Home » Advance Blog » A Brighter Future for Juanito
Jennifer is a mom who refused to give up.
She thought giving birth to her new son would be routine, just like it was for her other kids. All her doctor’s visits had gone to plan …
Instead, baby Juanito was born with clubfoot. Jennifer hadn’t heard of this common birth defect, but she knew what it meant in Ecuador:
Her beautiful boy’s future was dim.
He’d likely never walk normally … Never be accepted at school … Never find a job … Never marry. Children like Juanito are never fully accepted by society, unable to reach their full potential.
Jennifer couldn’t afford the $1,500 surgery from a private clinic with specialists, so she took her son to several public hospitals hoping to find a low-cost alternative. One doctor put Juanito’s tiny leg in a full cast.
That day brought both baby and mama to tears.
Yet weeks later, nothing improved. Jennifer was losing hope that Juanito would ever kick a soccer ball with his daddy. Or run, jump, and play with his brother. But she had to try — one more time — for her baby boy.
That’s when she learned that YOU don’t give up either. Generous folks like you helped send a U.S. surgical team to a hospital in Guayaquil, just a few hours away from Jennifer’s home!
Sadly, about 1 in every 10 children worldwide live with a disability. This fact alone makes them less likely to attend school and become literate. And it makes them more likely to experience discrimination, neglect, and abuse.
What makes a case like Juanito’s even more heartbreaking is that disabilities like clubfoot, bowed legs, and dislocated hips don’t have to be permanent. If treated early enough, these children can live full lives!
Kids like Juanito depend on Advance’s volunteer surgical teams to rewrite their futures.
Because the need is so urgent, one of the talented pediatric surgeons who volunteers in Ecuador has agreed to match your gift today up to $3,000.
So your kind gift of $250 — enough for the Advance team to end the suffering of one child — will give TWO children life-changing surgeries! But you must claim your match by December 31.
This Christmas Eve, Juanito won’t just be listening to his family and neighbors sing traditional carols. Thanks to your committed support, he’ll be singing — and DANCING — right by their side!
You can give another child like Juanito (or several!) the healthy future they deserve with a tax-deductible gift to Advance today! Make your match donation here.
October 02, 2023
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Advance
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email [email protected]
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also 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.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements 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, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to [email protected]