Accessibility

Our commitment

Built accessible, not retrofitted.

The Maryland Sea Grant RFP requires conformance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and the WCAG 2.1 standard, and with the State of Maryland's IT Non-Visual Access standards (COMAR 21.05.08.05). Accessibility is a design constraint here from the first wireframe, not a final checklist.

What that means on this concept

• Structure. Every page uses real landmarks (header, nav, main, footer), a skip link, one H1, and a logical heading order.
• Color & contrast. Text meets AA contrast against its background; color is never the only way information is conveyed.
• Keyboard. Every control, search, Ask, filters, the cart, the editorial board, the menu, and dialogs, is reachable and operable by keyboard, with visible focus.
• Screen readers. Images carry meaningful alt text or are marked decorative; dialogs announce themselves and trap focus; live regions announce result counts.
• Targets & motion. Interactive targets are at least 24 × 24 px; animation is subtle and fully disabled under prefers-reduced-motion.
• Responsive. Layouts reflow to a single column on small screens with no loss of content or function, and text resizes without breaking.

How we verify

The production build would be tested with automated tooling (axe-core), manual keyboard and screen-reader passes, and color-contrast checks at each design milestone, and accessibility acceptance criteria would be part of sign-off, not an afterthought.

Feedback

If anything on the real site is hard to use, Maryland Sea Grant's communications office wants to hear about it: communications@mdsg.umd.edu or (301) 405-7500.