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In order to do building work on a person’s home or business, most contractors are legally required to have a license. According to a recent Miami Herald article, in Florida, the regulation of the construction industry is determined by Chapter 489 of the Florida Statutes. This governs the licensure of categories of contractors through the Department of Business and Professional Regulation’s (DBPR) Construction Industry Licensing Board. Local governments also have additional licensing requirements. However, that doesn’t mean that every contractor that is hired has the required licenses.
In the last couple years there has been a surge of both home and business owners who have bypassed licensed contractors in favor of the cheaper, unlicensed, variety. In some cases, unlicensed contractors have downplayed their lack of licenses in order to try to bring in customers at cheaper rates than licensed contractors who pay licensing fees. Since unlicensed contractors are not able to get the proper permits, those who use them take a big risk, especially when the work does not meet Florida Building Code standards. Many are discovering they get what they pay for. Some of the problems that those with unlicensed modifications experience include:
While there are better protections in place when a license contractor fails to provide quality work, those who are facing the mistakes of unlicensed contractors are not entirely without recourse. For one, unlicensed contractors are not able to take advantage of the Florida lien law, which allows contractors to put a lien on property to assure payment for their work.
In addition, Florida law also states that unlicensed contractors that are not in pursuit of complying with proper licensing requirements can be asked to not only award damages to a customer who is injured as a result of their poor work, but may also be asked to pay attorney’s fees as well. Unlicensed contractors do not have the same rights to sue the property owner, and in some cases they may even be subject to civil and criminal penalties for working without a license.
While it’s always best to double check that a contractor has all the required licenses before they begin a job, there is help for those who discover errors in a contractor’s work whether they are licensed or not. An experienced lawyer can help you discover your rights and fight to get the compensation you need to rebuild.
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
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