Category: YuJa EqualGround Accessibility Governance Platform

• November 15, 2024

  EqualGround Accessibility Governance Platform Update – November 2024

  Australia Zone Canada Zone European Union Zone United States Zone YuJa EqualGround Accessibility Governance Platform

  The release provides keyword search ranking evaluations, the option to use AutoPilot and Structural Remediation Add-ons for documents, a new Usability Engine to evaluate the text content quality and validity of links, new Behavior Engine to track visitor analytics, an EqualGround browser extension for web page scanning, the option to specify report access for different roles, a new Accessibility Best Practice metric to enhance web content accessibility, and more.

   

  1. Evaluate How Keywords Affect Website Search Rankings With the Keyword Discovery Report 
     By integrating Google Search Console with EqualGround, you can generate the Keyword Discovery report, which helps determine how keywords are affecting website search ranking. The report can be categorized into four distinct groups:
     • Quick Wins: View words with the highest potential to drive traffic to your website.
     • High Impact: The most searched keywords that can significantly improve your website’s ranking.
     • High Performing: keywords with the most increased rankings to your URLs in the last 30 days.
     • Setbacks: Keywords that have decreased your URL rankings within the last 30 days

     

  2. Use AutoPilot to Resolve Accessibility Issues in Documents 
     When assessing accessibility issues in documents found on your website, AutoPilot can automatically fix supported accessibility issues directly within the original document, ensuring the document does not need to be manually fixed and re-uploaded to your website. AutoPilot can remediate documents in DOCX, PDF, PPTX, and XLSX formats, addressing issues such as:
     • Insufficient contrast between foreground text and background.
     • PDFs that are not tagged properly for screen readers to interpret 
     • Difficulty in reading text due to small font sizes.

     

  3. Use Remediation Max for Advanced Structural Remediation of PDFs
     Remediation Max provides in-line structural remediation to help fix a wide set of accessibility issues across PDF documents. These issues include:
     
     • Fixing the reading order of content by dragging and dropping elements into the correct reading preference.
     • Updating the type value of elements to ensure they are recognized correctly by screen readers.
     • Changing the language of elements so that they are read aloud correctly by screen readers.

     

  4. New Usability Engine to Evaluate the Quality of Text Content and Validity of Links
     EqualGround offers a Usability Engine that evaluates websites based on three essential metrics to ensure they are user-friendly for viewers.
     • Readability: Whether your web content is for young adults or academic professionals, EqualGround provides a customizable readability checker. You can choose from six standardized methods to assess readability, such as the Automated Readability Index and the Coleman-Liau formula. After selecting a method, a grading scale can be selected to determine the maximum readability level suitable for your audience.
     • Spelling: EqualGround offers a built-in standardized American-English spell checker with the option to add words to your own customizable dictionary. As we continue to develop EqualGround, we will offer a wider range of languages.
     • Valid Links: All links on scanned pages are checked to ensure errors are not received.

     

  5. New Behavior Engine to Track Analytics for Website Engagement
     The Behavior Engine monitors several key metrics to analyze visitors to your website. These issues include:
     • Total Visit: The number of visitors to your website.
     • Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors who leave your website without taking any action.
     • Referrals: Visits to your sites from links that have appeared on other websites.

     

  6. Download the EqualGround Browser Extension to Run WCAG and ARIA Checks for Web Pages
     With the launch of the new browser extension, you no longer need to be on the EqualGround platform to run your accessibility scans. On EqualGround, you can access Configurations > User Setup to install the extension and connect it to your platform. Once connected, the accessibility scan can be initiated for your desired web page listing all WCAG and ARIA issues and steps to remediate them.
     
  7. More Granular Role Management Capabilities for Reports
     As an administrator, when creating a role, you can specify particular reports that the role will have access to rather than granting access to all reports. This allows for roles to be specialized in one or more areas of web content improvement.
     
