National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM)! Next month marks the 34th annual observance of National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Every October is a celebration "honoring the achievements and contributions of U.S. workers...
Disability Voting Rights Week, formally known as National Disability Voter Registration Week, is September 12 - 16, 2022. Disability Voting Rights Week is coordinated by the REV UP Campaign. REV UP stands for "Register, Educate, Vote,...
According to Google’s English dictionary, which is provided by Oxford Languages, the definition of a business case is "a justification for a proposed project or undertaking on the basis of its expected commercial...
The problem with overlays is that they are still a problem! In February of 2021, I posted about the havoc that overlays cause to assistive technology and its users. According to a recent article in the New York Times (July 13, 2022), not...
What is an invisible disability? According to the Invisible Disabilities Association, "an invisible disability is a physical, mental or neurological condition that is not visible from the outside, yet can limit or challenge a...
The Hiring Process The use AI, or Artificial Intelligence is finding its way into the hiring, promotion, and other employment decision-making processes. For example, software that screens out applications using a pre-defined list of keywords or...
To answer that, we need a little history lesson. Back in 2008, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. Fast forward to 2018. Wow…a lot has changed on the web…live...
Because infographics are visual, they inherently present accessibility barriers to users with visual and cognitive disabilities. Infographics can also be challenging for those who use keyboard-only navigation. People with color blindness may miss...
On the third Thursday of May, we celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). GAAD "started" on Sunday, November 27, 2011, when Joe Devon penned a post on MySQLTalk.com challenging his fellow back-end programmers to increase their...
Web forms should be easy to navigate, complete, and submit while being keyboard accessible from the first input field to the submit button. Instructions, input format requirements, and error messages should be written in plain language and...
Supporting the Higher Education Web Professionals Association (HighEdWeb) is not new for DubBot. We have been Silver or Gold sponsors of the Annual Conference since 2018 and the Accessibility Partner in 2021 and again for this year’s...
The University of West Florida utilizes a CMS to manage their website content which allows non-technical users to manage their own web content. While this is a great practice that allows UWF to output timely content, manually reviewing all content...
Even a mild case of COVID-19 can cause long COVID. "It is estimated that anywhere from 10% to 30% of patients might experience long COVID after recovering—even if they weren’t very sick in the first place." ~ What...
We all want that web page we’ve been searching for to be viewable, usable, and interactive with lightning speed. But alas, that is not always the case. We have all had to "Let the Spinning Wheel spin," much to our displeasure and...
There are many different models of disability, along with varying titles and definitions, so it can get confusing. For the purpose of this post, we will be looking at just three of those models…medical, tragedy / charity, and social....
What is Microcopy? According to Adobe, "...microcopy refers to the tiny tidbits of copy found on websites, applications, and products - from the words that comprise a call to action, to the disclaimers that assure users that their email address...
Did you know that just by making your website accessible you also are boosting your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts AND improving your organic search rankings? Pretty awesome, right? DubBot scans and tests for six in-page elements...
What is Artificial Intelligence? According to the Oxford dictionary, artificial intelligence (AI) is "the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech...
According to the Center for Plain Language, "Readability is about making your digital content clear and easy to understand. When you focus on readability, you increase the chance your target audience will actually read and interact with your...
According to Psychology Today, "a heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows an individual to make a decision, pass judgment, or solve a problem quickly and with minimal mental effort." Heuristics are also referred to as "a rule of thumb," which...
Happy New Year to you and yours from your friends at DubBot! 3 New Year's Resolutions Invite people with lived experience to the table.Systemic barriers in policy, practice or procedure mean that some people are excluded or receive less than...
What’s the difference between accessible design and inclusive design? Accessible design and Inclusive design, "Along with other human-centered concepts such as Ethical Design and Responsible Design, they [form] a vanguard of design...
3Things - Procuring Accessible ICT Asking the Right Questions for Procuring Inclusive, Accessible TechnologyPostsecondary institutions have obligations to ensure the accessibility of electronic content, especially content purchased from third...
3Things - User Testing Edition Why You Need to Do User Testing with Deaf and Hard of Hearing PeopleOne of the most powerful ways to ensure your content is accessible is to involve people with disabilities at all stages of development and...
What is the Accessibility Tree? Simply put, the Accessibility Tree is what all operating systems use to power assistive technology. It is a modified Document Object Model (DOM). A browser takes the DOM and modifies it into a form that is useful...
WCAG 3.0: What you need to know about the future of accessibility standards WCAG 3.0 will be here soon and it will represent a significant shift in how accessibility is measured. Apple’s IPad Gets Assistive Technology...
Before emojis, there were emoticons. Emoticon is short for "emotion icon." Emoticons are "pictorial representations of facial expressions using characters — usually punctuation marks, numbers and letters — to express a...
Introducing updates to make it easier for guests with disabilities to travel Under our new accessibility review process, Hosts simply submit photos of the accessibility features in their home, which are then manually reviewed by a...
