Accessibility and ADA Compliance

Accessibility of the Orchard

We make every effort to be as accommodating as possible, however the orchard is a natural farming environment.  Some areas are steep, it can be very rocky, or very soft cultivated soil.  There is also almost no ground picking, as the deer have pruned all of the trees up to where they can reach, standing on their hind legs.  The ground may not be navigable to those in wheelchairs, strollers, or those using walkers, crutches, etc.

 

The picture, (below) shows what the ground is like.  If you come to the orchard, and feel you are not able to pick due to accessibility, please notify one of our staff and we would be happy to pick for you at the same U-Pick price.  Please understand that on a busy day, it may take us a little longer to get your cherries, but we are happy to pick for you, if you can not.    

If we see that you have balance issues, or are physically limited in some way that can pose a danger to you, we may request that you not use the ladders. We will be happy to assist you in whatever capacity we can. Safety is our number one priority with all of our guests and we want your experience to be a positive one.

 

View of Main Orchard

View of Main Orchard

 Accessibility of the Website

Hockaday Orchard is committed to accessibility and inclusion. We want all of our guests to be able to access our website.  We try to facilitate access to our website using assistive technologies, like screen readers, text to speech, or speech recognition software, screen magnifiers, and/or keyboard emulators. We’ve attempted to ensure all of our pages use valid structured HTML5, visual styling using CSS and enhanced user interaction via JavaScript.

Accessibility Standard

We strive to ensure compliance with applicable laws and guidelines that relate to web accessibility, and follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).  More information about WCAG 2.0 recommendations can be found at  http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/.

We make every effort to build our web pages to meet or exceed Level “AA” WCAG 2.0 compliance.  This level is recognized to be the international standard. We continually try to improve the experience for users with disabilities and are regularly reviewing updates and work to make any corrections and fixes that may make the experience even better.

Below are some of the ways we  ensure our web pages are as easy as possible to navigate for all users:

 Site layout

Our web page layouts are structured for easy navigation for those using screen readers.  We appropriately tag, using HTML 5 standards, to help distinguish between content headings, sections, listing, tables and other formatting features so guest can use the website using assistive technology.

Text Alternatives

Wherever images appear on our web pages, a text-based alternative is provided for screen readers to read the alternative text content

Zooming

Our website is responsive, allowing users to increase or decrease the size of a page, with the loss of content or function. This allows users to zoom in or zoom out on a page to make them easier to read.

Browser Support

We’ve made every effort to ensure our website renders correctly on the most current versions of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Apple Safari

Keyboard Accessibility

 Most of our website can be accessed using a tab-based keyboard or keyboard emulator to navigate the website.

Additional Assistance

Please contact us, if you need additional assistance to access our website, or if you have any feedback on things that are not working for you. We are constantly striving to provide the best experience possible and we take your suggestions seriously.

For more information on website accessibility, you can visit the following sites:

World Wide Web Consortium: https://www.w3.org/Consortium/

Americans with Disabilities Act:  https://adata.org/learn-about-ada