Website accessibility is a priority.

Ongoing Efforts to Ensure Accessibility

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, IE is committed to ongoing efforts to implement best practices and deliver a website accessible to all.

We follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1 as our guiding principle for determining accessibility. These internationally agreed-upon standards cover a wide range of recommendations and best practices for making content 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, 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

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

• 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 different interactive elements on a webpage and aligns with 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.
• 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 with 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 Divi 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 convey interactive element behavior. ARIA attributes supplement standard HTML when elements don’t fully describe their functionality. By ensuring your site has proper ARIA support, you can improve its accessibility so users with disabilities can effectively navigate and interact with its content, features, and functionality. Enabling this setting adds appropriate ARIA attributes to various Divi elements and modules.

• Set Icons As ARIA Hidden: Set icons to ARIA-hidden to indicate that certain icons on a web page should be hidden from assistive technologies, such as screen readers. This attribute is particularly useful when icons are used purely for decoration and don’t convey meaningful information to users who rely 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 visually distinguishing hyperlinks from regular text by underlining them. This is important for creating a more inclusive and user-friendly experience for individuals with disabilities, particularly those who rely on assistive technologies like screen readers to navigate and understand web pages. Underlining links serve as a clear and consistent indicator to users 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, who may have difficulty distinguishing links solely by color or other visual cues. Enabling this setting adds an underline to all links in the website content. We do offer the following exceptions:
  • Exclude Underlines In Heading – Enabling this setting prevents underlines from being added to links within the heading text.
  • Exclude Underlines In Buttons – Enabling this setting prevents underlines from being added to Divi Button modules.
  • Exclude Underlines In Menus – Enabling this setting prevents underlines from being added to Divi Menu modules.
• Add Skip Navigation Link Option: A skip navigation link is a crucial accessibility feature in web design that allows users to bypass repetitive content, such as navigation menus, and quickly jump to a webpage’s main content. These links are particularly useful for keyboard and assistive technology users, as they help them navigate web pages efficiently without having to tab through every menu item. Enabling this setting adds the option for users to skip the Divi navigation menu links when using keyboard navigation and go straight to the main content area.
  • Hide Link For Non-Screen Readers – Enabling this setting hides the skip navigation link for non-screen readers, ensuring usability for those who do not require it.

• Fix Duplicate Menu IDs – Because our theme uses the same menu for both the primary and mobile menus, unique IDs are duplicated, causing validation errors. 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 such as screen readers, from effectively navigating and understanding the content. Enabling this setting prevents WordPress from automatically assigning unique IDs to the menu items.
• Enable Dropdown Menu Keyboard Navigation: By default, the menu dropdown menus (we are not using any at this time) might not open or be easily navigable with the keyboard. This provides a very poor experience for users who rely on keyboard navigation to interact with and navigate dropdown menus. Keyboard navigation support for Divi dropdown menus enhances accessibility and usability, aligns with web accessibility guidelines, and promotes a more inclusive web experience for all users. Enabling this feature opens the Menu dropdown menus and allows them to 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 applied to elements such as webpage labels to improve how they 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 such as menu items in navigation menus and buttons in slider controls provide context to users who rely on assistive technologies. Unfortunately, Divi’s built-in screen reader classes sometimes use display: none; to hide elements from the visual display. This can create accessibility challenges. Our goal is to identify and address these instances and ensure 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 Divi and reverse incorrectly applied display: none; properties.
• Enable Browser Pinch And Zoom: By default, Divi disables pinch-to-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 those with visual impairments, low vision, or other disabilities who may rely on it to make content more readable. Enabling this setting allows pinch-to-zoom 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 hard 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)
• YouTube videos from our Client Stories will include either captions or transcripts

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 make everyone’s experience at IE a welcoming and enjoyable one. 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 IE website may pass online testing, it is not fully compliant with WCAG 2.1 Level AA until we can arrange live user testing and complete verification.  We hope to accomplish this in the future, especially if we are fortunate to secure a willing site visitor to volunteer.

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 developer. We will do our best to both assist you and resolve identified issues.