temporarily or indefinitely.
  • Terminate your account for material or repeated violations.
  • Report content to law enforcement where we believe a law has been broken or a person is in danger.

We try to give notice and a chance to cure before suspension or termination, but we may act immediately if the circumstances require it — for example, CSAM, active attacks on other users, or significant legal risk to us or third parties.

7. Reporting violations

If you believe someone is using the Service in violation of this AUP:

Please include the URL, account, or content in question and a brief description of the concern. We do not disclose the identity of reporters in most cases.

8. Appeals

If we take action against your account and you believe we are mistaken, email support@theaccessible.org with the subject line "AUP appeal" and the account email. A second person — not the one who made the original decision — reviews appeals. We aim to respond within 5 business days.

9. Changes

We will update this AUP as the Service and the legal landscape evolve. The effective date appears at the top of this page. For material changes we give at least 30 days' advance notice per our Privacy Policy §14. Prior versions remain available from the version history link below.

10. Contact