Web Accessibility

Web Accessibility
Visit Huntington Beach is committed to building a robust, inclusive, and accessible platform for all audiences. We strive to meet level AA standards from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. We are continually improving the user experience and applying the relevant accessibility standards. Technology is constantly evolving, so we’ve established the following baseline with which our Internet content should be viewed.

The surfcityusa.com website uses a proprietary Content Management System (CMS) built by a tourism-focused technology company called Simpleview. If you have any trouble browsing the site or accessing the content, please email us at accessibility@surfcityusa.com.

Browsers
SurfCityUSA.com is best viewed with the most current version of all major browsers.

Screen Readers
A screen reader is a software application that attempts to identify and interpret what is being displayed on the computer screen. Various assistive devices and software have varying levels of functionality and thus might not be able to fully support an accessible document.

Plug-ins
SurfCityUSA.com is best viewed with the most current version of all recommended plugins. These plugins are free for download.

In addition to information provided on standard web pages, Visit Huntington Beach offers content in various formats. Although not required to access our core information, this supplemental information requires plug-ins*, or add-ons to your standard browser in order to access. To utilize this supplemental information, you may be prompted to download the following plug-ins or software:

Adobe Acrobat Reader – provides the ability to access Portable Document Format (pdf) files. Examples of added browser functionality includes (but not limited to) viewing, printing, zoom and form completion.
Adobe Flash Player – provides the ability to access Shockwave Files (swf) via your browser. Flash files offer the added capability of viewing interactive content such as animation, video, self-contained multimedia experiences. 99 percent of all browsers have this plug-in installed.
Apple QuickTime Player – provides the ability to access QuickTime (.mov) format files.
Windows Media Player – provides the ability for users to access Windows media (.wmv, mpeg, etc) files from within your browser.

Completed Improvements
Right now, our website meets the majority of the standards and is substantially compliant with the AA standards. There’s more for us to do, and we’ll continue updating this page as we make improvements.

Homepage / Global
- Corrected eleven instances of mostly logos with no alt attributes
- Added title attributes to the search field and date inputs in booking widget
- Corrected five select boxes that had no description and needed title attributes
- Corrected twenty five occurrences of insufficient color contrast ratio to 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text
- Made focus visible thirty two occurrences where the element previously was not highlighted on focus.
- For labels or instructions, added a title attribute to input and/or made sure label tags exist and are visible.
- Removed the display:none setting in the CSS so that the check-in and check-out inputs on the booking widgets have visible labels.
Stakeholder Template
- Title attribute and associated label added to search field input.
- Fixed five occurrences of a select box with no description in the Google Translate dropdown.
- Fixed all <a> tags wrapping <img> tags to have alt attributes (in addition to alt attributes on the actual image).
General Template
- Fixed three instances where the search field <input> needs title attribute or associated <label>, and changed the CSS so that the booking widget <input> fields show their <label> tags.
- Fixed the “See More: Plan Your Visit” dropdown (after Hero and Banner Ad) by switching from <b> tags to <strong> tags.
- Fixed the contrast relationship between the text and background. Used a ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.
Things to Do Template
- Fixed a missing header by not using a <H4> tag as an empty spacer.
- Added a missing title attribute to Google map <iframe>.

How We Test the Platform
Along with testing in modern browsers, we used VoiceOver in Chrome and Safari to review our sites.

Future Improvements
We are continually improving the user experience for everyone and applying the relevant accessibility standards. Here are a few things we’re hoping to update in the coming months:

Homepage / Global
- Alternative text for content images
- Captions for videos
- Text descriptions for ads
- Hero slide needs to stop auto rotate
- No option to skip repeated content
  - Implement a skip link on other sites to leverage a link at the top of each page that goes directly to the main content area.
- A form is missing a submit button. The form will be provided with a submit button to maximize predictability. Update form with <button>.
Stakeholder Template
- Six occurrences where the WAI-ARIA ‘aria-describedby’ attributer has a reference to an ID that does not exist or an ID that is not unique.
  - Make sure the ID referred by ‘aria-describedby’ exists on the page and that the referred ID is only used on one element on the same page.
- Error – HTML is used to format content. The slickslider is bringing in an i-frame from image service Threshold 360 using a “framborder=”0”html attribute.
  - This could be done in the CSS.
General Template
- The image on the global warning feature has not been free of text.
  - Any hero slides with text in the image should be changed. Additionally, the banner ads with text would ideally be built out in HTML to break out text.
Things to Do Template
- For link purpose context, the link text is too generic in its current context.
  - Link text should be written so they make sense out of context. Avoid texts such as ‘Click Here’ and ‘More’ that give no indication of the destination of the links.
- Error – Element ID is not unique. The booking widget and the “places to stay” section on the website both have a <div> with id=”hotels.
  - Need to determine where we are linking that section and all the places that would need update. Change one of the IDs so they are both unique.

We’ll continue updating this page as we improve the platform.

Contact Us
If you have any feedback or questions about accessibility, please email accessibility@surfcityusa.com. Please include details about the site you’re trying to access and the kind of assistive technology you’re using (e.g., VoiceOver on iOS).

Published: March 12, 2021
Last updated: December 1, 2021