Accessibility Statement

Accessibility Statement

We are committed to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities. We continuously improve the user experience for all and regularly apply relevant accessibility standards and best practices.

Compliance 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 correct accessibility deficiencies in HTML code. It also provides an interface that allows visitors to manipulate their browsing experience. The full set of tools is intended to help this site conform as closely as possible to WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards.

Additional accessibility considerations

While we are aiming for WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance, we have also applied some WCAG 2.1 Level AAA success criteria: Text images are used for decorative purposes only. Some WCAG 2.1 Level AA requirements are not included in the correction process as they are outside the scope of the website's source code, including video captions.

Actions taken by this website to comply with the standard

  • Full WCAG 2.1 Level AA website audit and remediation on page load. All page elements are scanned and compared against our library of accessibility standards to ensure compliance. If a correction is required, the element is tagged and our Ai correction tool makes the necessary, non-invasive corrections on the client side of the site.
  • Automatic image and link recognition and correction of content that does not contain alternative or title text for users who need access to screen readers; descriptions are stored for user adjustment to aid our machine learning algorithms.
  • Quick access to search the Meriam website for word definitions and pronunciations.
  • Colour blindness adjustments to improve colour distinction for red-green colour blindness (Deuteranomaly, Protanomaly, Protanopia, Deuteranopia), blue-yellow colour blindness (Tritanopia, Tritanomaly), Other colour blindness (Achromatopsia, Achromatopsia).
  • Reset fonts to Arial o Dyslexia friendly font implementation
  • Ability to highlight headings and links
  • Text enlargement
  • Content, font, line height, line spacing and zoom scaling
  • Alignment of content including left, centre and right alignment
  • Dark and light contrast and high contrast modes that increase contrast ratio to 135%, and full colour inversion
  • Saturation settings including High (140% saturation), Low (90% saturation), Monochrome (0% saturation)
  • Full colour control of elements including title, font and background colour settings with colour-safe palettes to ensure an 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 help users focus on the content of the page
  • Highlight the element on mouse-over or focus to ensure that both keyboard and mouse users can orient themselves on the focused element.
  • Screen reader that reads page content by highlighting it.
  • Full keyboard navigation control
  • Aggregate settings in navigation profiles to quickly deploy accessibility settings for multiple user types.


Browser and assistive technology support


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) for both Windows and MAC users.

Technical specifications

The accessibility of this site depends on the following technologies to work with the particular combination of web browsers and any assistive technologies or plug-ins installed on your computer:

  • HTML
  • WAI-ARIA
  • CSS
  • JavaScript

These technologies are based on compliance with the accessibility standards used.


Notes
Although our primary goal is to make the entire site accessible to all users, some pages may not have been discovered or may not have a satisfactory accessibility fix at this time. We are committed to continually improving the accessibility of this site to ensure that it is accessible to all.