Accessibility Statement
We are committed to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities. We are continually improving the user experience for everyone and applying the relevant accessibility standards and best practices regularly.
Conformance status
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) define requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA.
We have installed an automatic accessibility tool that runs in the background. This tool runs Ai and machine learning to remediate accessibility deficiencies in the HTML code. In addition, it provides an interface that allows visitors to manipulate their browsing experience. The complete toolset aims to assist this site in conforming as closely as possible to the standards by the WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
Additional accessibility considerations
Although our goal is WCAG 2.1 Level AA conformance, we have also applied some Level AAA Success Criteria: Images of text are only used for decorative purposes. Some WCAG 2.1 Level AA requirements are not included in the remediation process as they are outside of the scope of the website source code, including but not limited to video captions.
Measures taken by this website to achieve compliance
Complete WCAG 2.1 Level AA website audit and remediation on page load. All on-page elements are scanned and reviewed against our accessibility standards library to ensure compliance. If remediation is required, the element is tagged, and our Ai remediation tool makes necessary, non-invasive corrections on the client-side of the site
Auto Image and Link recognition and remediation for content that does not contain alt or title text for users that require screen reader access; descriptions are stored for user adjustment to assist our machine learning algorithms
Quick access to search Meriam Website for definitions and pronunciations of words.
Colorblindness adjustments to improve distinction between colors for Red-green color blindness (Deuteranomaly, Protanomaly, Protanopia, Deuteranopia), Blue-yellow color blindness (Tritanopia, Tritanomaly), Other color blindness (Achromatopsia, Achromatomaly)
Reset fonts to Arial or Implementation of Dyslexia friendly font
Ability to Highlight Titles and Links
Text Magnification
Content, Font, Line Height, Line Spacing Scaling, and Zoom
Content alignment including left, center, and right
Dark and Light Contrast modes and High Contrast that increases contrast ratio to 135%, and complete inversion of colors
Saturation adjustments including High (140% saturation), Low (90% saturation), Monochrome (0% saturation)
Complete element color control including Title, Font, and background color adjustments with color-safe color palettes to ensure optimal contrast ratio of 4.5%
Ability to stop motion (videos, animated graphics, web element transitions, etc.), hide all images, and mute sounds
Simple reading guide or more elaborate page mask to assist users in focusing on-page content
Highlight element on hover or focus to ensure both keyboard and mouse users can orient themselves on the focused element
A screen reader that reads back page content on highlight
Complete keyboard navigation control
Aggregated settings into browsing profiles to quickly deploy accessibility configurations for multiple user types.
Compatibility with browsers and assistive technology
We strive to be compatible with the following assistive technologies:
Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS, and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Technical specifications
Accessibility of this site relies on the following technologies to work with the particular combination of web browsers and any assistive technologies or plugins installed on your computer:
HTML
WAI-ARIA
CSS
JavaScript
These technologies are relied upon for conformance with the accessibility standards used.
Notes
While our main goal is to make the entire site accessible to all users, there is a possibility that some pages may not have been discovered or do not have a satisfactory accessibility remediation solution at this time. We are committed to constantly improving the accessibility of this site to ensure it is accessible to all.
