Pope Tech release notes for 2023.
Want to know what has been updated recently at Pope Tech? You are in the right place. These release notes include all updates, including small updates and bug fixes.
The Release Notes include updates for both Pope Tech products, the Web Accessibility Platform (scan websites) and Canvas Accessibility Dashboard (scan courses).
Any questions or feedback don’t hesitate to contact us.
May 25th, 2023 – Web Accessibility Platform updates
Added non-exact match dismiss option
This feature allows users to decrease noise in dashboards and reports for results that have already been reviewed but the the HTML changes between scans.
The dismiss option allows users to remove Error or Alert results from Pope Tech Dashboards and reports. It works by matching the xpath, HTML, and result type of the result. As long as the matched HTML stays the same between scans the dismissed result won’t show on any future scans. If the HTML changes the result comes back. This makes sense because the dismissed accessibility result might now be an issue if the HTML changes.
This does leave a gap for content that dynamically changes between scans that doesn’t change the accessibility of the content. For example some Single Page Applications (SPAs) will add dynamic attributes for scoping that will change with each deployment. This update helps bridge that gap.
Now when dismissing a single result there is a checkbox for “Exact Match?” that is checked by default. If this is unchecked you can change the html that is being dismissed to remove the dynamic part that doesn’t impact accessibility. You could remove the front or end of the HTML (or both).
In this example we have a <noscript> element that is only loading a CSS file and has no accessibility impact. With each deploy the CSS file name is dynamically changed as a cache buster.
After unchecking the “Exact Match?” checkbox the html that is going to be dismissed is displayed and editable. If we dismissed the entire HTML with each deploy it would come back when the css file name changes. By removing the dynamic part, the dismissed result will persist across deployments.
This is very flexible and can be used in a wide range of situations.
Added Order panel to Pope Tech Inspect functionality
The Order panel shows all of the navigable page elements along with their order, role and accessible name. This can be accessed from the Inspect view between the Reference and Structure panels.
The Inspect WAVE engine was also updated and significant performance optimizations were added to decrease the load time of the Inspect view.
Other Updates
- Fixed issue with dismissed results not persisting that contain “&”.
- Fixed issue with dismissed results not persisting that contained encoded quotes “"”.
- Resolved issue where a small number of reports weren’t running.
May 11th, 2023
Includes updates to the WAVE scanning engine and various bug fixed for both the Web Accessibility Platform and Canvas LMS Dashboards.
Web Accessibility Platform updates
- Updated WAVE scanning engine to latest WAVE version including performance updates and various bug fixes for rare pages that didn’t scan. Fixed some false positive Contrast Error results.
- Fixed issue with Asana integration caused by Asana API update.
- Update scan details API endpoint meta and pagination to be consistent with other endpoints.
Canvas Accessibility Dashboard Updates
- Updated WAVE scanning engine to latest WAVE version including performance updates and various bug fixes for rare pages that didn’t scan. Fixed some false positive Contrast Error results and included improvements for handling possible list detection.
- When accessing reports from the Course Dashboard previously if the user was an admin and not enrolled in the course that the Pope Tech Dashboard was accessed from the report dropdown didn’t show the current course. The current course will now show as an option for running reports along with any courses the user is enrolled in. All course reports can still be accessed for an admin from the Admin Dashboard.
- Blocked external CSS or JS files from loading during scan. Canvas doesn’t allow CSS or JS to be added via API or in the editor but we ran into issues where content created by a 3rd party was somehow adding CSS/JS files. These files aren’t ever loaded for students so the changes were causing differences in Pope Tech results on a few amount of pages.
- Fixed issue with Accessibility Guide JS error for invalid HTML that was occurring on a small number of pages using a 3rd party plugin.
- Updated JS column on course and page view to check the user enrollment per course and to handle Canvas Lazy load with different sections.
- Fixed issue with the code view not opening in some scenarios with Contrast Errors and Documents and Video results separated from Alerts.
- Sometimes when editing the Syllabus page the Accessibility Guide button didn’t load because of a race condition. Improved this to always load.
May 4th – Canvas Accessibility Dashboard Updates
- Fixed issue with mismatch of Overview and Most Common Issues widgets in course Dashboard.
- Resolved issue where some deleted content was being removed on course scan.
- Fixed issue where some courses weren’t showing in My Dashboard when a user was in dozens of courses.
May 1st, 2023 – Web Accessibility Platform updates
- Fixed issue with errors per page in dashboard double counting contrast errors.