Those of us in the digital accessibility field can spot an accessible video at 20 paces. But what about an inclusive video? What does one look like? Producing an inclusive video means designing with accessibility in mind — captions,...
3Things - Thanksgiving Edition How to Be a Good Thanksgiving Host to Guests with DisabilitiesWhile disabled needs may not be as familiar as non-disabled needs, they’re not...
CVS withdraws Supreme Court case on disability rights, announces new partnership The plaintiffs objected to changes to the company's terms that meant they could not opt out of mail-only delivery or utilize another pharmacy with...
It’s been said that disability is the "missing D" in diversity and inclusion discussions and initiatives. In December 2020, research conducted by The Valuable 500 showed that "only three percent of articles discussing diversity...
Lauren Ridloff, Marvel's first deaf superhero"[I] hope that, by bringing my story to the audience, people from marginalized communities will feel that there’s room for their own stories." Nyle DiMarco, deaf super model"I sent in my...
The 3 functions of alternative text: Screen readers announce alternative text in place of images, helping users with visual or certain cognitive disabilities perceive the content and function of the images. If an image fails to load...
On November 2, DubBot’s own Blaine Herman will be joining other experts in accessible technology for the November Meetup of the NY Tech Alliance. The NY Tech Alliance was created in 2016 when the NY Tech Meetup and the New York...
3 Higher Ed Accessibility Professional Organizations Access Technology Higher Education Network (ATHEN)ATHEN is a professional association and network for Access Technology in Higher Education. The purpose of ATHEN is to collect and disseminate...
3 Things, 3 Jobs WatchOS Accessibility Engineer - Apple, Inc. - Santa Clara Valley (Cupertino), CaliforniaApple's Accessibility team is looking for a motivated Software Engineer to help develop and enhance features that make watchOS more usable...
Happy National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM)! This year's theme is "America’s Recovery: Powered by Inclusion." As our nation begins the process of recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s more important...
3 Things, 3 Disability Activisits Marilyn Golden"Radicalized" after an accident left her disabled, she became a "linchpin" in the fight for the Americans With Disabilities Act as a leading policy analyst. Robert Marx"We had a common experience...
Ensuring that your organization utilizes appropriate alt text for images within your website is pretty much considered Accessibility 101. For those readers who are not familiar, alt text or alternative text is the text version of an image read to...
Colorblind Accessibility ManifestoBefore designing a website, or even making a small change to an existing one, ask if your design choices consider the needs of people with color blindness. Changing the button color on your website may seem...
Carousels. Some people love ‘em, and some people hate ‘em! Yet they are one of the most popular ways of displaying content. One reason for that is carousels are a quick way to appease multiple stakeholders who want their...
A case for accessibility statements in app stores In Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store, apps can have certain bits of meta data. Categories, localisations, price, privacy policy URL… but where is...
Back in 2018, I met quite an amazing young man. His name is Tyler. He was attending the university where I work and was in the last semester of his last year. I had actually sought him out. I desperately needed an expert in the use of screen...
3 Things - 3 TED Talks Edition Simple Hack for a Life with Parkinson's Mileha Soneji is a trained strategic product designer, originally hailing from the city of Pune in India. The Cost of Failing to Design AccessiblyKings Floyd is a...
Why are web content writers, designers and managers still using "Click Here" (or "Read More," "Learn More," etc.) as link text when it has been shown repeatedly it's just not best practice? Maybe it’s time for a refresher course on...
The Summer Paralympics, sometimes referred to as the Games of the Paralympian, are held in the same host city as the Olympics, with two weeks between the close of the Olympics and the opening ceremony of the Paralympics. The first official...
Creating an accessible PDF from InDesign is a relatively simple process, but depending on the file size, it can be time-consuming. To keep me on track, I keep a list of accessibility "must do's" when preparing an InDesign document for export to...
Some History on Disability Pride Month Did you know July is Disability Pride Month? I admit it wasn’t until last week when I read an article in Diversability Magazine that I learned about it. In July of 1990, when the...
What is ALT text? ALT text (ALT being short for alternative) is referred to in several different ways: ALT text, ALT tag, ALT attribute, ALT description and simply, alternative text. ALT text serves several purposes: It is read by screen...
Using automated scanning software, such as DubBot, and manual testing are two excellent ways to identify potential accessibility issues in your digital assets. There is one more tool you can add to the mix and that is analytics. Finding an...
Creating a business case for web accessibility can be difficult, especially when, as accessibility professionals, we just "get it!" We know why accessibility is important and that it should be baked into all of our information and communication...
Happy Global Accessibility Awareness Day!! Participate! Spread Awareness! Talk about it! Think about it! Learn about it! Create digital access, opportunity and inclusion for everyone. GAAD website | ...
Recently, I was asked to review an email newsletter and report any accessibility issues that I found. Wow, was I surprised! I don't expect most people to know that they need to build digital communications with accessibility in mind. But I did...
Each year on the third Thursday of May, we celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). But how did GAAD begin? Who started it? What’s GAAD really all about? GAAD "started" on Sunday, November 27, 2011, when Joe...
