These Terms of Service (“Terms”) are an agreement between you and Base22, LLC (“Ockem,” “we,” “us”), which offers the websites, products, and services described here under the Ockem name — including ockem.com, proof.ockem.com, Ockem Proof, and any related early-access programs such as Ockem Read and Ockem Audit (together, the “Services”). By using the Services, you agree to these Terms. If you are using the Services on behalf of an organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that organization, and “you” refers to it.
1. The Services
Ockem Proof runs automated accessibility checks on PDF documents, remediates them, and issues a certificate recording the checks each document passed and the attestations made for it (see section 6). Some capabilities are offered free — a free trial, a free assessment, or a free evaluation — and others are paid, including prepaid document packs and done-for-you remediation services. We may change, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Services, and may impose limits on free offerings (for example, the number of documents, pages, or submissions per person) at any time.
2. Accounts and eligibility
You must be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract to use the Services. Where an account is required, you are responsible for the accuracy of the information you provide, for safeguarding your credentials, and for all activity under your account. Notify us promptly at info@ockem.com if you suspect unauthorized use.
3. Your documents
You retain all rights to documents you submit to the Services. You grant Ockem a limited, non-exclusive license to host, process, analyze, remediate, and transmit those documents to provide the Services to you, and to use them to improve our models only as this section allows. You represent that you have the necessary rights to the documents you submit and that they do not contain content you are prohibited from sharing with us. Files submitted through the free trial are automatically deleted within 30 days, and a free evaluation workspace is kept or deleted as described below; see our Privacy Policy for details on storage and retention.
Improving our models — off unless you turn it on. Separately from providing the Services to you, we use the documents processed in your workspace, and the corrections made to them, to train and evaluate our models only while your workspace’s training setting is on, or where it is a condition of a free evaluation (below). The setting is off for every workspace unless an administrator of that workspace turns it on, and each change is recorded in the workspace’s audit log. While it is on, we use each document’s structure tree (the tags describing its headings, lists, tables, figures and reading order), renders of its pages, the differences between one version of the document and the next, and the review decisions your team recorded. We use them only to train and evaluate our own accessibility models. We do not sell them, we do not share them with other customers, and we do not give them to any third party to train that party’s own models. An administrator can turn the setting off at any time in workspace settings, except during a free evaluation. Turning it off stops future use; it does not remove material already used before it was turned off. Files submitted through the free trial are never used for training. The diagnostic records we keep to operate and fix the Services, and the processing we perform to provide them to you, continue whether the setting is on or off.
Free evaluations. We may, at our discretion, provide your organization with a free evaluation of Ockem Proof: a dedicated workspace with an agreed number of free documents for an agreed period, followed by a read-only period (30 days, unless your evaluation offer states otherwise) in which the workspace can be read and downloaded but no documents can be added or certified. Documents certified during the evaluation carry the same certificate as a purchased document and are yours to keep.
- The condition. Training use is a condition of a free evaluation. You agree that we may use the documents processed in the evaluation workspace, and the corrections made to them, to train and evaluate our own accessibility models, on the terms in the paragraph above. The condition is accepted on your organization’s behalf by an administrator of the workspace before the workspace opens, or in a written agreement with us made before the workspace was set up. Until it is accepted, the workspace does not open to your members and the training setting stays off. We record who accepted it and when.
- While the evaluation runs, including the read-only period, the training setting stays on and cannot be turned off in the workspace. You may end the evaluation at any time, in the workspace’s settings or by telling us; ending it stops future use from that point, as turning the setting off does. An evaluation you end stays read-only unless you purchase.
- If you purchase, the workspace becomes an ordinary paid workspace and keeps its documents. The training setting stays on until an administrator turns it off, which they may then do at any time.
- If you do not purchase before the read-only period ends, the workspace and its contents are scheduled for deletion as described in our Privacy Policy, and are no longer used for training from that point.
4. Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- use the Services in violation of applicable law or third-party rights;
- probe, scan, disrupt, or overload the Services, or attempt to access data that is not yours;
- circumvent usage limits on free offerings, including by creating multiple identities;
- resell or provide the Services to third parties as your own service without our written agreement;
- submit malware or content designed to interfere with the Services.
5. Fees and payment
Paid offerings are billed at the prices displayed at the time of purchase or as set out in an order or statement of work agreed with us. Unless expressly stated otherwise, fees are exclusive of taxes, and you are responsible for any applicable taxes other than taxes on our income. Certificates and remediated deliverables for paid work are released upon payment as described at purchase.
Prepaid documents do not expire. A document you have purchased remains in your balance indefinitely, whether or not it is ever used.
Refunds. Documents on which no remediation work has ever been started are refundable within 30 days of purchase, for any reason — contact support and we refund the untouched portion to the original payment method. Once work has started on a document it is no longer refundable, but it never expires: that document stays in your balance and may be applied at its purchase value against an Ockem Assured or Managed Compliance invoice. Documents already consumed by certification are not refundable, because the deliverable has been produced and released. After 30 days, purchased documents are non-refundable and remain yours to use.
How a partial refund is calculated. When we refund part of a pack, the documents you have already consumed are charged at the published rate for the largest pack that quantity would have completely filled — ten consumed documents at the ten-document rate, three at the single-document rate — and we refund the remainder of what you paid. The bundle discount belongs to buyers who use the bundle.
