Privacy & Accessibility
What this site collects, what happens to anything you send us, and how to tell us if something here is hard to use.
There are no cookies on this site. No analytics, no advertising tags, no session tracking, and nothing saved in your browser. We cannot tell who you are, what you read, or how long you stayed. The one form on this site is the mailing list signup, and it only does what it says — described below.
This costs us something, and it is worth being straight about it: without analytics MAPS cannot tell you how many people used the Resource Hub or which pages mattered most. Year-one results are measured from work MAPS actually did, voluntary de-identified feedback, anonymous polls and plain server totals instead. We think that is the right trade for a workforce whose core risk is being identified.
Two things are worth knowing anyway, because they are true of almost every website and we would rather say them than let you assume otherwise:
- Fonts. The typefaces load from Google’s font service. That means Google’s servers see your IP address when a page loads. We do not receive that information.
- Server logs. Our host keeps ordinary web-server records, which include IP addresses, for a short period for security and reliability. We do not use them to build any picture of a visitor.
Email, and what we do with it.
Email is the only way to reach MAPS right now. If you write to admin@mdpeeradvocate.org, your message and address are read by the people organizing MAPS and nobody else.
- We do not add you to any list because you wrote to us.
- We do not share your message with an employer, a funder, or a partner organization.
- Messages are deleted automatically about six months after they arrive. That is the same schedule the workforce survey runs on. It happens on its own — you do not have to ask, and we do not have to remember.
- You can also ask us to delete your messages sooner. Write to the same address and say so.
The mailing list
If you join the mailing list, we store the name, email, role and county you give us, in a spreadsheet only the people organizing MAPS can open.
- We use it to send MAPS updates. Nothing else.
- We do not share it, sell it, or pass it to any advertising service.
- Your address is kept until you unsubscribe — not six months. Deleting it on a timer would just mean asking you to opt in again. Ask us to remove you and we will, and we keep a note that you opted out so you are not added back by mistake.
Email is not a secure channel and it is not anonymous. If you are worried about being identified, the workforce survey below is the safer route.
The workforce survey.
The Workforce Needs Assessment is run separately and has its own protections, set out in full before you answer anything:
- You can skip any question and stop at any point.
- Answers are not used to identify you.
- Answers are deleted about six months after they arrive.
- Only counts and themes are published — never anything that identifies a person.
- Contact details at the end are optional, and are deleted on the same schedule.
No survey answer goes to any employer, and nothing in it starts an investigation of anyone.
What we cannot promise.
MAPS services have not started yet. When they do, MAPS will hold records about the concerns people bring to it. You should know the limits now rather than later.
- There is no legal privilege. Talking to MAPS is not like talking to a lawyer or a doctor. A court can order records to be handed over, and MAPS would have to comply.
- Safety comes first. If someone is in immediate danger, or the law requires a report, we act on that.
- Nothing is escalated without you. Outside those limits, MAPS does not take a concern anywhere without your agreement.
Before individual services begin, MAPS will publish a written schedule for how long records are kept and when they are destroyed, and will explain these limits to anyone before they share anything sensitive.
Built to be usable.
This site aims to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. That is the standard most public bodies in the United States work to. What that means in practice:
- Text and background colours are checked for contrast, including where text sits over a photograph.
- Everything works with a keyboard alone, and the focus outline is always visible.
- Buttons and links are large enough to hit on a phone.
- Content is readable when zoomed, and the layout does not force sideways scrolling.
- Animation is switched off for anyone whose device asks for reduced motion.
- With JavaScript turned off, the whole site still works as a plain document.
We test this and we still expect to miss things. If any part of this site is hard to use, please tell us at admin@mdpeeradvocate.org — say which page and what happened, and we will fix it and reply.
The site is in English only for now. The Baltimore pilot is where we learn what language access the workforce actually needs, and we will say what we plan to do about it once the needs assessment reports.
Questions about any of this?
Ask us. We would rather answer than have you guess.
This page describes how MAPS operates today, while services have not yet begun. It will be revised before individual services start.
