Pope Tech release notes for 2025.
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.
October 16th Release Notes
Web Accessibility Platform Updates
- Fixed an issue where in-product Help Center links to Result Documentation weren’t working.
- Fixed issue with Result Documentation pagination.
- Fixed pagination issue in the Template view’s Versions and Pages Not Included widget.
Canvas Accessibility Dashboard Updates
- Updated the focus and hover styles of the navigation tabs.
October 9th Release Notes
Minor updates and bug fixes.
Web Accessibility Platform Updates
- Improved error messaging when creating templates and regions.
- Updated PDF Result Details report so that longer URLs are shortened.
Canvas Accessibility Dashboard Updates
- Fixed issues with text color not changing when using the Accessibility Guide for updates.
September 25th Release Notes
These updates include several new features, minor updates, and bug fixes.
Scanning Engine updates
Google Docs Detection
Both the Web Accessibility Platform and Canvas Accessibility Dashboard now detect Google Docs, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Videos, Forms, and Files.
Learn more about each new result in Result Documentation.
Other updates
Updated WAVE Scanning engine, which included improvements to label results with two inputs and underlined text results with links within spans.
Updates for Web Accessibility Platform
New Detail View
The new Detail View is available when you drill down to specific accessibility result types. It gives information specific to that result type if applicable, the code snippet, and documentation.
For example, a Very Low Contrast error gives the contrast ratio, plus a contrast picker tool to explore more accessible color combinations.
Customize invite email
Organizations can now customize the invite email sent to new users, and if that email is sent from the organization’s support team.
More guidance in AIM Score
Pope Tech now detects if there are certain results and will give that information. For example, if there are no empty labels on the page, you’ll get that information to help as you review the page. The selections are also more straightforward, making it clearer what to select and giving more consistent results.
Other Web Accessibility Platform Updates
- Added the ability to remove users from groups instead of deleting them from whole account.
- Combined Very Low Contrast error with other errors in Result documentation.
- Added URL location of PDF and YouTube video in Result Detail CSV reports.
- Added total errors and total alerts to the website list view.
- Updated Accessibility Progress Report emails.
- Improved crawl and scan error messaging.
- Fixed issue with manual testing status not updating.
- Fixed issue with crawls getting stuck.
- Fixed scanning issues, including duplicate scans.
- Improved result matching for dismissed results and regions.
- Fixed dashboard filtering issue.
Updates for Canvas Accessibility Dashboard
- Fixed issues with dismiss not working at the course level.
- Updated icons for Syllabus and Quiz content to view.
- Resolved discrepancies between Canvas Dashboard and Accessibility Guide results.
- Fixed issue with Canvas Studio results being removed when editing a content block with a Canvas Studio result.
- Forced rescans when dismissing results and turning on caption checking for YouTube and Canvas Studio to make sure counts and results update.
- In reports, contrast errors are now included with errors.
- Drilling down to other documents from the Documents and Videos widget takes you to a list of only document and video-related results.
- Updated wording in reports from “Course scanned” to “Content blocks scanned.”
- Fixed issue where embedded Canvas Studio videos weren’t getting caption results.
August 14th Release Notes
This update includes a new beta feature, a combined view when drilling into results, and other minor updates and bug fixes.
Combined “code”, “dismiss” and “create task” views
When drilled into your results, the dismiss and create task options are now available through the Code button.
Accessibility progress report in beta
Have a new manual testing option called the Accessibility Progress Report in beta. If customers are interested in trying, please contact Pope Tech.
Users complete questions with support from the Assistant content about their current accessibility state, and get a report to document and share.
Other Web Accessibility Platform Updates
- Improved dismiss results based on exact match functionality.
- Fixed pages loading when selecting pages for AIM Score.
- Fixed bulk edit functionality.
- Fixed user interface issues after dismissing contrast errors.
- Included contrast errors in Most Common Error section in reports.
- Fixed scheduled scan reporting configuration issues when using combined crawl and scan.
- Merged contrast errors with other errors to fix pages duplicating and not showing accurate most common error in page lists.
- Fixed issues with scanning behind a login.
- Fixed page timeout issues when scanning related to WAVE updates.
- Fixed issue with reports failing.
- Improved error messaging for crawls.
