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...
Once upon a time in an office not so far away, a bot was created to simplify your life. It was designed to keep an eye on your website, let you know if something went wrong, pages went down, links got broken, content publishers went rogue, or you...
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...
May 19 is Global Accessibility Awareness Day! Purpose The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion, and the more than One Billion people with disabilities/impairments. How to...
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...
3 Jobs Edition Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence ~ Georgia Institute of TechnologyThe College of Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology seeks experienced applicants for the position of Associate Dean for...
Voters with Disabilities Face New Ballot Restrictions Ahead of MidtermsAs voters went to the polls last month in the Texas primary, the voting rights hotline lit up at the nonprofit advocacy agency Disability Rights Texas. Delaware groups raise...
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...
Help celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) on May 19! Here are three ways you and your organization can participate. (The following are taken directly from the GAAD website.) Publish a blog post on or before Global...
The 11th annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is on Thursday, May 19, 2022. "The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion, and the more than One Billion people with...
#DeafTalent #DeafTalent was started as a way for actors, performers, and directors who are deaf to push back against an industry that continuously hires hearing individuals when a deaf individual would be a much more appropriate choice....
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...
3 Jobs Edition Digital Accessibility Specialist ~ Elsevier, Philadelphia/PAAs a Senior Accessibility Specialist, you will develop and oversee the delivery of compliant and usable designs for our global e products. You will...
What is a design pattern? "User interface (UI) design patterns are reusable/recurring components which designers use to solve common problems in user interface design. For example, the breadcrumbs design pattern lets users retrace their steps....
Letters to the Editor: Aphasia is a form of hidden disability Following reports in the media about the condition, it is clear that there needs to be a conversation about aphasia. There needs to be accurate reporting and a clear...
Paralympic Gold Medalist Changes Adaptive Sports Paralympic gold medalist Mike Schultz lost his leg in a snowmobile race in 2008 — now he’s creating lower limb prosthetic equipment for high-impact gravity sports. How the...
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...
3 Focus State Facts Focus states need to have at least a 3:1 contrast ratio against the background color. All interactive components on a page need a focus state, not just buttons or links. Focus states cannot just be a color change. You need...
3 Podcasts AccessAbility Works is a podcast that explains authentic digital inclusion —ensuring that organizations’ digital offerings, websites, mobile apps, and work environments are accessible and usable to people of all...
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....
3 Jobs Edition Accessibility Program Manager, AWS Accessibility ~ AmazonAs an Accessibility Program Manager, you will work with global teams to develop and implement strategies to improve accessibility. You will establish,...
Your Wordle Results Are Annoying, but Not for the Reasons You ThinkWhen sharing Wordle results and other emoji-heavy content, it’s important to know how inaccessible these results can be for disabled people and what it is like to have...
What do we mean when we talk about best practices? Merriam-Webster defines best practices as "a procedure that has been shown by research and experience to produce optimal results and that is established or proposed as a standard...
The crisis is real: Where are the web accessibility professionals?The shortage of qualified talent is felt by all of us. But from where will these individuals come, and how can we accelerate their availability? How To Hire For Digital...
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...
3 A11Y Meetup Groups WordPress Accessibility MeetupVirtual meetups on making WordPress websites accessible with ASL interpretation and live captions. This meetup has been officially approved for Continuing Accessibility Education Credits for...
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 that...
3 Tips for Accessible Emails Use Headers. If you use headers screen reader users are able to work out the hierarchy of the page. Use contrasting colours for backgrounds and text. Some colours might look nice but don't work in terms of...
NYC Gallery Displays Works By Artists With Special NeedsA Manhattan gallery known for displaying works by world-famous names is hosting a rare exhibit by a unique group of relative unknowns: artists with autism and other special needs. 'As We...
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...
3Etiquette Best Practices Ask before you help Just because someone has a disability, don’t assume she needs help. If the setting is accessible, people with disabilities can usually get around fine. Adults with...
Why Miss America Winner Emma Broyles Considers ADHD To Be Her 'Superpower'"She even shared that while sometimes having ADHD is a struggle, she sees some aspects of it as an advantage or "superpower." Artist Makes Prostheses With Darker Skin...
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...
3Jobs Edition Manager, Accessibility Center for Excellence (COE) - TwitterAs part of this team you’ll be using your knowledge of Accessibility and Disabilities to help integrate accessibility into Twitter’s...
Some of you may have noticed a new report available to you in DubBot. That’s right, the Web Governance Report. We are really excited about this one! The Web Governance report will combine Custom Checks (soon to be called "Policies") and...
Back in December, I posted an article A11Y vs Inclusion that discussed the differences and similarities between accessible and inclusive design practices. Here’s a short review: Definitions: According to Adobe...
Happy New Year! 3Things from 2021 Department of Justice reached settlement agreements related to digital and physical accessible with dozens of entities. Here's a few: Kroger Brown University Rite Aid (PDF) The disability...
