What is a Modal Dialog? A modal dialog is an intentional interruption of the user’s experience. It takes over the underlying page, dimming or locking it down, making it inactive until the user responds to the information in the...
Keyboard-only testing is one of the simplest, most revealing ways to evaluate the accessibility and usability of your website. While many people effortlessly glide through websites using a mouse or touchscreen, a significant portion of users rely...
If you want to understand how accessible your website really is, there’s no substitute for experiencing it as many users do, and that’s with a screen reader. One of the most widely used screen readers is NVDA, and the good...
Good web design doesn’t make users stop and think about how something works. It simply works. That’s the power of affordances. Those subtle design cues that tell people how they can interact with something. A classic example...
Caveat: This post will discuss accessibility testing with VoiceOver, Apple’s free screen reader. You don’t need to install any software or plugins. You do need to be on a Mac computer or laptop, and for the best results, run...
Footnotes look simple on the surface - a tiny superscript link that leads to small print at the bottom. But in digital spaces, they’re anything but simple. On the web, they rely on semantic structure and sometimes even ARIA to clearly...
If you work in digital accessibility long enough, you start to hear two very different conversations. One is about what’s required to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the criteria that often define legal risk and...
Accessibility should be baked in long before a piece of content goes live. When accessibility is addressed only at the review stage, it becomes a last-minute fix rather than a built-in part of your content strategy. When you make it part of the...
This is a follow-up post to the four-part ALT text series that began with ALT Text Isn’t a Description. It’s a Content Decision. An effective web accessibility strategy doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a...
This is the final post in a four-part series on ALT text. Because writing it well (and knowing when not to write it) deserves more than a quick checklist. See part three, ALT Text Is Read by AT, Search Engines, and AI—Write...
This is the third post in a four-part series on ALT text. Because writing it well (and knowing when not to write it) deserves more than a quick checklist. See part two, The Most Accessible ALT Text Is Sometimes No ALT Text at...
This is the second post in a four-part series on ALT text. Because writing it well (and knowing when not to write it) deserves more than a quick checklist. See part one, ALT Text Isn’t a Description. It’s a Content...
This post begins a four-part series on ALT text. Because writing it well (and knowing when not to write it) deserves more than a quick checklist. See part two The Most Accessible ALT Text Is Sometimes No ALT Text at...
In December 2024, I wrote a blog post outlining several accessibility certifications, including three from IAAP and the Trusted Tester Process & Certification Program. The post's main idea...
That’s right! DubBot now inventories all your images with every Site crawl. And the best part? You don’t have to request access to Image Inventory. It’s turned on by default and ready to make you a rock star....
What exactly are footnotes? Footnotes are notes that are placed at the end of a page and used to reference parts of the text (generally using superscript numbers). Writers use footnotes for several purposes, including citations,...
When people think about AI and websites, they often imagine sophisticated algorithms crawling pages, analyzing keywords, or ranking content. But in reality, AI systems read web content in ways strikingly similar to how screen readers...
Have you ever looked at the dashboard of an automated testing tool and thought, Why is accessibility sitting next to SEO and broken links? At first, accessibility might seem to belong in a totally different category. More legal, maybe...
Budgeting for accessibility is a deliberate, forward-looking process. It requires understanding why accessibility matters, planning for the real costs involved, and thoughtfully allocating resources over time. Why Accessibility Requires a...
Conversations about accessibility testing often default to a familiar refrain: You can’t just automate, it has to be manual, too. That statement is true, but it’s frequently delivered with an undertone that sells...
I’ve been taking advantage of the mobile nature of podcasts lately (earbuds in, phone in my back pocket) in keeping up to date on accessibility trends and strategies (especially those related to AI) and, in general, what folks are doing...
Early in my career, building websites meant writing HTML by hand, often in Notepad. No visual editors or drag-and-drop tools, just tags and a lot of trial and error. As the tools evolved, so did my workflow. I moved from Dreamweaver to...
One of the building blocks for a sustainable accessibility strategy is a remediation plan. An accessibility remediation plan is a structured, repeatable approach that outlines how you'll test for and identify accessibility issues, decide what to...
Disability etiquette sounds so formal, but at its core, it’s really just about being a decent human with a bit of extra awareness baked in. Most awkward moments don’t come from bad intentions; they come from uncertainty and not...
Accessibility isn’t a niche. It affects everyone, from the person using a screen reader to an employee who needs an inclusive workplace, to a customer who wants to use a website without getting stuck. Accessibility must be a...
