Accessibility Statement

We are committed to ensuring that our website is accessible to everyone, regardless of ability. To achieve this goal, we strive to adhere as closely as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines provide instructions on how to make web content accessible to people with disabilities such as visual, motor, and cognitive impairments.

Our website uses various technologies to improve accessibility. We have implemented an accessibility interface that enables users with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI and personalize it according to their needs. Additionally, an AI-based application runs in the background, constantly optimizing the website's accessibility level. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapting its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by blind users and keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.

If you need to contact us regarding accessibility issues, please email us at apexcultureco@gmail.com. We are committed to ensuring that our website remains accessible to all users.

Our website employs the ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, combined with behavioral modifications, to ensure that blind users who rely on screen-readers can access, comprehend, and enjoy the website's features. Once a user with a screen-reader enters the site, they are prompted to enter the Screen-Reader Profile, enabling them to navigate and operate the site seamlessly. Here are some of the ways our website fulfills critical screen-reader requirements:

Screen-Reader Optimization: Our website has been optimized for screen-reader users through the implementation of the ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, and ongoing maintenance ensures compliance with updates. We provide screen-readers with meaningful data using ARIA attributes such as accurate form labels, descriptions for actionable icons, validation guidance for form inputs, and element roles for buttons, menus, and modal dialogues.

Our background process scans all images on the website and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT tag for images that are not described. It also extracts texts embedded within the image using OCR technology. Screen-reader adjustments can be turned on by users at any time with the Alt+1 keyboard combination, and automatic announcements encourage screen-reader mode when entering the website.

These adjustments are compatible with popular screen readers, including JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, and TalkBack.

Keyboard Navigation Optimization: In addition to screen-reader optimization, our website also features keyboard navigation optimization. The background process adjusts the website's HTML and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.

Keyboard users can access content-skip menus at any time by clicking Alt+2 or as the first element of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, not allowing the focus to drift outside. Users can also use shortcuts such as "M" for menus, "H" for headings, "F" for forms, "B" for buttons, and "G" for graphics to jump to specific elements.

• Epilepsy-friendly profile: This profile eliminates the risk of seizures resulting from flashing or blinking animations and color combinations that could trigger epilepsy in users.
• Vision impairment profile: This profile adjusts the website to be accessible to people with various visual impairments, such as tunnel vision, cataract, glaucoma, and degrading eyesight.
• Cognitive disability profile: This profile provides assistive features to help users with cognitive disabilities, such as autism, dyslexia, and cerebral vascular accidents (CVA), focus on the essential elements of the website.
• ADHD-friendly profile: This profile reduces distractions and noise to help people with ADHD and other neurodevelopmental disorders browse, read, and focus on the essential elements of the website more easily.
• Screen-reader profile (for blind users): This profile makes the website compatible with screen-readers such as JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, and TalkBack, which are installed on the user's computer.
• Keyboard navigation profile (for motor-impaired users): This profile enables users with motor impairments to operate the website using the keyboard Tab, Shift+Tab, and Enter keys. It also provides shortcuts such as "M" for menus, "H" for headings, "F" for forms, "B" for buttons, and "G" for graphics to help users navigate to specific elements of the website.

• Font customization - Users can personalize the font by changing its size, family (typeface), spacing, alignment, line height, and other properties to fit their needs.
• Color customization - Users have the option to choose from various color contrast profiles, including light, dark, inverted, and monochrome. Additionally, there are over seven different color schemes available to swap titles, texts, and backgrounds.
• Animation control - For users with epilepsy, all animations such as videos, GIFs, and CSS flashing transitions can be stopped with a single click.
• Content highlighting - Users can emphasize important elements like links and titles or highlight only focused or hovered elements.
• Audio control - Users with hearing devices can mute the entire website with one click to avoid headaches or other issues caused by automatic audio playing.
• Cognitive support - We provide a search engine connected to Wikipedia and Wiktionary, which helps users with cognitive disorders decipher the meanings of phrases, initials, slang, and more.
• Additional functions - We offer several other features such as cursor color and size adjustments, a printing mode, virtual keyboard, and other functions to enhance the user experience.

Our goal is to provide our users with the flexibility to choose their preferred browsers and assistive technologies with minimal limitations. To achieve this, we have invested significant effort to support all major systems that account for more than 95% of the user market share. Our website is fully compatible with popular browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera, and Microsoft Edge. We also ensure compatibility with screen readers such as JAWS and NVDA for both Windows and MAC users.

Although we have put forth great efforts to ensure that our website is customizable to meet the needs of all users, there may be pages or sections that are not completely accessible or are in the process of becoming accessible. In some cases, a technological solution may not be readily available. Nonetheless, we are constantly striving to enhance our accessibility features, adding, updating, and improving options and features, and keeping up with new technologies to achieve the highest level of accessibility. If you need to contact us, please use the email apexcultureco@gmail.com