Accessibility Policy

We are committed to making our website accessible to everyone!

Although the 1998 Amendment to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 in the USA established legal obligations and requirements specifically for US Federal Agencies, we followed the same guidelines and requirements for the design and development of this website. Additionally this website was designed and developed with the aim of achieving "Triple-A" (the highest level) compliance with the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which are an important part of the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

Does that mean that this website is perfectly accessible to everyone? Unfortunately not, but we are working on the parts that we can control and influence. There are a number of other factors including the technical limitations of operating systems, browser software and assistive technologies for people with accessibility issues, which are all out of our control.

We welcome feedback and constructive criticism from visitors with and without accessibility issues. Should you experience any accessibility problems while visiting this website we would be very grateful if you could send us an e-mail with details of exactly what the problem was so that we can address it and make appropriate changes if necessary.

Images (Photographs)

The vast majority of visitors really want to see exactly what the villas look like, inside and out. For that reason this website uses photographs extensively. However, every single image on this website (with the exception of purely decorative background images) also includes "alternate text" to describe its function for those who cannot see it i.e. that it's a photograph and exactly what it's a photogaph of. Also there are extensive, textual descriptions of the villas on the same pages, which should hopefully enable visitors who cannot see the photographs to be able to "picture" the villas.

Navigation and Links

All the links on this website use link text that can be understood even if read out of context and/or provide a "link tip" (using the title attribute) so that the visitor will know exactly what to expect if he follows the link. We never open an additional browser or pop-up window when a link is followed.

This website supports navigation with and without a pointing device e.g. a mouse. You can generally scroll the pages up and down using the keyboard "arrow" keys. You can navigate this website by using the keyboard "tab" keys to navigate from one link to the next or back to the previous link.

Access keys are also supported on this website. The following access keys are consistently available on all pages:

  • 0 = Home
  • 1 = Villas (the first page of the villa descriptions section)
  • 2 = Contact
  • 3 = Guest Gallery (the first page of the guest gallery)
  • 4 = Maps & More (the first page of the maps and more section)
  • 5 = About Us
  • 6 = Accessibility Policy (this page)
  • 7 = Disclaimer
  • 8 = Privacy Policy
  • E = Send us an e-mail
  • T = Top of the current page

The sections of this website also use consistent access keys for their section specific navigation i.e. in the villa descriptions section each villa has its own access key to provide immediate access from any page in that section. The access key is always specified in the "link tip" (using the title attribute). These section specific access keys generally go from A to Z, but obviously avoid the access keys specified above.

Standards Compliance

A page must pass W3C validation and automated compliance testing before being added to this website.

  • All the pages of this website have been written using structured semantic markup using eXtensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) according to the W3C's "XHTML 1.0 Strict" standard.
  • All the pages of this website use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for their layout. However, the pages have been designed to still be readable (and make sense) even if your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets. Tables are used to represent tabular data only i.e. for the villa rental rates.
  • All the pages on this website aim to be US Section 508 compliant.
  • All the pages on this website aim to be WCAG Triple-A compliant.

Text

This website uses only relative font (text) sizes. Visitors can use the standard function of their browser software to increase or decrease the size of text on all pages. All pages have also been tested to ensure that they are still readable after 2 levels of relative increase or decrease in text size.

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