Accessibility

Our Commitment to Accessibility

Waterloo Cabins (watercabins.com) is committed to providing a fully accessible website experience for all users, regardless of ability, including those who rely on assistive technologies such as screen readers, screen enlargement software, and alternative keyboard input devices to navigate the web.

Building an accessible website that meets all ADA Compliance requirements is difficult and expensive, as there is no “one” solution that makes a website comply with WCAG 2.1 standards.  However, Waterloo Cabins is committed to an ongoing effort to implement best practices and deliver a website that is accessible to all.

Ongoing Efforts to Ensure Accessibility

We follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1  as our guiding principle for determining accessibility. These internationally agreed-upon standards encompass a wide range of recommendations and best practices for making content accessible and usable. As we add new pages and functionality to our website, all designs, code, and content entry practices are checked against these standards.

Website accessibility is an ongoing process. We continually test content and features for WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance and remediate any issues to ensure we meet or exceed the standards. Our developer tests our website using industry-standard tools, including several WordPress plugin tools to assist in flagging accessibility issues. These tools also include the WebAIM WAVE – Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool, color contrast analyzers, keyboard-only navigation techniques, and Flesch-Kincaid readability tests.

Accessibility Features On Our Website

The following is a list of items we have included on our website to improve its
accessibility:

• Provide a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 for foreground/background elements
• Ensure content is structured with properly nested headings to make sense in screen readers or other devices
• Work hard to follow best practices for ARIA elements
• Provide ALT text for all non-decorative images
• Decorative images that are not critical for understanding content use either “decorative” or no ALT text.

We are using a new tool that provides the following from within our website theme:

• Add Focusable Support to Modules: The term “focusable” in website accessibility refers to elements on a webpage that can be selected using the keyboard’s “Tab” key. This is crucial for enabling users to interact with and navigate through various interactive elements on a webpage, aligning with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to create more inclusive web content. Enabling this setting adds support for focusable elements in Divi modules, allowing them to be navigated with the keyboard. This feature currently applies to both the Toggle and Accordion modules. Pressing the Enter key will either expand or collapse the toggles when they are in focus.
• Add Keyboard Navigation Outline to Focused Elements: A focused element’s outline refers to a visible indication or highlighting applied to an element on a webpage when it receives keyboard focus. When a user interacts with a webpage using their keyboard to navigate through different interactive elements by pressing the “Tab” key, the currently focused element should be visually distinguishable from other elements. This practice is fundamental for web accessibility, ensuring that users with disabilities, particularly those who rely on keyboard navigation or screen readers, can accurately track their position within the interface. Enabling this setting will add a keyboard navigation outline to focused elements.  Presently, the keyboard navigation focus outline is “red.”
• Add ARIA Support to Theme Module Elements: ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) support involves adding attributes to HTML elements to improve web accessibility for people with disabilities. These attributes provide additional information to assistive technologies, such as screen readers, to help convey the behavior of interactive elements. ARIA attributes supplement standard HTML when elements don’t fully describe their functionality. By ensuring your site has proper ARIA support, you can enhance the accessibility of your website, allowing users with disabilities to navigate and interact with the content, features, and functionality effectively. Enabling this setting will add appropriate ARIA attributes across various theme elements and modules.
• Set Icons As ARIA Hidden: Setting icons as ARIA hidden to indicate that specific icons within a web page should be hidden from assistive technologies, such as screen readers. This attribute is beneficial when icons are used for purely decorative purposes and don’t convey meaningful information to users relying on assistive technologies. This helps create a more accessible web experience for users with disabilities while still maintaining the intended design aesthetics. Enabling this setting adds the “aria-hidden” attribute to icons.
• Underline All Links: Underlining links in web accessibility refers to using underlines to visually differentiate and highlight hyperlinks from regular text within web content. This is crucial for creating a more inclusive and user-friendly experience for individuals with disabilities, particularly those who rely on assistive technologies, such as screen readers, to navigate and understand web pages. Underlined links provide users a clear and consistent indicator that certain text or elements are interactive and lead to another page or resource when clicked. This is especially valuable for users with visual impairments or color blindness, as they may have difficulty distinguishing links solely based on color or other visual cues. Enabling this setting will add an underline to all links within the website content. We do offer the following exceptions:
  • Exclude Underlines In Heading –  Enabling this setting will ignore adding underlines to links within the heading text.
  • Exclude Underlines In Buttons –  Enabling this setting will ignore adding underlines to the theme Button modules.
  • Exclude Underlines In Menus – Enabling this setting will ignore adding underlines to theme menu modules, with the exception of those in the footer section of the website.
• Add Skip Navigation Link Option: A skip navigation link is a crucial accessibility feature in web design that enables users to bypass repetitive content, such as navigation menus, and quickly access the main content of a webpage. These links are especially useful for keyboard users and those using assistive technology, as they help them navigate web pages efficiently without having to tab through every menu item. Enabling this setting allows users to skip over the theme navigation menu links when using keyboard navigation and proceed directly to the main content area.
• Hide Link For Non-Screen Readers – Enabling this setting will hide the skip navigation link for non-screen readers, ensuring usability for those who do not require this feature.
• Fix Duplicate Menu IDs – Due to the theme’s usage of the same menu for both the primary and mobile menus, a situation arises where unique IDs are duplicated, leading to validation problems. Duplicated IDs are problematic for web accessibility primarily because they violate the fundamental rule that HTML IDs must be unique within a web page. When IDs are duplicated, it can lead to a range of accessibility issues that hinder users, particularly those who rely on assistive technologies like screen readers, from navigating and understanding the content effectively. Enabling this setting prevents WordPress from automatically assigning unique IDs to the menu items.
• Enable Dropdown Menu Keyboard Navigation: By default, the theme’s dropdown menus might not open or be easily navigable using the keyboard. This provides a very poor experience for users who rely on keyboard navigation to effectively interact with and navigate through the dropdown menus. Keyboard navigation support for theme dropdown menus enhances the accessibility and usability of the menus, aligns with web accessibility guidelines, and promotes a more inclusive web experience for all users. Enabling this feature enables the theme’s Menu dropdown menus to open and be easily navigated using the keyboard.
• Add and Improve Screen Reader Classes and Roles: A screen reader class is a specific CSS class used to enhance the accessibility of web content, particularly for users who rely on screen readers. These classes are often added to elements, such as labels within a webpage, to enhance how these elements are presented and interpreted by screen readers. Additionally, assigning appropriate ARIA roles to HTML elements helps define their function for assistive technologies. For example, roles like menu items in navigation menus and buttons in slider controls provide context to users relying on assistive technologies. Unfortunately, the theme’s built-in screen reader classes sometimes use the display: none; property, which hides elements from the visual display. This can create accessibility challenges. Our goal is to identify and address these instances, ensuring your website content is properly exposed to screen readers. Enabling this setting will add screen reader classes and roles to various labels and elements throughout the theme and reverse incorrectly applied display: none; properties.
• Enable Browser Pinch and Zoom: By default, the theme disables the ability to pinch and zoom on mobile. However, browser zoom plays a significant role in web accessibility by ensuring that digital content is usable and legible for a wide range of users, including users with visual impairments, low vision, or other disabilities who may rely on browser zoom to make content more readable. Enabling this setting allows you to pinch and zoom the screen on mobile devices.

Where We’re Improving

In the spirit of a commitment to continuous improvement and our ongoing efforts to provide an ADA-compliant website, we are targeting the following areas:

• Consistent monitoring for errors or warnings as content changes
• Work diligently to resolve any confusion caused by redundant links or repetitive alt text.  These do not display as errors, but we will continue to follow ways to improve the structure.
• Accessible PDF files (if used)
• Accessible videos IF narration is ever included in the future.

Known problems with active work to resolve.

TBD – this initial site will be modified in future iterations with expanded content. This is part of our broader effort to ensure that everyone’s experience at Waterloo Woods Cabin Retreat is welcoming and enjoyable. Please note that while we make every effort to provide information accessible to all users, we cannot guarantee the accessibility of third-party websites to which we may link.

Finally, we know that while the Waterloo Woods Cabin Retreat website may pass online testing, it is not fully compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA until we can arrange for live user testing and complete verification.  We hope to accomplish this in the future.

Accessibility Support Contact

We welcome comments, questions, and feedback on our website. If you use assistive technologies and have difficulty using our website, please contact us and we’ll reach out to our development team. We will do our best to both assist you and resolve identified issues as practicable.

Last updated:  November 2025