The St. Augustine “virtual” exhibit site has been with us since 2001! You can often tell a site’s age by its technology, and this one is no exception by featuring a flash movie introduction (that you have to click past to “enter” the site) that was all the rage back then. Fast forward almost 20 years and Flash use has plummeted due to its accessibility issues and newer web technology options. The very code structure of this site was so antiquated that it was a major accessibility problem for the Museum and almost completely unusable to screen readers and keyboard-only users. Not good for a site that is still heavily used by schools!

We wanted to get this site revamped before the fall school year started back up and happily were able to get it launched before (hopefully) too many teachers started including it in their lesson plans. The new site does lose its unique design look since it is using the standard museum theme, but the increase in overall access means that many more people will be able to learn from it. In addition, the same ancient code that was making the site inaccessible for users was also blocking Google from crawling the site, so all of the still-relevant information it contains should now get more exposure to the wider world.