6. Certificates and compliance disclaimers
An Ockem Proof certificate records, for one specific version of a document, the results of the automated checks we ran against it, mapped to WCAG 2.1 AA, any remediation performed, and the attestations made for the criteria that need human judgment (below). A certificate is a record of the checks a document passed and the attestations it carries — it is not legal advice and not a guarantee that a document complies with any law or regulation (including the ADA, Section 508, Section 504, or the European Accessibility Act), nor a guarantee that no accessibility claim will be made against you. It does not describe any other version of the file: editing or republishing the document ends the correspondence between the certificate and the file. Automated checks do not replace a full manual audit for complex documents. You are responsible for your own legal compliance obligations.
Your attestations. Some accessibility criteria cannot be decided by a machine — for example, whether the reading order makes sense, whether alternative text describes its image, or whether text shown in an image is also available as text. Where the Services ask a person to confirm one of those criteria, that confirmation (an “attestation”) is your statement, made on your organization’s behalf by the person who records it, that they have looked at what the check describes and that, in their judgment, the document meets it. Where a separate agreement has our experts complete those criteria for you (for example, Ockem Assured), that agreement says who attests and on what basis.
- Before anyone attests. Before a person can record their first attestation, the Services show them the Ockem Proof Attestation Statement and record their acceptance of it, with the date. We may update that statement and ask for acceptance again before the next attestation.
- What we record. We record each attestation against the identity of the person who made it and the exact version of the file they were shown. The certificate names your organization as the attesting party and cites the version of the Attestation Statement the attesters accepted where we can show it. It keeps the individual’s identity on file under the certificate’s ID rather than printing it, unless an administrator of your organization chooses to have attesters named on your certificates.
- We rely on attestations; we do not review them. We issue certificates in reliance on your attestations without independently reviewing them, and the certificate says so. You are responsible for their accuracy, and for which members of your workspace you allow to make them.
- An attestation is required, and only a person can give one. A document with an unattested human-judgment criterion is not certified. Suggestions or assessments produced by our models are drafts presented for your review; they are never recorded as an attestation and never count toward certification on their own. An attestation does not clear a failed automated check — that failure must be fixed and re-verified.
- Attestations belong to a file version. An attestation covers the version it was made on. If the file changes, criteria may need to be attested again before that version can be certified.
Standing instructions. Some settings in your workspace are standing instructions: an administrator of your organization gives them once, and we act on them for every document they cover until an administrator withdraws them. Changes to them are recorded in your workspace’s audit log with the name of the administrator and the date.
- Automatic certificate issuance is off unless an administrator turns it on. While it is on, when the current version of a document passes every automated check and has no human-judgment criterion left open — because none applies to it, or because your attesters have already attested every one — we certify that document as soon as our check finishes, without a person approving it. Certifying it consumes a document from your balance and makes the remediated file and certificate available, exactly as a person’s approval would. Any review or sign-off requirement you configure in your workspace still applies and prevents automatic issuance the same way it prevents a person’s approval. A certificate issued this way states that it was issued automatically under your organization’s standing instruction. While the setting is off, those documents wait for a person in your organization to approve them.
- Automated remediation. Your workspace’s remediation settings say, for each kind of automated change, whether we apply it automatically, ask a person before applying it, prepare it as a draft for your review, or do not make it. Changes of a kind set to apply automatically are written into your document without a person reviewing each one. Where an administrator has recorded those settings, the certificate names that administrator and the date. Text our models write under an automatic setting is not an attestation: our automated checks can confirm, for example, that alternative text is present, but not that it accurately describes its image.
- Withdrawal. An administrator may withdraw either instruction at any time in workspace settings. Withdrawal applies to what happens next: it does not withdraw a certificate already issued or undo a change already made.
- Your instruction, your responsibility. A certificate issued under a standing instruction is issued at your organization’s direction and on the same basis as any other certificate described in this section. You are responsible for deciding whether a standing instruction is appropriate for your documents.
7. Intellectual property
The Services — including software, checks, scoring methodology, certificates’ format, site content, and trademarks — are owned by Ockem or its licensors and are protected by intellectual-property laws. Except for the limited right to use the Services under these Terms, no rights are granted to you. If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them without restriction or obligation to you.
8. Confidentiality
If we enter into a separate agreement with confidentiality terms (for example, for done-for-you services), that agreement controls. Otherwise, each party will use reasonable care to protect non-public information received from the other and use it only in connection with the Services.
9. Warranty disclaimer
The Services are provided “as is” and “as available.” To the maximum extent permitted by law, Ockem disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement, and does not warrant that the Services will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that automated checks will identify every accessibility issue in a document.
10. Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law: (a) neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, or data; and (b) Ockem’s total liability arising out of or relating to the Services will not exceed the amounts you paid to Ockem for the Services in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim. These limits do not apply where they cannot be limited by law.
11. Indemnification
You will defend and indemnify Ockem against claims arising from documents or content you submit, your use of the Services in violation of these Terms, or your violation of applicable law.
12. Termination
You may stop using the Services at any time. We may suspend or terminate your access if you materially breach these Terms, if required by law, or if we discontinue the Services. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including Sections 6–11) survive.
13. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. The “Last updated” date above reflects the current version, and material changes will be posted on this page. Continued use of the Services after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.
14. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, USA, excluding its conflict-of-laws rules, and any dispute will be resolved in the state or federal courts located in Texas, whose jurisdiction both parties accept.
15. Contact
Questions about these Terms: info@ockem.com, or through the contact form.