A website can pass automated and manual accessibility checks and still fail someone trying to accomplish a task. A form might have accessible labels. A button might work with a keyboard. Every page might pass an accessibility audit. But if...
October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM), a time to recognize the contributions of workers with disabilities and promote accessible workplaces. It’s also a good reminder that accessibility isn’t just...
How Acquiring Accessibility Expertise Changes What You See Years ago, while working in higher education, I came across a concept called the Magic Escalator of Acquired Knowledge. I don’t remember exactly where or when I found it, but I...
Recently, the DubBot app flagged several landmark issues across a few of my blog posts. And so, naturally, I began to investigate. As some of you may have already surmised, the culprit turned out to be the template. That was a bit confusing,...
DubBot is excited to once again join the DigiCol community as a Platinum Sponsor and Accessibility Partner for the 2026 Digital Collegium Annual Conference in Pittsburgh, PA. Join us in person or online for DigiCol 2026, happening October 18 -...
You spend a lot of time remediating accessibility issues. Every image has ALT text, focus order makes sense, and forms work with screen readers. But a new feature, design update, content change, or code fix can undo that hard work and introduce an...
While working to correct some minor policy issues reported in the DubBot app, two pages were flagged for Image alt text is less than 12 characters. When I opened the Detailed Page View, I saw that the images were small, like icons, and gray in...
Think about the last personalized email you received. That message that greets you by name, recommends exactly what you’ve been looking for, and arrives at precisely the right moment. Now imagine the text is light gray. The CTA button...
Tables and lists are both very useful ways to organize and present content. But they’re both structured to present different types of content. Choosing the right one isn't just a design decision. It’s also an editorial and...
Folks rarely set out to build something inaccessible. But tight deadlines, understaffing, and budget constraints can push shift-left accessibility activities to the sidelines, creating gaps and missteps that are harder to address later. Issues...
Sometimes it's a good thing I’m not in an office during work hours. Here’s a perfect example of why. When I saw the headline of one of my regular email subscriptions, I screamed out loud, Damn skippy! I’ve been asking...
While scrolling through LinkedIn the other day, I came across a post from a former intern from my higher-education days. He was sharing a website redesign project he had worked on, and I was excited to see what he’d created. Naturally, I...
Dark mode is no longer a niche developer preference. With the 2019-2020 releases of iOS 13, Android 10, and Windows / macOS system-level toggles into the mainstream, dark mode has since become a widely offered option. Last week, the Support Team...
DubBot is pleased to join the Texas Department of Information Resources for its upcoming Texas Digital Accessibility Coffee Chat, a monthly meetup designed for Texas public-sector employees only who work to improve digital accessibility. The...
We’re all working toward WCAG conformance. But what does conformance actually mean? It’s a word that gets tossed around a lot in accessibility, sometimes as shorthand for we’re doing accessibility right. But...
Caveat: This content is provided for informational purposes only. It is not legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Make sure it’s WCAG compliant. We need this to meet Section 508. If you work in digital technology,...
I recently attended an excellent webinar on accessibility metrics. The presenters broke the metrics into three categories, meant to be applied across the software / product development lifecycle: A11y barrier prevention metrics A11y monitoring...
Last summer (August 2025), I wrote a blog post (When Your Accessibility Tool Isn’t Accessible) about what to do to prevent purchasing an accessibility tool or platform that itself fails its own accessibility tests. BTW, the short answer...
Last week I received my copy of the Smashing Newsletter from Smashing Magazine. I was especially excited about this issue because every feature section was focused on accessibility. One section I found especially interesting was about...
As I sometimes do when I'm researching for a blog post, if a comment or an idea piques my interest, I immediately jump down a rabbit hole. The DigiCol A11Y Summit was no exception. While watching the presentation titled The future of document...
Accessibility is often discussed in terms of standards, tools, and compliance. We talk about WCAG success criteria, automated testing platforms, color contrast ratios, semantic markup, and remediation plans. These all play a key role in creating...
Plain language is not about oversimplifying the content. It’s about language that enables people to find what they need, understand it the first time they read or hear it, and use that information successfully. Plain language focuses on...
Your website serves people with a wide range of reading needs and abilities. Some visitors have dyslexia. Others have low vision and rely on magnification or screen readers. Many are reading in a language that isn't their first. And still others...
After a long day of reading reports, meeting with stakeholders, and returning numerous emails and phone calls, you come home, grab your tablet, and go to your favorite sushi restaurant's website to order dinner. <sigh> You scroll down the...
From navigation menus to action buttons, icons can make interfaces feel clean, modern, and compact. But while icons may look sleek and elegant, they don't always clearly communicate meaning, especially when accessibility is a priority. In this...
A tooltip is one of those concepts that's often misunderstood. Many people think of a tooltip as a single UI element, but it's actually made up of two working parts. The trigger element and the tooltip. That fact was not always evident in some of...
This is part two of a four-part series on web governance. A strategy fueled by people, process, and technology. See part one titled Web Governance: Building Structure for a Sustainable User Experience. See part three...
