MERLOT Accessibility Changes

MERLOT is continually striving to update the website with enhancements and bug fixes to make your experience on the site easier. MERLOT has completed 2 of 3 phases to become 508 compliant.  The following changes have been made to al pages that are not part of the MERLOT Workspace (internal peer review process). A summary of Accessibility changes completed to date include:

• Allow navigation and keystrokes/mouse using the keyboard.
• Added tab indices to pages with forms for easier keyboard navigation.
• Added alt tags for images, to enable screen readers to read them.
• Redesigned the MERLOT home page, changing images and links to be text links, and include alt tags.
  • Changed Links have a consistent look and feel.
  • Images are not links are now text links.
• Added labels to fields for more descriptive forms when using a screen reader.
• Made headers and lists use HTML header and list tags. This helps screen readers to navigate the pages easier. .
• Form field labels are tied to the fields they describe. This is done with special HTML tages for this purpose. Allows screen readers to tell a user what a field is for when they go to that field.
• All images have good alt text.
• Decorative images have blank alt text
• Orther images have alt text which matches what the image says (for example, sort button has alt text of sort)
• Image links do not have both a title attribute in the link and an alt attribute in the image.
• Modified images and buttons so it is clear what is a link and what where the cursor is on the page.
• Improved accessibility of the MERLOT Communities page
• Links are made to look like links
  • Text links are underlined or become underlined when rolled over and are a different color from regular text.
  • Image links change when rolled over
• Image buttons have text that matches their action. For example, a button that causes a sort to happen, says "sort" instead of "go."
• Use CSS for all colors and fonts rather than outdated HTML attributes
• Links are unique in their description. For example, in the material hitlist page, a category name mimght be the same as a material in the search results. Categories on hitlists now have titles for links that say "Limit search to items in xxx category."

MERLOT has also completed a VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) to outline our progress and status on making accessibility changes to the merlot.org site. You can also view a VPAT for the MERLOT Content Builder.

For information on MERLOT's Accessibility policy, go to http://taste.merlot.org/accessibilitypolicy.html.

We welcome your comments or questions to the Webmaster at webmaster@merlot.org

revised 11/16/11 - bbs