Accessibility Statement for the Alaska Ocean Observing System (AOOS) website

This is an accessibility statement from the Alaska Ocean Observing System (AOOS).

Measures to support accessibility

AOOS takes the following measures to help ensure the accessibility of the AOOS website:

  • Maintain a designated accessibility contact responsible for reviewing and addressing accessibility issues on the site.
  • Conduct regular accessibility audits against WCAG 2.1 and remediate issues as they’re identified.
  • Use an accessibility-enhancement layer (ARIA roles, labels, and keyboard support) built into the site’s underlying theme components, maintained and extended as part of ongoing audit work.

Conformance status

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines 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. The AOOS website is partially conformant with WCAG 2.1 level AA. Partially conformant means that some parts of the content do not yet fully conform to the accessibility standard, and that we are actively working through an identified list of issues.

Remediation work completed

As part of our ongoing accessibility audit, the following issues have been identified and fixed to date:

  1. Heading structure (WCAG 1.3.1): Corrected misused heading tags on the Ocean Data Explorer page, and converted bold-styled footer labels (“Regional Coastal Observing Systems,” “National Observing System Partners,” “Contact Us”) into real semantic headings site-wide, so they’re discoverable by screen reader users browsing by heading.
  2. Data table accessibility (WCAG 1.3.1): Added descriptive captions and column header associations (scope="col") to the Board Officers and Former Board tables on the Governance page, so screen reader users can understand what each table contains and how its columns relate to its data.
  3. Color contrast (WCAG 1.4.3): Verified header and footer navigation text meets contrast requirements, measuring 8.4:1 and 6.3:1 against their background colors — both well above the 4.5:1 minimum for WCAG AA.
  4. Keyboard accessibility (WCAG 2.1.1 / 2.4.7 / 4.1.2): Confirmed, through direct keyboard testing, that the main navigation’s dropdown menus open and are fully reachable by keyboard, that all navigation links show a visible focus indicator when tabbed to, and made the mobile navigation menu toggle operable by keyboard (Enter/Space) in addition to touch, site-wide.
  5. Icon and label accessibility (WCAG 1.1.1 / 3.2.4): Hidden purely decorative icon glyphs from screen readers so they aren’t announced as confusing, meaningless characters, and verified social media icons carry accurate accessible labels matching the platform they link to.
  6. Interactive component support
    1. Tab modules (the click-to-switch-content widgets) get proper tablist/tab/tabpanel roles, selected/expanded states, and left/right arrow-key navigation — so screen reader and keyboard users can tell what’s selected and move between tabs without a mouse.
    2. Dropdown submenus get aria-haspopup so screen readers announce that an item opens a submenu.
  7. Labels for icon-only controls
    1. Search open/close buttons, the search field icon, and other icon-only buttons get proper button roles and accessible names (e.g., “Open search,” “Close search”) instead of being silent or ambiguous to screen readers.
    2. Purely decorative icon glyphs (the small icon-font graphics used throughout the design) are hidden from screen readers entirely, so they’re not announced as confusing, meaningless characters.
  8. Forms
    1. Required form fields get aria-required so screen readers announce them as required.
    2. Form success/error messages get role="alert", so screen reader users are notified immediately when a form submission succeeds or fails, without having to go looking for the message.
    3. Hidden spam-protection fields are properly hidden from assistive tech instead of being exposed as confusing extra form fields.
  9. Page structure
    1. The main content area gets role="main", giving screen reader users a way to jump straight to the page’s primary content.
    2. Header and comment sections get descriptive aria-labels so they’re identifiable when browsing by landmark.
  10. Links
    1. All non-decorative links get a consistent link role.
    2. Duplicate links pointing to the same destination (e.g., a thumbnail image and a heading that link to the same article) are collapsed into one stop in the tab order instead of forcing keyboard users to tab through the same destination multiple times.
    3. “Read more” links on article/post listings get a unique accessible name identifying which article they belong to, instead of several identical “Read more” links with no way to tell them apart out of context.

This list will continue to grow as we complete additional items identified in our audit.

Feedback

We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of the AOOS website. Please let us know if you encounter accessibility barriers:

Phone: 907-644-6754 E-mail: information@aoos.org

Technical specifications

Accessibility of the AOOS website relies on the following technologies to work with the particular combination of web browser 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.

Limitations and alternatives

Despite our best efforts to ensure accessibility of the AOOS website, there may be some limitations. Below is a description of known limitations and potential alternatives. Please contact us if you observe an issue not listed below.

Known limitations for the AOOS website:

Ocean Data Explorer: The Ocean Data Explorer, located under Ocean Data, is an interactive data-mapping and visualization portal. Due to the complexity of interactive mapping tools, some features may not be fully accessible to all assistive technologies. If you need specific data in an alternative format, please contact us and we will work with you to provide it.

Assessment approach

AOOS assessed the accessibility of the AOOS website through the following approaches:

This accessibility statement was prepared by SpinUp Creative on behalf of AOOS. The AOOS website’s accessibility was assessed through the following approaches:

  • Manual testing, including keyboard-only navigation testing (tab order, focus visibility, and operability of menus, dropdowns, and other interactive components) and review of how content is exposed to screen readers.
  • Automated scanning using WAVE, cross-referenced against WCAG 2.1 success criteria.
  • Direct review of the site’s underlying code to confirm each fix works correctly on the live site, not just visually.

This is an ongoing collaborative review between SpinUp Creative and AOOS, and will continue as further issues are identified and resolved.

Date

This statement was created on October 2, 2026, and is reviewed and updated as remediation work continues.