Usefulness and accessibility

The Villà Viatges website has been programmed, insofar as the files located in the same domain and open to the general public facilitating access to all users are concerned, in compliance with category A corresponding to the WCAG1.0 (WAI 1 A) Standard. Quite possibly the private section reserved for customers-company and customers-travellers may well not always comply with these characteristics, since elements self-generated by servers beyond the control of Villà Viatges also appear.  At the same time the series of pages that offer the possibility of reserving travel on line, and also exclusive reservation services for air tickets, hotel accommodation, car hire or train tickets do not offer accessibility levels as they are generated by third parties.

Keyboard shorcuts

In keeping with WAI standard recommendations, keyboard shortcuts have been established in order to make the browsing of the main website content distribution elements easier, with the exception of the hypertext links that are shown in the body of the text in the pages, the side and auxiliary menus, the reserved area and elements generated outside the domain.

The shortcuts are shown in the table on the right of this text. Depending on the browser and the platform used, the activating key can vary from ALT (option) and Control (CTRL). The numerical assignation to the shortcuts has been carried out following the international recommendations on reference to the website standard elements.

If Internet Explorer on a Windows platform is being used, the ALT key should be pressed, as well as the identificative numeric key and Enter in order to directly access the desired page. With the Mozilla family browsers, just press the ALT key and the indicated destination key. In the Apple platform, the ALT key is replaced by the CTRL key.

The pages essential keys also present an ordered tabulation, and it is possible to go from one element to another element in the menu and auxiliary menus by pressing the tab key.

Use of Ajax

Practically all the elements that present a higher degree of interaction for the visitor have been programmed with Ajax applications (asynchronous JavaScript and XML). For the selection of the applications with Ajax, a “non-obtrusive” nature has been required, providing maximum accessibility, or, when applicable, an alternative to the visitors with access difficulties to all the information included. The basic development platform is MooTools, although applications have been developed for this purpose.

External applications

The website may contain a wide range of information material in pdf format. In order to access the same a PDF reader is required. The users may use, if applicable, readers of the operative system (in Mac and Linux platforms), the Adobe Reader or any other free software that allows accessing the same.

In addition, it is possible that at some moments the user finds text files (preferably TXT and RTF), spreadsheets (XLS), presentations (PPT and PPS) or ZIP compressed files that will require specific applications to access the information included. An economic alternative is the use of the Open Office, which is free.

Certification, standards and mobile devices

The website has been programmed —in its accessible section— in keeping with XHTML 1.0 Transitional language specifications, without disposition tables and based on CSS, version 2.1 styles. The W3C consortium has validated the XHTML and CSS programming: Valid XHTML and Valid CSS.

A large part of the website has a specific version for browsing using mobile devices, especially Apple Mobile (iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch). The use of these devices to browse the website allows the users to focus on elements of fragments of the page, the automatic activation of telephone numbers, or the use of the contact form.

The website has been certified by AccesOK, exceeding the most demanding access controls.