Fixes and accessibility improvements now live on Red sites

Posted on February 19, 2026

On Feb. 12, 2026, and Feb. 18, 2026, several codebase updates were deployed to the Red production server. These updates are now active across all sites hosted on the live Red production server, helping ensure better compliance with current accessibility standards and enhancing usability for all visitors.

Fixes

  • Accordion: fixed height issue.
  • Fixed jQuery issues that caused Gravity Forms to break. jQuery was loading multiple times.
  • Minor Gravity Forms style updates. Adjustments were made around time fields and field groups.

Accessibility Improvements

  • Improved main navigation keyboard support. Arrow key support has been added to the main menu, making it easier to access top-level menu items. If the item has a submenu, the template generates a keyboard-friendly chevron-style button. Original mouse hover behavior on the menu has been preserved. In addition, pressing the Esc key now closes the submenu if it is in focus.
  • Removed focusability of the header’s invisible search submit button. The invisible search submit button, which was still navigable via keyboard, can no longer receive keyboard focus. The input field itself now guides users to press Enter to submit their search query.
  • Rendered fully visible focus indicator in Mega Menu. Submenu items that receive keyboard focus now display a visible focus indicator around all sides.
  • Improved text color contrast in the Gravity Forms progress bar. Adjusted Gravity Forms progress bar text styling so that its color contrast meets WCAG 2.2 AA requirements across all sites using the paginated “Page” field.
  • Improved text color contrast in Gravity Forms “Maximum Characters” counter. Adjusted Gravity Forms legacy markup styles so the “Maximum Characters” counter text meets WCAG 2.2 AA minimum color contrast accessibility requirements.
  • Removed invalid ARIA attribute from slideshow images. Resolved this auto-detected best practices issue by removing the “presentation” role from image elements in the slideshow.
  • Fixed heading order in Research Project custom post type. Changed the “Abstract” heading on Research Project pages from h3 to h2 to ensure proper page heading hierarchy. This meets the best practices requirement: “Heading levels should only increase by one.”

These updates reflect our ongoing commitment to accessibility and usability standards. If you manage content on a Red site, no action is needed; these improvements are already live.

Modified on February 19, 2026