Accessibility

Lowell Five is committed to accessibility for our website users.  We believe that all guests should be able to view lowellfive.com easily online or on a smartphone to find the information and support needed.  Whether you’re using assistive technologies like a screen reader, a magnifier, voice recognition software, or switch technology, our goal is to assure lowellfive.com is easy to use and delivers the service you need.

Guidelines

This website is built to and tested against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 AA.  The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA are recognized and acknowledged as a leading standard measure of accessibility for websites. Though the website was built to the WCAG 2.0 AA standard, we recognize that websites are constantly updated and evolving.  The team at Lowell Five will work to maintain and improve compliance over time.

Verification

The LowellFive.com website accessibility was built and verified through several means identified below.

1. Site Structure — The site uses appropriate headings, lists, paragraphs, and other formatting features so that guests can easily use the site with assistive technology.
2. Text Equivalents — People who either can’t see images or hear audio may need some form of text equivalent to interact with our sites. We’re working to ensure all of our images and multimedia are fully accessible through alternative text, captions, and transcripts.
3. Non-Text Equivalents — A text description of all non-text equivalent content is available.
4. Full Keyboard Access — Everything we build can be accessed using a keyboard.
5. Site Consistency — We’re consistent in the way we build our sites and apps so that once you understand how our menus and pages work, you can count on our sites to be consistent and function the same way every time you interact with them.
6. Other Areas —

1. 1. Ease of use: The site was built to provide the best ease of use for people using assistive technologies. (e.g “Skip to Content”, “Roles/Landmarks”).
   2. Enhancing assistive technologies use: Elements of the site which function in a decorative manner are hidden so only pertinent content is seen by assistive technologies.

7. Verification: The website was tested for WCAG AA standards by using the following tools and methods.

1. 1. All static pages validate to WC3 HTML5 standards.
   2. The Wave accessibility evaluation tool. https://wave.webaim.org/
   3. Google Chrome accessibility audit
   4. Review of the site with JAWS screen reader http://www.freedomscientific.com/products/software/jaws/
   5. Manual testing supplemented software validation via Mac OS screen reader/voiceover.

We recognize that standards change quickly and issues can come up within a site. If issues are identified with the current website accessibility, please contact us and we will work to address the issue.