Icer Brakes has attempted to make its website accessible and useful for the greatest number of people, regardless of their personal or technological limitations.
For this reason, we have applied and complied with the Accessibility Guidelines or General Principles of Accessible Design established by the WAI Work Group (Web Accessibility Initiative) which is part of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).
What is accessibility?
Accessible websites are considered to be those that, including people with any type of accessibility, can be used correctly by the greatest number of users.
Why is it important to make websites accessible?
People, especially those with some type of disability, have difficulties using the Internet due to the many barriers that they encounter in websites and in the applications that they use: browsers, multimedia devices, screen readers, voice synthesizers, etc…
A few of the problems that users encounter when they visit websites include:
- Images without alternative text
- Absence of alternative text in image maps
- Incorrect use of the elements that structure a page
- Sounds that do not have subtitles or images without descriptions.
- Absence of alternatives for users with browsers that do not support frames, scripts, or applets.
- Tables that are not interpreted correctly when read linearly.
- Pages with poor colour contrast
Which users benefit from accessible pages?
The relationship between accessibility and disability is not direct. On one hand, not all disabilities affect access to the Internet (for example, a person who has problems with mobility), and on the other hand, there are problems that do complicate access and that are not considered disabilities (for example, difficulty reading small letters). Also, not all Internet users have updated versions of all possible programs and devices. It is possible to encounter users with:
- Devices such as voice translators, braille, no sound card or text-mode browsers.
- Difficulty to distinguish colours, or users with monochromatic systems.
- Vision problems that require the font size on a website to be increased.
- Photosensitive epilepsy.
- Outdated browsers or very new but not widely used browsers, or that have services disabled in the browser.
- Motor difficulties that make it impossible to interact with objects in movement.
- Displays with non-standard sizes (mobile phones, Palms, etc.).
- Cognitive difficulties.
In general, all Internet users benefit from accessible websites, because they are easy to use and do not generate any type of problem.
Who are the W3C and the WAI?
The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is a neutral entity that oversees the development of the Internet and its standards.
The WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) is an Accessibility workgroup created by the W3C.
In May 1999, this group published the Web Content Accessibility Directives, documentation that covers the accessibility directives to satisfy up to 3 different levels of conformance (Level A, priority 1, Level AA, priority 2, and Level AAA, priority 3). It also created checklists for the content of the directives and techniques in order to comply with the directives.
What do the accessibility guidelines consist of?
The Web Content Accessibility Directives are based on 14 general guidelines (which are then subdivided into 65 points), which are the general principles for making a design accessible.
These guidelines are aimed at web designers, people who verify accessibility of websites, and organisations that want to make their websites accessible or that are interested in allowing people with disabilities to access the information on their websites.
What accessibility level does this page have?
Our website complies with level AA.