Like many others you may read, this post is about New Year’s resolutions. What may make this post different is that I am encouraging you not to make a New Year’s resolution. Or at least not make a typical resolution, one rooted...
From the DubBot family to yours, we wish you a happy New Year filled with peace, joy, and prosperity.
As a blog writer focused on accessibility topics such as standards, laws, tools, best practices, and the latest trends and developments, I spend roughly 40 – 50% of my 40-hour week conducting research. That means reading reports and...
First unveiled on Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2025 and then expanded during Apple’s Worldwide Developers’ Conference 2025, Apple launched Accessibility Nutrition Labels in their App Store. Accessibility Nutrition Labels...
The web is constantly evolving. Standards change, design trends come and go, and digital teams are always balancing competing priorities. Yet amid all this movement, one thing remains consistent. Accessibility issues continue to surface. Each...
New England Drupal Camp (NEDCamp) was a great success this year, as it is every year. DubBot is proud to be a NEDCamp sponsor. The NEDSummit on Higher Education brought together marketing and technology professionals from a wide range of colleges...
ARIA can be a powerful tool for creating accessible web content. But it’s not a universal solution. When misused, it can actually generate accessibility barriers rather than removing them, creating confusion for assistive technologies...
Persistent navigation, or sticky navigation, remains fixed to the top or side of the screen as users scroll. Marketers love it because key links stay visible. Designers love it because it feels sleek and convenient. And while sticky navigation can...
Today, we’re grateful for all the folks who show up every day, pushing accessibility forward one fix, feature, and fearless audit at a time. Your work makes the web kinder and easier for everyone. Thank you...
Several weeks ago, as I do most mornings, I was scrolling through my copy of the CNN 5 Things newsletter. In the section called Breakfast Browse, there was a link titled 'Vibe coding' named Collins Dictionary’s Word of the Year. I was...
What is an Accessibility Policy? An accessibility policy is a clear, internal framework that spells out your organization’s commitment to building accessible digital products. It defines the standards your organization follows, the...
An effective web accessibility strategy doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a long-term framework that weaves accessibility into everything from leadership and company culture to ideation and design, coding and content creation, and...
I try not to begin a blog post with a definition. In fact, some folks have told me it’s just not good form. But in this particular case, I feel it’s necessary. The subject of ableism, the word itself, even ...does a lot of...
When you're building an accessible website, elements like headers, headings, and titles can seem similar and even inconsequential. But actually, each element plays a significant role in creating proper content structure that makes it easier for...
Imagine a student exploring a digital archive of 19th-century letters, or a researcher diving into an interactive map of historical migration patterns. Now imagine that a student or researcher can’t fully engage because the site...
Back in May of this year, I wrote a blog post about the importance of a sustainable, continuous accessibility monitoring strategy for ensuring long-term digital accessibility compliance and improvement. This blog post is a...
DubBot is proud to announce its sponsorship of the EvolveDigital Summit, taking place November 20–21, 2025, in New York City. No matter your role, a developer, designer, strategist, marketer, or AI expert, the EvolveDigital Summit brings...
Providing a safe, inclusive, and accessible environment at Halloween for your friends and neighbors involves making simple sensory-friendly adjustments, offering non-food options, accommodating communication differences, and ensuring that...
The Analyze feature just got an upgrade. Previously, full-site re-analysis was handled behind the scenes by the DubBot team. Thanks to valuable client feedback, account and site-level administrators can now run a complete Analyze across their...
New England Drupal Camp (also known as NEDcamp) celebrates its twenty-first birthday this November 14-15. DubBot is proud to be a sponsor, and I'm thrilled to be an attendee. NEDcamp is held at Rhode Island College in Providence, Rhode Island and...
As I do most evenings, I was scrolling through LinkedIn posts, looking for content that would inspire a blog post and, in the process, stay up to date with the accessibility space and all that it encompasses. I came across an excellent...
If you’ve ever flipped through a book, you’ve used pagination. On websites and in digital documents, pagination (sometimes referred to as breadcrumbs) works the same way. It breaks content into manageable pages rather than...
DubBot is proud to be a sponsor for New England Drupal Camp on November 14-15, 2025! Our own Amy Helfman, a longtime Drupal user and developer, will be on-site for this outstanding event that offers a community-driven space to learn, share, and...
Who says conferences are all business? Some bring swag, we brought 150 Lite Brites as give-aways. At this year’s Digital Colloquium, DubBot traded laptops for pegs and let creativity take the lead. The results? A mashup of bold colors,...