- Moved all customers that hadn’t already opted in to the updated combined crawl and scan interface. Now you can crawl and scan websites with one action.
Canvas Accessibility Dashboard Updates
- Fixed issues running reports.
- Fixed issues where alternative email formats weren’t converting.
- Added Alternative Formats to Canvas’s New Files view.
- Fixed column alignment issues in Canvas course dashboard.
May 9th Release Notes
Minor updates and bug fixes.
Canvas Accessibility Dashboard Updates:
- Fixed issue with Most Common Issues Pie Chart where content was cut off on hover/focus.
Web Accessibility Platform Updates
- Improved performance for AIM Score page sample selection for websites with many pages.
- Improved Global search to be more accurate and return more relevant results.
- Fixed issues for Errors By Group dashboard when filtered by a specific website.
May 6th Release Notes
Small improvements and bug fixes.
Web Accessibility Platform Updates
- Updated API docs to add support for Combined Crawl and Scan with new Scan Containers endpoint. Deprecated old crawl and scan endpoints. Deprecated endpoints will be supported until July 15th.
- Fixed issue with drilling into Most Common Issues from the Dashboard when the Date Filter is used.
- Fixed issue with displaying Manual test when the scheduled date is today’s date.
Canvas Accessibility Dashboard Updates
- Fixed issue with recurring reports not displaying in the recurring section.
- Improved Caption detection for Canvas Studio videos when embedded through Rich Content Editor (RCE).
April 21st Release Notes
Update fixed various bugs and minor improvements.
Following updates were for Web Accessibility Platform and Canvas Accessibility Dashboard:
- Updated WAVE Scanning engine which included improvements to label results with hidden inputs.
- Updated CSV Reports to not generate a file if it would have been empty.
Web Accessibility Platform Updates
- Updated message when page limit is reached by Crawler to not set the Crawl status to an error but still have a status message that the page limit was reached.
- Improved flow when drilling into results from template results.
- Fixed issue with blank timestamps for scan start times with combined crawl and scan.
- Updated remaining filters and csv report columns to always include contrast errors with the Errors category.
- Fixed pagination issue with displaying the selected website in filters when there are more than 50 websites.
- Added display of specific crawl error in the Crawl/Scan widget on the Website view without having to drill into the details.
- Improved handling of edge cases for breadcrumbs.
- Fixed issue drilling into Inspect from Result Details Preset.
April 14th Release Notes – Canvas Accessibility Dashboard Updates
This update includes two of the top requested features, the ability to dismiss results and account level filters in the Admin Dashboard.
Dismiss Results
Dismissing a result means it won’t show in the Accessibility Guide, dashboard, or reports. Dismissed results will stay dismissed unless the html changes. Dismissed Results is a setting that can be turned on in your org settings for the entire account.
Dismissed results specifically allow users to review Alerts and dismiss them if they are not an issue. Errors can also be dismissed currently but a future update will make this an organization setting if dismissed results should only be available for Alerts. Most organizations won’t need to be able to dismiss Errors.
Review how to Dismiss Results.
Other Updates
- Account filter in Admin Dashboard that allows you to filter the dashboard to any sub account underneath the current Canvas Account that the admin dashboard was accessed from.
- Fixed issue with CSV report not completing for some large accounts.
- UI cleanup of smaller issues with report creation and dashboards.
Feb 27th Release Notes
Canvas Accessibility Dashboard Updates
Update includes new caption detection features for YouTube videos and Canvas Studio videos.
YouTube Caption checking is now released as a Beta feature that can be turned on in your admin settings inside of Canvas for your account.
YouTube Caption detection tests embedded YouTube Videos and links to YouTube videos to find out if the video has no caption track, automated caption track, or an uploaded caption track. This is valuable for finding and prioritizing the captioning of videos.
Results include:
- YouTube automated captions (Alert)
- YouTube captions (Feature)
- YouTube video missing captions (Error)
- YouTube video not found (Alert)
The old result of YouTube video (Alert) won’t show on videos scanned after turning on YouTube Caption detection and will be replace by one of the new results.
Review new YouTube Caption results documentation.
Canvas Studio integration for Caption Detection
Once set up the integration with Canvas Studio will detect if videos in your courses added through Canvas Studio have a caption track added. This helps prioritize results. If the integration is not set up in your account Canvas Studio videos are still detected but show up as an Alert for all videos.