  8. Follow Our Best Practice Guidelines to Make Your Website More Accessible
     In addition to the Accessibility Report’s ability to detect ARIA and WCAG-level issues, EqualGround is offering more ways to enhance web content accessibility by providing a score based on our recommended Accessibility Best Practices. These best practices include detecting issues such as:
     • Any content on a website that is hidden behind tabs or within accordion components in the site’s design.
     • Images that contain duplicate labels.
     • Landmarks on a website that do not contain a unique name or role.

     

  9. More In-Depth SEO Crawling by Including Six New Areas of Improvements
     We have improved our SEO crawling engine to include six new areas where we verify that your website adheres to the latest SEO best practices. The SEO crawler will check for:
     • Open Graph Tags:  Determines how URLs will appear when shared on social media platforms.
     • JSON-LD Structured Data Tags:  Provide organized, standardized, and machine-readable information about a web page.
     • Sitemap:  Provides details about the pages, videos, and files on your site and how they are related to each other.
     • Internal Links:  Checks for the number of internal links on your website.
     • Redirects:  Checks for the number of links that direct to another website.
     • H1 Tags:  Determines the topmost heading for your web page.
     • Alt Text:  Text that represents visual images.
     • Viewport Tags:  Tells browsers how to control viewport dimensions and scaling.

     

  10. Choose the WCAG Conformance Level Your Organization Requires
      Your organization can now select the desired level of WCAG conformance to ensure that their websites meet accessibility standards. In the Website Settings, you can choose whether your organization prefers Level A, Level A and AA, or Level A, AA, and AAA accessibility standards for detecting issues.
  11. More In-Depth Detection of WCAG and ARIA Accessibility Issues
      We have added more than a dozen accessibility checks for WCAG and ARIA-related issues. Some of these issues include:
      • Elements should have visible focus indicators so users can easily see where they are on the page when they navigate using a keyboard.
      • Lists on a web page should be structured correctly, specifically to ensure that assistive technologies can interpret and present the content accurately.
      • Ensure ARIA labels do not have redundant roles, as their implicit role defines their function.

      

  12. New Filters to Organize Accessibility Issues by Their Components or WCGAG Criterion
      We have provided two new filters to the Accessibility Issues panel, allowing you to select whether to view issues by their WCAG criterion or to group issues by their component. The WCAG criterion filter will highlight the issue detected, along with the items affected by the issue. In the new component view, you will be able to see all issues within a related category in one view, including all link, checkbox, list, and button issues displayed in their respective viewport.
      

   

   

• October 4, 2024

  EqualGround Website Accessibility Scanning Platform Update – October 2024

  Australia Zone Canada Zone European Union Zone United States Zone YuJa EqualGround Accessibility Governance Platform

  The release provides real-time accessibility integration with WordPress and Drupal, comprehensive insights into accessibility issues, a new Performance Report metric, use AutoPilot.AI to propose fixes for entire web pages, disable websites from being scanned, at-a-glance accessibility scores for documents, and assign one-time credits to scan pages.

   

  1. Real-Time Accessibility Integration for WordPress and Drupal CMS Including AutoPilot.AI
     If you’re an administrator, you can now integrate your EqualGround Platform into WordPress and Drupal to detect accessibility issues in real time as you create websites. In addition, you will have complete access to AutoPilot to help suggest fixes for issues as they’re found.
     
  2. Comprehensive Insights on Issues: What They Mean and Why They Matter
     EqualGround scans for over 100 potential issues, and we understand that you may not be familiar with each one. To simplify things, when an issue is detected, we now provide concise summaries explaining its significance and why resolving it is important.
     
  3. New Performance Report Metric: Speed Index
     We’ve introduced a new Performance Report metric, the Speed Index, which measures how quickly content becomes visually available during page load.
     