- Fixed issue with code view not opening for contrast errors.
- Updated rounding in email reports to match dashboard.
- Added May monthly focus widget for PDFs and other documents for Professional Plans.
April 27th, 2023 – Web Accessibility Platform updates
This update includes improvements to the dashboard and reports based on user feedback and testing. The scan detail view wasn’t updated but will be later in the year.
Contrast Errors combined with Errors
The Contrast Errors category is moved into the Error category as an Error Result Type and is included in Error totals. This has been updated throughout the dashboard and reports.
Previously confusion occurred where users didn’t realize that Contrast Errors were Errors.
Default metrics normalized per page
Previously the first result in the dashboard was total errors, but often times pages were added or deleted. Additionally with a large number of pages it was difficult to understand what that number means. Normalizing the errors per page was previously added to report emails and has been expanded throughout the dashboard and reports.
Total Errors and Alerts can still be turned on for any applicable dashboard widget in the widget settings.
Additional metrics including an automated score out of 10 and % of pages with no errors will be added to the Automated scorecard later this year.
Dashboard Widget updates
The following widgets in the dashboard have been updated.
Overview Widget upgraded to Automated Scorecard
The top left widget in the dashboard is now the Automated Scorecard widget which defaults to Errors per Page and Alerts per page with Features, Structure and ARIA deemphasized for clarity of the role of each category. Alerts are detectable accessibility issues, Alerts are likely to be issues but need to be reviewed by a human. Features, Structure and ARIA aren’t something you want to get to 0, but are things that can impact accessibility and help with manual testing and identifying issues and patterns.
This widget is customizable. Total Errors and Total Alerts can be turned on. Any category can be turned off. This is a user setting that will automatically save for your user when edited.
Each result in the Automated scorecard now has a delta next to it. This shows the change since 30 days ago from the time the dashboard is loaded. No arrow means no material change. This helps with easily seeing a snapshot of the current trend for filtered website or group.
The Automated Scorecard also now shows the number of pages in the widget header.
Most Common Issues widget
The most common issues widget was updated to include the Very Low Contrast result in the Errors tab. Each result now indicates how many pages it is found on, “162 across 56 pages”. This helps with identifying the impact at a high level.
The colors were updated to not be confused with the category colors. The accessibility was improved so all information is found in the list of top 6 results outside of the pie chart. The table view is still present but the percentage and number of pages found on were added as columns.
Errors By Group widget
A new tab was added to show results “By Page” to be consistent with the rest of the dashboard. By Occurrences and By Density tabs are still available.
Issues Over Time widget
Issues over time updated to default to Errors and Alerts per page for easy benchmarking and tracking progress over time. Errors, Alerts, Pages and Websites can be turned on in the widget settings. Additional metrics including the Automated Score and % of pages with no errors will be added later this year. For Professional Plan accounts the AIM score will be added.
Report Redesign
The HTML and PDF report type formats were redesigned based on feedback and user testing to be more usable. They now interact with the platform more. This includes the following updates:
- Added link to Help Center.
- Replaced Overview with Automated Scorecard.
- Added delta since the last report was run with the same criteria (to match the email reports).
- Added Manual scorecard for Professional Plans.
- Updated Most Common Issues to match dashboard.
- All summary categories listed above now link to the dashboard filtered to the specific results selected.
- Website and Group summary was updated to be Errors per page and Alerts per page.
- Added link to result documentation and report explainer at the bottom of the report summary.
- Page detailed heading updated to link to website in Pope Tech.
- Manual testing status added to website detail if Professional Plan.
- Pages listing updated to link to page with columns that link to the page detail in Pope Tech or WAVE.
April 27, 2023 – Canvas Accessibility Dashboard Updates
- Added support in My Dashboard for courses that you have the TA or Designer roles (or a customer role based on those roles).
- Improved Syncing queue handling.
April 6th, 2023 – Canvas Accessibility Dashboard Updates
This update includes updates for Course Scanning inside of the Canvas LMS.
- Fixed issue with some reports not completing and reran any reports that didn’t complete.
- Updated live events to better handle events with null HTML.
April 2nd, 2023 – Web Accessibility Platform updates
This update included various updates for website scanning.
Added Presets as a filter option inside of Result Details
When drilling into any result category from the dashboard you can now filter the results to any preset, such as all images results or even a custom preset such as all PDFs. These are the same presets that are already available inside of the Result Details report options.