To set this up follow the steps in the Canvas Studio Integration documentation.
Other Canvas Updates
- Improved error message when 3rd party cookies are blocked and the LTI doesn’t load.
Web Accessibility Platform Updates
Small improvements and bug fixes include:
- Changed default when scheduling a scan to crawl the website if combined crawl and scan is turned on. This doesn’t change existing schedules.
- Added ability to add YouTube Results to Result Details presets for reports.
- Improved flow for combined crawl and scan when an account is at its page limit.
- Added scan context and link to Automated section of AIM score report.
- Fixed issue where some result detail reports were getting errors.
Feb 18th Release Notes – Web Accessibility Platform Updates
AIM Score Launch
The AIM or Accessibility Impact score is a score from 1-10 that combines automated testing with 10 manual tests across a 4+ page sample (How the AIM Score is generated). It is a tool to that helps organizations have a clearer picture of the accessibility across their websites in a way that is repeatable, measurable, and approachable.
Layering Automated testing, AIM Scores and full manual audits is an achievable way to implement web accessibility testing. Learn more about How your organization can use the AIM Score.
The AIM Score is available for all Scanning and Professional Plan account, requires the “Track Manual Testing” permission.
Getting started with the AIM Score
An AIM Score is created or edited through the Manual Tests view under Accessibility in the Main left side navigation or when editing a website from the Manual Testing Widget.
The first step of an AIM score is to create a 4 page sample.
Each Step or accessibility test has an AIM Score Assistant that helps you create your AIM score including accessibility training videos. The AIM Score Wizard can also be a useful training tool on how to get started with manual testing.
The AIM Score is not a complete manual audit but goes through 10 common tests that are each rated 1 to 10 along with the ability to leave comments. The final question is an overall ranking of the accessibility of the page after reviewing the other questions. We find that the typical page takes 7-15 minutes to test once someone is trained. Initially it will take longer as someone levels up their accessibility knowledge.
AIM Score report
The report view includes 3 scores, The Automated and Manual score which combine to create the overall AIM Score. The AIM score is also visible on the website view and in the Dashboard for Professional Plan accounts in the Manual Scorecard.
YouTube Caption Detection launch
YouTube Caption checking is now released as a feature that can be turned on in your organization settings and is no longer beta status.
YouTube Caption detection tests embedded YouTube Videos and links to YouTube videos to find out if the video has no caption track, automated caption track, or an uploaded caption track. This is valuable for finding and prioritizing the captioning of videos.
Results include:
- YouTube automated captions (Alert)
- YouTube captions (Feature)
- YouTube video missing captions (Error)
- YouTube video not found (Alert)
The old result of YouTube video (Alert) won’t show on videos scanned after turning on YouTube Caption detection and will be replace by one of the new results.
Review new YouTube Caption results documentation.
Other Updates
- Added ability to track website owners on websites (only available with Combined Crawl and Scan turned on).
- Added org and user timezone settings
- Fixed issue with adding pages to AIM score on some websites.
- Fixed issue with scanning behind authentication sometimes requiring you to reenter the password even when it wasn’t changed.
- Fixed issue with some external Result Detail reports that weren’t including the result HTML.
- Fixed issue where some websites were getting a ERR-999 error and not scanning.
- Improved edge case handling for YouTube caption checking where the video URL was encoded.
- Improved edge case handling for dismissed results with invalid html in the <head>
Feb 4th Release Notes
This release included the latest WAVE testing engine update with minor improvements to rule logic and significant performance improvements in loading time for scans. Assets that have no impact on accessibility are conditionally not loaded.
Web Accessibility Platform Updates
- Added support for YouTube Caption checking into the Inspect functionality.
- Fixed issue on a small number of websites where blocked host couldn’t be removed.
- Fixed issue with UI when adding more than 10 templates to a website.
- Fixed issue with code view and dismissing results when there is invalid html of a <noscript> tag in the <head>.
- Fixed issue with external reports with template content results linking to all results.
Canvas Accessibility Dashboard Updates
- Fixed issue with Accessibility Guide button location when editing a published discussion
- Fixed issue where Date picker was showing the wrong day of the week.
For additional recent updates view Release Notes – 2024.