Every October, we recognize National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM). It's a time to celebrate the contributions of workers with disabilities, raise awareness about ongoing barriers, and recommit to creating inclusive...
A well-crafted website accessibility statement is one of the most effective ways to demonstrate to visitors that your organization has made a genuine commitment to accessibility and inclusivity. Back in 2021, I wrote a blog post on...
Have you ever zoomed in on a website to make the text easier to read, only to end up scrolling left and then right, then to the left again, just to try and read the first sentence? That’s precisely the barrier WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion...
Broken links happen for many different reasons. And though they may seem minor, they cause ripple effects across accessibility, SEO, AEO, and user experience. Let’s break down how broken links affect accessibility, SEO, AEO, and user...
Digital accessibility, when done right, is designed to improve the experience for everyone, not just people with disabilities. But yes, there are cases where accessibility features can impact website performance. Those cases are primarily due to...
Task management is the process of overseeing a task throughout its entire lifecycle, from inception to completion. It is a fundamental practice for both individuals and teams, designed to enhance efficiency, productivity, and collaboration. So...
Let’s be honest. Most of us don’t give file names much thought. We choose names that make sense to us personally or for the project we’re working on, without considering how clear they are to others. But file names...
Drupal is a powerful, enterprise-grade CMS. It’s flexible, scalable, and trusted by organizations with big, complex digital footprints. Managing all that content and complexity can be a significant challenge. DubBot simplifies things for...
Accessibility isn’t just about color contrast, focus indicators, and screen readers. The way we write matters, too. Did you know the average American reads at a 7th- to 8th-grade level? That’s a helpful benchmark...
As I gear up to renew my Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC) certification, I'm currently taking a mini-course offered by the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP). The course...
When your web content appears as a solid wall of text, readers can feel overwhelmed and click away before they even start. That’s a missed chance to connect and share your message. This is where lists come in. There’s a reason...
The whole point of accessibility is to make things easier for everyone. So why are you okay with accessibility tools that are so complex only a handful of your team are willing to use them? Why settle for an accessibility tool that’s...
If you’ve invested in an accessibility platform, it should work for everyone on your team, including those who use assistive technology. So what happens when the very tool meant to help you meet accessibility standards can’t...
With current shifts in public sentiment and external pressures regarding DEI, some organizations have paused, rebranded, or scaled back their initiatives. The simple truth is, if you market, sell, inform, educate, connect, or build community...
I recently attended Digital Colloquium's Accessibility Summit—hands down one of my favorite events of the year. Niki Ramesh delivered this year's keynote, Using AI to Improve User Experience, which was both timely and...
At DubBot, great technology is just one part of our solution. True success comes from supporting our users with exceptional service and a genuine understanding of our clients’ accessibility goals. Our Client Support Team is at the...
Are the instructions on your website accessible to everyone? You can answer that question by testing your content against Success Criterion 1.3.3 Sensory Characteristics. This criterion requires that directions on a website or app don’t...
When the DOJ rolled out its final rule for Title II of the ADA for state and local governments, it brought some long-overdue clarity—and also raised critical questions surrounding the topic of archiving. Suddenly, it’s not just...
DubBot is proud to once again be a Platinum Sponsor of the Digital Collegium 2025 Annual Conference, where higher ed professionals come together to share insights, sharpen skills, and build the connections that drive your industry forward....
About a month ago, while catching up with the accessibility professionals I follow on LinkedIn, I came across a post by one of my favorite trainers and advocates, Dax Castro. The post was in response to feedback he had received from a previous...
With Custom Policies in DubBot, you can easily create tailored checks to keep your content on track. These policies can return a list of pages that either match or don't match a single rule or a set of custom rules. These checks can be...
At DubBot, we get excited when organizations blend accessibility and bold leadership into their digital strategies—and even more so when it’s one of our clients leading the charge. David Moretti, Senior Director of Digital...
Automated accessibility testing is a powerful tool for quickly identifying many common accessibility issues and should be an integral part of your accessibility testing workflow. But it’s only one piece of the puzzle. To truly understand...
Digital Collegium runs on volunteer power and the invaluable support of our sponsors! DubBot is proud to continue our sponsorship this year as a sponsor for the Accessibility Summit on Tuesday, July 29, 2025. The Accessibility Summit is a...
While working with a client to help customize the crawl on one of their sites, DubBot’s client support specialist, Joanie Chembars, discovered an area for improvement in the Ignore Path setup module. Joanie was helping this client...