Other Updates:
- Fixed issue on the Scheduled view where the 2nd pagination view had “NaN” values.
- For Professional Plans, updated the monthly focus for April to Alternative text to link directly to the Image presets.
- Fixed issue with some crawls not finishing.
March 28th, 2023 – Canvas Accessibility Dashboard Updates
This update was for Course Scanning (Canvas LMS)
- Fixed issue with deleted content not being removed from dashboard.
- Added in the ability to rescan the course from the course dashboard.
- Added scan status at the top of the course dashboard.
- Fixed issue where Canvas instances with 100s of accounts weren’t able to filter to all accounts, made term and account filters comboboxes so they can be searched easily.
- Added new setting to allow instructors to enable courses that aren’t enabled to be scanned.
- Fixed issue with Admin Dashboard term filter not persisting in course widget pagination.
Feb 28th, 2023
Web Accessibility Platform Updates
- Optimized reports significantly. Reports finish up to 6x as fast with this update.
- Fixed issue with rerunning previous reports.
- Optimized global search, scan listing website listing views. Loads significantly faster with this update.
- Improved support for website mass upload if not all values are filled in.
Canvas Accessibility Dashboard Updates
- Term pagination support for orgs with hundred plus terms.
- Link Accessibility Guide to Canvas Documentation.
- Fixed issue with sorting in course details widget.
- Added setting for JavaScript Columns inside of the Admin Settings view. The JS columns can now be turned on or off.
January 3rd, 2023 – Web Accessibility Platform Update
- Added January Monthly focus to Dashboard for Professional Plans.
December 16th, 2022
This update included the ability to add users to multiple groups, this was prioritized from feedback from our users. We also launched our Professional Plans which include a training program along with the automated scanning.
Add a user to multiple non-nested groups
Prior to this updated the custom group structure for an account required that a user was assigned to one group and would have access to any nested children group underneath the assigned group. With this update a user can be assigned to any number of groups.
The role of the user is the same for all groups. Users can switch between groups using the group filter found in the header of the platform.
To assign a user to multiple groups, simply add a 2nd group after assigning the first when creating or editing a user.
Launched Professional Plans
With the new Professional Plans each account gets seats to a built in training program that includes quarterly training webinars and open office hours, an all-day WebAIM online Training, and access to our Accessibility Help Desk. In addition Professional plans have two new widgets on the dashboard for tracking Manual testing.
Manual Testing Tracking
For Professional Plans there is a new widget called, “Manual Scorecard” that tracks when each website was last manually tested. You also have the ability to schedule how often they should be manually tested.
Learn more how to track manual testing in the Manual Testing tracking article in the Help Center.
Monthly Focus Widget
Each month Pope Tech has a monthly focus topic. This can be followed by anyone. For Professional Plans we integrated the monthly focus into the dashboard along with related Pope Tech results.
Other Updates
- Fixed report links for users that went to invalid pages for some orgs.
- Improved user creation validation.
- Increased text contrast throughout platform.
- Updated icons throughout to be consistent.
- Added Zoom support option from the Help Center. A zoom call can be scheduled.
- Added ability to assign Accessibility Help Desk or Training Seats.
- Added Permission for who can assign Accessibility Help Desk or Training Seats.
- Fixed issue where results with brackets in the html weren’t staying dismissed.
Coming Soon
Based on user feedback will be updating the “Result Types widget in the dashboard to be the “Automated Scorecard” and it will include Errors per page, Alerts per page as well as % of pages with no Errors metrics. You will have the ability to pick which metrics are shown for you in the widget.
Canvas Dashboards Updates
This update included polishing from our Alpha testers feedback along with the ability to separate Documents and Videos results from other results in the dashboard.
Separate Document and Video Results Setting
This is a setting that can be turned on from the Admin Pope Tech LTI Settings inside of Canvas. Once turned on any Documents or Video results won’t show as Alerts but will show as their own category inside of the different dashboards.
Courses scanned before December 2022 will need to be rescanned for this to work. Courses scanned before December 2022 will still show the results as Alerts.
Other Canvas updates Updates
- Fixed issue with undefined pagination.
- Fixed issue where you couldn’t drill into “Link to Canvas Asset” results.
- Changed wording for opening Accessibility Guide from dashboard to always say “Edit”.
- Changed defaults for over time graph.
- Improved performance for JS column loading time in course or page listing.
- Fixed Accessibility issue with content block link not being keyboard accessible.