Melvyl Accessibility
Review

 Results and Recommended Actions

Below are the results of our analysis. On the whole the site is close to Section 508 compliance. In the main section, we discuss only components that do not meet specific checkpoints of the Section 508 standards. In the Usability Recommendation section we seek to go beyond a checklist and truly make the experience better for all users--even non-humans.

We have a few broad suggestions based on usability principles:

• Simplify structure …
• Large forms with many options can seem overwhelming to new users. (For example, even the Basic page has 4 types of "Title" & 4 types of "Author" searching in the first drop-down list of categories.)
• Shortening or grouping lists of options wherever possible (or moving them to the Advanced level) generally improves usability.
• We suggest adding"search” to both"Advanced” and"Commands” in the primary navigation.
• Use Semantic Markup …
  • Headings are a good example.  Since assistive technologies like screen readers allow users to navigate through a document by its heading structure, headings should be used to form a sensible structure independent from the rest of the document. Thus, on the Basic Search page, The text that is 16-pt bold could be marked as H1, while the 10-pt bold text could be H2.  Following logical structure, the items under Search Examples ("Title", "Author  (last name first)" etc.) would then be H3.

  Code Example:
  In Basic Search:
  
  Instead of:

  Line 164: <strong class="pageTitle">Basic Search:</strong>
  Line 165: <strong class="pageSubtitle"> Entire Collection </strong>&nbsp;

  Use this:
  

  <h1 class="pageTitle"> Basic Search </h1>
  <h2 class="pageSubtitle"> Entire Collection </h2>

• Use title attribute in <a> tag to indicate a pop-up or other relevant information. The primary case where this is useful is for links that launch in a new window. Simply adding a TITLE attribute with "Opens a new window" would inform the user of the special behavior of the link.

•  Define a DOCTYPE for each document.

basic search