When working with PDFs to make them accessible, one of the first steps we learn is to ensure they are correctly tagged. What are tags in a PDF? Tags communicate the structure and reading order of the document to assistive technologies,...
Believe it or not, the internet leaves a mark on the planet, not just in our browser history. The internet leaves a carbon footprint. The digital industry is now responsible for between 2-5% of global emissions, more than that of the...
Some of our best product updates didn’t come from a boardroom brainstorm—they came straight from our clients' "wouldn’t it be nice if…" moments. That’s precisely what inspired our latest product...
When we hear the term digital accessibility, many of us immediately think of web accessibility. And we wouldn’t be wrong. However, digital accessibility does not stop at the web. Many digital technologies operate outside of the web, and...
The AI Model Accessibility Checker (AIMAC) is a groundbreaking, open-source tool designed to hold Large Language Models (LLMs) accountable for how effectively they generate accessible HTML. By using neutral, nonspecific prompts, just like...
Welcome to DubBot! We're excited to help you get up and running! Just because our software is self-service doesn't mean you’re on your own! Our Client Support Team works closely with you to get to know you and your team,...
There was an interesting conversation on the DubBot support line the other day. A potential client had asked one of our account executives to "compare and contrast" the accessibility checking features of DubBot with their organization’s...
DubBot is proud to sponsor this outstanding event where agency leaders, technologists, creatives, and higher education professionals converge to discuss accessibility, digital strategy, content, and user...
For most colleges and universities, commencement is over, signifying the end of another academic year. Summer term has arrived! For many faculty, this is a time of rest, reflection, and regrouping. That regrouping may include a new or updated...
A sustainable, continuous accessibility monitoring strategy is essential for ensuring long-term digital accessibility compliance and improvement. Here are some key elements that make such a strategy effective and sustainable. Build Accessibility...
Misspelled words damage credibility and erode trust — they also disrupt user flow and negatively impact search engine rankings. Maintaining proper spelling across your website is a strategic advantage. Leveraging DubBot’s...
Tomorrow, May 15, is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)—a day to shine a light on digital access and inclusion for the more than one billion people worldwide living with disabilities and impairments. How will you be...
May 15 holds special significance for many of us in the accessibility community — it's the day we proudly celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). Behind this crucial annual event lies a dedicated organization: the GAAD...
If you work in higher education IT, you know the Higher Education Community Vendor Assessment Toolkit (HECVAT). It can be a heavy lift at times, but it’s essential for keeping tabs on vendor risks around security and privacy. It helps...
What is meant by crawling a website? Just like a librarian who meticulously inventories every shelf in a library, writing down the title, author, and subject of each book, a website crawl, also known as a spider crawl or web crawl, is the process...
I first wrote about overlays in February 2021 in a post titled "The Problem with Overlays." The post is pretty simple. It defines overlays, gives examples of how they function, and explains why they are not an acceptable solution for your...
Last week, while scrolling through a social media channel, I stumbled upon an interesting article from NPR. The article's subject is "that more than half of the 1,260 Americans surveyed say they're watching shows with subtitles on because the...
Accessibility remediation work can be very detailed; a single issue can span hundreds of web pages. Effective task management is crucial for successful remediation projects and efficient workflows. Breaking a large project into small, manageable...
We've all been there. You click on a link only to be met with the dreaded "404 Not Found" page. Broken links leading to "404 Not Found" errors frustrate users. Beyond the inconvenience, these errors harm your website's search engine...
Making your PDFs accessible doesn't have to be a daunting task. By focusing on a few fundamental principles, you can significantly enhance the usability of your documents and reach a wider audience. Here are four key principles for making PDFs...
Before I discuss accessibility for mobile apps, I want to differentiate between mobile apps and mobile websites. A mobile website is like any website you visit on your computer, but it is designed to be responsive and function well on mobile...
Have you ever noticed that most WCAG accessibility standards emphasize how content is delivered, not the content itself? While Section Headings (2.4.10) and Reading Level (3.1.5) relate to content, they are Level AAA criteria. Generally,...
In March, I wrote a blog post focused on the importance of labels, specifically for familiar web components such as documents, icons, image maps, and form controls. These elements are often top-of-mind when creating accessible web...
I was offline all day last week for a small road trip. On the drive home, I was thinking about what the next blog post should be about. I keep a running list of topics on my computer, and while driving down I-95, I was running through that list in...
Achieving a comprehensive accessibility evaluation requires automated scans and manual testing. Manual testing allows for the simulation of how people with various disabilities use the web, which can uncover accessibility barriers that automated...