When I’m looking for inspiration, a new topic, an idea that sparks my interest, or even a quote or headline that serves as a springboard to a blog post, I often tag one of the numerous newsletters in my inbox. Or sometimes, like in this...
At the recent Virginia Higher Education Accessibility Partners (VHEAP) conference in May, our sales executive, Luke Bachelor, had an interesting conversation with one of the attendees. They described a challenge that many...
DubBot is excited to return as a platinum sponsor of Digital Collegium’s Accessibility Summit on Tuesday, July 28, 2026. This one-day, multi-track virtual event brings together higher education professionals focused on advancing digital...
While researching another project, I noticed a recurring accessibility theme across several sources, often centered on the same ideas, such as budget and resources, accessibility as a business function, internal accountability is essential, and...
For colleges and universities, every technology purchasing decision is an opportunity to create a more accessible and user-centered digital experience for students, faculty, and staff while setting the standard for inclusion before anyone ever...
Last week, I was involved in an automobile accident. (No injuries with either driver.) My little Kia Soul sustained some pretty extensive damage. I’ll admit, it was pretty scary. It definitely shook me up. When I finally got home and...
I’m a long-time subscriber to Smashing Magazine’s email newsletter and have found articles and webinars that have inspired numerous blog posts over the years. One recent newsletter highlighted an article by David Mello,...
Higher education and private agency web teams may use some of the same digital tools, but the operational workflows they rely on are fundamentally different. Agencies are often built for speed with fast-moving client timelines, campaigns, and...
I love autocomplete! It’s one of those tiny internet features that makes my online life so much easier. Especially when I’m logging into a website or app I haven’t visited in months, and my brain has fully deleted...
Ableist language isn’t always obvious. It can hide in tone, assumptions, euphemisms, backhanded compliments, pity, or even the microcopy on a simple button label that seemed harmless at first. Case in point. While building a...
Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) began in 2012 with a simple but powerful idea: get people talking, thinking, and learning about digital accessibility. What started with a blog post and a grassroots collaboration between Joe Devon...
In my blog post, What's So Great About HTML?, I included a link to Mark Steadman's LinkedIn profile. That link was flagged as an HTTP 404 error in the DubBot app. I certainly was not expecting that. I jumped out to LinkedIn and looked up...
I recently read 9 Accessibility Myths and Pushbacks (And How to Answer Them) by Stephanie Walter. In this blog post, Ms. Walter identifies nine reasons people give for not doing accessibility well or, even worse, not doing accessibility at...
While working on a Google Slides presentation celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), I thought it might be a good time to pause and write a few words about accessibility best practices for creating slide...
May always brings a bit of extra energy to the accessibility world, and DubBot is leaning all the way in. Between Global Accessibility Awareness Day and the wider push for digital inclusion, it’s a reminder that accessibility is an...
In December 2025, Canada released CAN-ASC-6.2:2025: Accessible and Equitable Artificial Intelligence Systems, the world’s first national standard focused specifically on accessibility in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Imagine AI not just...
A session timeout is when a website or app automatically logs you out after a period of inactivity. They are often regarded as a fundamental safeguard driven by legitimate security concerns. Think of them like a safety timer. If you walk away or...
Hidden content refers to elements on a webpage that are visually concealed but remain accessible to assistive technologies like screen readers, or that are hidden for functional reasons, such as progressive disclosure or interactive widgets. Why...
Too often, people view accessibility as a one-time initiative. In reality, accessibility is a system, and like any system, it needs structure, rules, and oversight. That’s where a strategy, a policy, and continuous monitoring come in....
Web forms are among the most interactive elements on the web, acting as essential interfaces for user engagement and data collection. Yet, they are often designed in ways that cause unnecessary cognitive effort. Cognitive load is the mental effort...
If you haven’t heard yet, the DOJ will be extending the ADA Title II web accessibility deadline for public entities with a total population of 50,000 or more by one year, from April 24, 2026, to April 26, 2027. It also...
I recently came across a Slack conversation about a third-party vendor and their disregard for obvious accessibility issues, and the frustration it was causing their customer. It felt very familiar. Back when I managed a higher ed website, I...
ALT text is a vital part of how users experience your content. Yet for most of us, there has been no clear way to evaluate ALT text at scale. Without a clear view, it can be all too easy to overlook and even easier to forget. That’s all...
Before the DubBot Sales Team headed to the Windy City for DrupalCon Chicago, I asked them to keep an ear out for insights that tend to surface when you’re talking face-to-face, in real time, with practitioners, partners, and...
Microcopy is easy to underestimate. Let’s face it, it really doesn’t look like much. It’s a handful of words on a button. A line of helper text under a form field. A quick error message that shows up at exactly the...
Most advice on creating accessible emails centers around ALT text, color contrast, and proper semantic structure. All essential elements for any digital creation to be accessible. But if you’re a content marketer like me, trying to...
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...