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...
The designers, programmers, and engineers at DubBot have been burning the midnight oil over the past several months and have released quite a few important updates. Let me tell you about the three most exciting (and requested) updates to be...
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...
3 Things - 3 Paralympic Games Highlights Oksana Masters Is One of the Most Decorated Paralympians in History Surprise wedding proposal melts hearts on the track at 200m 2020 Tokyo Paralympics: Moments to Remember
The war in Afghanistan has been officially declared over with approximately 116,700 people evacuated, according to the latest information from the White House. Among those evacuated are scholars, students, faculty, and higher education personnel...
Closed Captioning vs. Subtitles: What's The Difference? OPEN vs CLOSED Captions - Why & How to Add Them to Videos Online Transcription Vs. Captioning | What's the Difference?
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...
3Things 3 Conferences Edition Inclusive Design 24 (#id24) - September 23, 2021This is a free 24-hour online event for the global community. It celebrates inclusive design and shares knowledge and ideas from analogue to digital, from design to...
Accessibility and SEO ~ The A11Y ProjectSearch engine optimization and accessibility have a lot more in common than you would think. Many of the same practices that we use to enable everyone to enjoy our digital experiences also open...
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...
PDF Accessibility Remediation Software Tools: A Detailed ComparisonThis article compares the top PDF remediation tools: CommonLook PDF, Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, axesPDF, AccessibilityNow® Remediate, and Equidox. The article should help you...
3Things 3 Jobs Edition Disability Specialist - University of Pennsylvania The Disability Specialist advocates for the inclusion of students with disabilities and assists the university in maintaining...
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...
3Things, 3 Screen Readers Using VoiceOver to Evaluate Web Accessibility Using NVDA to Evaluate Web Accessibility Using JAWS to Evaluate Web Accessibility
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...
'I am not ashamed': Disability advocates, experts implore you to stop saying 'special needs'Most experts and advocates vehemently oppose the term "special needs," and believe we need to eliminate it from our vernacular. Furthermore, they say...
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...
'I am not ashamed': Disability advocates, experts implore you to stop saying 'special needs'Most experts and advocates vehemently oppose the term "special needs," and believe we need to eliminate it from our vernacular. Furthermore, they say...
Welcome to the 3Books Edition of 3Things Accessibility for EveryoneYou make the web more inclusive for everyone, everywhere, when you design with accessibility in mind. Let Laura Kalbag guide you through the accessibility...
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...
HigherEdWeb Association - Accessibility SummitCheck out the Program Schedule and Meet the Presenters for this awesome gathering of accessibility professionals. Registration is open! The Summit will be online on Tuesday, July 20. Position...
Happy June to all! We’re excited to be edging closer and closer to summer. We’re even more excited to share information about our new feature, sharable reports. We added sharable reports as an optional way to view and share...
500 global firms put disability inclusion on boardroom agendas - The Guardian The Valuable 500 global disability network said it had reached its target to get 500 major companies to put disability inclusion on their boardroom agenda,...
Why We Need Universal Design | Michael Nesmith | TEDxBoulder Tech for disabled people is booming around the world. So where’s the funding? - restofworld.org Although the last few years have seen significant advances in...
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...
Position Available: Digital Accessibility Consultant, University of ArizonaThe Digital Accessibility Consultant works to ensure that University of Arizona's technology-based teaching and learning software, applications, tools, and resources are...
#CovidAccessibilityBugBountyICYMI - To celebrate GAAD, BarrierBreak announced the #CovidAccessibilityBugBounty campaign, giving people across the world an opportunity to put their accessibility skills to use by testing COVID-19 websites and...
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...
A11YTalksVirtual meet-ups featuring speakers & conversations around digital accessibility. Blind people, advocates slam company claiming to make websites ADA compliant"Blind people say AccessiBe, which is supposed to automatically make...
United in Accessibility - podcast from the International Association of Accessibility ProfessionalsThe United in Accessibility podcast offers shared experiences, solutions, and barriers that impact diversity and inclusion in...
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...
Global Accessibility Awareness Day - May 20, 2021The idea of a Global Accessibility Awareness Day started with a single blog post written by a Los Angeles-based web developer, Joe Devon. See Joe’s Blog post that...
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...
HighEdWeb 2021 Accessibility Summit - July 20, 2021The HighEdWeb 2021 Accessibility Summit is a one-day, online event focused on digital accessibility in higher education. This position is no longer available.Position Available: Access...
IAAP and Fundación ONCE Launches a Spanish Chapter for Accessibility Professionals"The Spanish Chapter will provide accessibility professionals, who support equal access in both the built and digital environments by promoting and...
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...
FREE Promo for Higher Ed! THIS PROMOTION HAS EXPIREDCommonLook is providing a free, 6-month subscription to two of their best-selling PDF accessibility software solutions: CommonLook PDF and CommonLook Office. Promo runs March 26 through...
