Accessibility statement
Every part in the catalogue can be found with a keyboard alone.
A herd manager ordering milking machine parts at the end of a long day may be on a cracked phone zoomed to 200% because the glasses are in the truck. Another reads the page with a screen reader. The dairy parts catalog is built for both. Below is what works, what does not yet, and who to tell when something gets in your way.
Can I get around without a mouse?
Yes. Tab moves through every link, button and form field in reading order. The first stop on each page is a "Skip to the content" link that jumps past the masthead, so you are not tabbing through five section tabs and ten category links every time you land.
Focus shows as a 2px gold outline set 3px off the control. We tested it on cream, on the oxblood estimator band and on the dark brown footer, and it stays visible on all three. On a phone, the Sections button opens the navigation and the Escape key closes it again from a hardware keyboard.
The magnetic pull on buttons and the image that follows your pointer across the catalogue ledger are decoration for a fine pointer only. They switch off entirely on touch screens and when your system asks for reduced motion. Nothing on the site depends on hovering to be read or used.
What standard are you working to?
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, version 2.2, at level AA. That is the target we build and check against. We have not had the site audited by an outside body and we are not going to write that it "complies" or is "certified" when nobody independent has signed that off.
What we do check, page by page, before anything goes live:
- Text contrast. Body text is near-black
#1C1411on cream#F2E8D5, and oxblood headings on cream also pass the 4.5:1 ratio for body-size text. Gold is only ever a thin accent, never the colour of words you have to read on cream. - One
h1per page, with headings that nest in order, so a screen reader's heading list reads like a table of contents. - Every photograph of a claw, a gasket or a cow in the parlour carries alt text that says what is in it. Icons are marked as decorative, because the word beside them already says it.
- Tap targets of at least 44 by 44 pixels, and a layout that reflows from a 320px phone to a wide monitor without sideways scrolling.
What still doesn't work well?
A few things, and we would rather you heard it here than found it halfway through an order.
The wide reference tables, like the ferrule size chart on tri-clamp fittings and the temperature table for tri-clamp gaskets, scroll sideways inside their own box on a narrow phone. The page itself does not scroll sideways, but a screen magnifier user has to pan the table. Each table has a caption and header cells, so a screen reader announces the column for every value.
The support chat checks for new replies every five seconds while it is open. New messages are announced politely, which means a screen reader finishes what it is saying first. If the desk replies while you are typing, you may hear it a beat late.
Fonts load from Google Fonts. On a very slow farm connection the page shows a fallback typeface for a moment and then swaps. Nothing moves out from under you, but headings can change width once.
Photographs of parts are documentary shots, not diagrams. If you need a dimension, the spec rows under each item give it in text. Never rely on a photo for a size. We don't either.
Does the estimator read out its numbers?
It does. The price estimator is an ordinary form: radio buttons for part family, size and material, and a number field for quantity. The result panel is a polite live region, so each time you change a choice the per-unit band and the total band are read once, in US dollars, with the quantity break you have reached.
If you type something that is not a number into quantity, the error is written in words next to the field and tied to it, rather than shown only as a red border. The line saying it is an indicative band, not a quote, is plain text in the result and gets read with it.
Can I order without the website?
Most of our customers do. Ring the parts desk on (608) 355-8791 and read out the part number, or the measurement if the number has worn off. Or email [email protected] with a photo of the part against a ruler. Everything the online inquiry form collects, the desk will take down over the phone.
Post also works. Parts desk, Foremost Farms, 8401 GREENWAY BLVD SUITE 600 · MIDDLETON, WI · 53562. It is slow for a leaking tank outlet, but some people prefer paper, and a letter with a gasket taped to it is a perfectly good inquiry.
How do I tell you something is broken?
Email [email protected] with "Accessibility" in the subject, or call the desk. Tell us which page you were on and what got in the way. Naming the browser and any assistive technology you use helps too, for example "iPhone, VoiceOver, the size radio buttons on the estimator". You do not need to know the technical name for the problem.
If the barrier stopped you placing an inquiry, say which part you were after and the desk will deal with that at the same time. The part comes first. The fix to the page comes after.
What happens after I report it?
A person on the desk reads it, not an auto-reply. We aim to answer within two working days and to tell you whether it is something we can fix quickly, like a missing label, or something that needs a larger change to a page. Quick fixes usually go out the same week.
We keep your report only as long as it takes to fix the problem and confirm with you. How we handle the name and email you send is set out in the privacy policy, and you can ask for it to be deleted through the data request page.