What is plain language? "A communication is in plain language if its wording, structure, and design are so clear that the intended readers can easily find what they need, understand what they find, and use that information." ~ Center for...
What are the components of a robust procurement process for technology that ensures accessibility needs are identified and addressed in the planning, requirements gathering, research and evaluation phases as well as the determination of...
VPAT: Voluntary Product Accessibility Template A VPAT is a document used to describe the level of conformance of an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) product against the standards outlined in WCAG, Section 508 and EN 301 549. An ICT...
"A national emergency does not exempt federal, state, and local governments from providing equal access," wrote Mark Riccobono, president of the National Federation of the Blind, in a letter to the U.S. Health and Human Services...
Look at the two images below. Both are the footer section of the White House website. The first one is dated Jan. 15, 2021. The second one, Jan. 25, 2021. Putting the obvious difference in the look and feel aside, what do you notice? Think A11Y....
What, exactly, are tags? In a PDF, tags provide the logical structure that controls how the content is presented or “read” by assistive technology. Tags identify the content type, such as Sect, P, Table, Span, to name just a...
What Is an Overlay? According to Dictionary.com, an overlay is: noun something laid over something else; covering. a layer or decoration of something applied: an overlay of gold. Accessibility overlays are very similar ... they are laid...
An accessibility statement is a public communication that reflects your organization’s policies, standards, methods, and goals related to the accessibility of your web content, web and mobile applications, and information communication...
'Persona' Defined A persona is defined as "a single representation of a cluster of target users who represent similar behaviors, goals and motivations." ~ © Nielsen Norman Group More simply put, personas are models, usually...
Today’s websites and web apps can be very complex. Many consists of 1000s of code lines, multiple user interactions, custom color palettes, and video and audio content. Automated quality assurance tools, such as DubBot, are critical in...
Color blindness encompasses a large number of causes and conditions, and it's complicated and complex. Wait! Come back! I promise I won’t be talking about cones and rods...whew! When we talk about color blindness, we refer to the most...
One might wonder what digital accessibility has to do with the 75th observance of the National Disability Employment Awareness Month. According to Jennifer Sheehy, Deputy Asst. Secretary of Labor for Disability Employment Policy...
What’s the difference between 404 and 301? Simply put, an HTTP 404 status code indicates that your browser cannot find the page requested, “File Not Found.” When a user requests a nonexistent webpage, you should...
While improving color and color contrast to be accessible can prove technically to be some of the simpler changes to make within a website, there is often pushback on getting these changes in place. It is no wonder too! Color and color contrast...
Global Accessibility Awareness Day is a great time to reflect on the efforts of inclusion that we make with the work we put forward. It seems that the world changed in the last few months to focus less on experiences in a physical space and moving...
While priorities, resources, and timelines have shifted significantly over the past month, there is still a need to continue to iterate and improve website accessibility, user experience, and overall content availability. More now than ever,...
...and OMG, 2020 is almost here! With the holidays fast approaching, I thought this article by Forrester Research geared towards people who manage retail websites was a great, short read with some useful tips for all website managers. Retailers:...
Alternative text is the textual alternative for media for people who have visual issues and utilize technology such as screen readers when browsing a website. Simply put: the alternative text is what supplements the media for someone who can not...
In May, we observed Global Accessibility Awareness Day with a Lunch-and-Learn. We discussed different accessibility challenges and our takeaways from participating in one of the suggested ideas for raising awareness from the GAAD website. I am...
DubBot is committed to making a more usable internet for everyone, so we are excited to be participating in Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). Everyone at DubBot will be trying out at least one of the suggestions from the GAAD website. In...
Working with DubBot, I know the amount of work our users put into convincing others to care about the quality and the accessibility of their websites. I know that you may sometimes feel like you are in a battle with an Empire of dark forces. It...
Read More, Click Here, Learn More! As a developer, I have seen these phrases and other “Calls to Action” thousands of times in web designs and content that I have been asked to post. I struggle with this myself sometimes. I...
Walking around as an individual three years ago, I was unaware of the challenges that others may be having moving in the same space that I was. Now three years later, having gone through pregnancy, having a baby in a stroller, and then having that...
In a blog post earlier this year, I highlighted some accessibility woes that Dominoes and Beyoncé were currently experiencing. Today, I thought it would be a good idea to highlight a study released by Microsoft that shows more Americans...
As January closes and February approaches, we're excited to see that DubBot is ready for the winter weather. Being based out of Atlanta, yes, we are just now having to really be winter-ready! To keep DubBot users prepared, we are also excited to...
Aside from both having great delivery? They both now have accessibility woes! While many organizations have already prioritized tackling accessibility issues they find on their website as outlined by WCAG, 2019 presents a couple of high name...
Happy holidays from DubBot! We are excited to introduce you to our reindeer bot. He will serve as a guide to light the way through checking your website during the darkest of days. One could say he has a nose for finding accessibility issues. The...
