“Your best days are ahead of you. The movie starts when the guy gets sober and puts his life back together; it doesn't end there” - Bucky Sinister
Why are we writing a post about sober apparel?
Let me ask you a better question: why not?
Getting sober has been the biggest awakening in my entire life; not because I have refrained from Jell-O wrestling, frequent blackouts, and crying while watching How I Met Your Mother because I wanted friends…
Rather, I finally became a part of something bigger than myself! Having a sense of community and essentially ‘belonging’ to a community was what I longed for my entire life.
When I left rush-week at UCLA without a bid from any sorority, I was completely devastated. Why? Because I wanted to be a part of a community!
When I lost the elections for freshman school president in high school, I was devastated. Why? Because I wanted to be a part of the activities community!
All of my major depressions in life can be directly associated with my feelings of loneliness and need for true companionship.
When I got sober, it was kind of like I had ‘automatic friends’! I was projected into this community of people who loved me and wanted what was best for me: sobriety.
If I could say one thing to the world, it would be: “Sobriety isn’t just a way of life for alcoholics and addicts; it can change anyone’s life!”
These 5 sober and mental health apparel brands focus on eliminating the stigma around sobriety, alcoholism, mental health, and addiction. They have started a movement, which is dedicated to changing people’s perception of addiction and mental health, opening up the door to not just suffering alcoholics and addicts but all people who suffer. They say: “Come and join us! This way of life is kick-butt and we want everyone to know about it.”
I say, let’s go for it! Join a movement, and feel a sense of community with not only your close sobriety friends but also with the entire world.
Party Sober is less about the clothing and more about a lifestyle.
Every time you turn on the TV, you are swamped with beer and vodka commercials. The actors in these commercials are never drinking alone, with no lights on, crying themselves to sleep (like I was); generally, they’re with their friends at the beach or at a bar, laughing and smiling like it’s no big deal.
You see, there is a glorification of alcohol in society, and that’s exactly why Party Sober established a brand around “(of) people who want to exemplify a better life for themselves and for others.”
Their motto: Stand proud. Stand sober.
Example Clothing
All of their apparel is tagged with sober humor or slogans. Other shirts say things like: “Never Hungover,” or “Drugs Aren’t Cool,” etc. You get the gist; basically, they have awesome apparel for the sober community.
In simple terms: breaking the stigma of alcoholism and addiction.
New Lyfe believes (accurately) that they are a clothing line of fighters; all of us have a unique and equally miserable story to share with the world. Let’s be honest, we wouldn’t have stopped drinking or using if things were running fabulously…
Unfortunately, alcoholism and addiction are looked down on, as a ‘poor life choice’ or a ‘weakness,’ which is not at all the case. We are fighters, dangit!
This really passionate lifestyle brand believes in strength, confidence, independence, and helping one another… Essentially, the four pillars of their company.
Let’s break the stigma!
break the stigma
Example Clothing
These shirts manage to look completely awesome and powerful at the same time. It’s not just a recommendation to check out this brand, it is more of a suggestion…
Doing it sober has unique designs from Daniella’s spiritual journey in Recovery. T-Shirts that make her think and represent her love for the “Sober Warrior” in all of us, doing the deal to treat the disease of Alcoholism and Addiction. Tank tops with quotes and sayings used to help get us through 24 hours a day, ONE DAY AT A TIME.
This mode 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
Improves website's visuals
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
Helps to focus on specific content
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
Reduces distractions and improve focus
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
Allows using the site with your screen-reader
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.
Online Dictionary
Readable Experience
Content Scaling
Default
Text Magnifier
Readable Font
Dyslexia Friendly
Highlight Titles
Highlight Links
Font Sizing
Default
Line Height
Default
Letter Spacing
Default
Left Aligned
Center Aligned
Right Aligned
Visually Pleasing Experience
Dark Contrast
Light Contrast
Monochrome
High Contrast
High Saturation
Low Saturation
Adjust Text Colors
Adjust Title Colors
Adjust Background Colors
Easy Orientation
Mute Sounds
Hide Images
Virtual Keyboard
Reading Guide
Stop Animations
Reading Mask
Highlight Hover
Highlight Focus
Big Dark Cursor
Big Light Cursor
Navigation Keys
Accessibility Statement
www.newmethodwellness.com
June 5, 2023
Compliance status
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email juanita@newmethodwellness.com
Screen-reader and keyboard navigation
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on 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 of 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 7 different coloring options.
Animations – epileptic users 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), both for Windows and for MAC users.
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 juanita@newmethodwellness.com