  4. Use AutoPilot.AI to Help Propose Fixes for Entire Web Pages
     In our previous release, we introduced the option to select an issue and for AutoPilot.AI to suggest how to fix it. Now, you can streamline the process by running AutoPilot.AI across an entire web page, allowing you to review all proposed fixes for accessibility issues at once.
     
  5. Disable Websites from Being Scanned
     If you’re looking to pause recurring scans for specific websites, you can now disable those sites from being scanned by EqualGround.
     
  6. At-a-Glance Accessibility Scores for Documents Detected on Web Pages
     When reviewing a document scan of a web page, detected files will display an accessibility score next to them, allowing you to prioritize and address the most concerning documents first.
     
  7. Assign One-Time Credits to Page Scans
     In one-off cases where you require more credits than your monthly limit for page scans, you can contact your Client Success Manager to add additional credits that will remain on EqualGround until used.

   

• August 30, 2024

  EqualGround Website Accessibility Scanning Platform Update – August 2024

  United States Zone YuJa EqualGround Accessibility Governance Platform

  The release provides new Performance, SEO, and Document reports, view WCAG accessibility issues for documents, use AutoPilot for in-line remediation suggestions, color-blind filters for the web report, the option to scan individual pages, specify multiple URLs to exclude from scans, navbar styling options, and the option to customize features available on your EqualGround Platform.

   

  1. Review a Comprehensive Performance Report to Evaluate the Response Time of Web Pages
     Slow-loading content can quickly cause users to lose interest in websites. To enhance user experience, EqualGround offers a comprehensive performance report that evaluates the key speed metrics below, allowing ongoing analysis to maintain or improve performance over time.
     • First Contentful Paint: The time it takes to display the first piece of content.
     • Largest Contentful Paint: The time it takes to display the largest content. 
     • Total Blocking Time: The total time a web page is unresponsive while loading.
     • Time to First Byte: The time it takes for the browser to receive the first piece of information from the server.

     

  2. View Analytics to Improve Search Engine Visibility with SEO Reporting
     The report offers an overview graph to track trends for the overall SEO score across your organization’s websites. Additionally, a table displays each website’s score and provides the option to review issues organized by the number of times they occur across your organization.
     
  3. Evaluate the Accessibility of Files With Document Reporting
     The Document Report provides an in-depth analysis of file accessibility across your organization’s websites. Review analytics on the number of monthly issues and identify the most common problems found within documents.
     
  4. Open Documents in EqualGround to Review WCAG 2.2 Accessibility Issues
     When reviewing reports, documents on the web page will automatically be detected. These documents can then be opened directly within EqualGround to see highlighted WCAG 2.2 accessibility issues and the steps required to resolve them.
     
  5. Use AutoPilot for In-Line Remediation Suggestions to Improve WCAG, ARIA, and SEO Issues
     AutoPilot highlights problematic snippets of web page code and offers solutions to resolve them. These solutions can be easily copied and pasted into the web page’s code to ensure the issues are resolved.
     
  6. View Visual Web Page Reports With Color-Blind Filters
     When reviewing reports in the visual web view, admins can enhance their experience by selecting between various color-blind filters. These filters include options for three common types of color blindness: Protanopia, Deuteranopia, and Tritanopia.
     
  7. Scan Web Pages Individually to Update Their Accessibility Scores
     Organizations can choose to enhance website accessibility one page at a time by scanning individual pages. This approach allows for targeted resolution of accessibility issues specific to each page, ensuring that all issues are addressed before moving on to the next page.
     
  8. Add Multiple URLs to Exclude With the Wildcard Asterisk Character
     Administrators can specify a URL prefix when creating an exclusion URL list by appending an asterisk (*) at the end. This will ensure that all URLs starting with the specified prefix are automatically blocked from being scanned.
     
  9. Custom Branding for the EqualGround Navbar
     Administrators can now personalize their EqualGround navbar by customizing its background and text colors and applying a gradient option.
     
• July 23, 2024

  EqualGround Website Accessibility Scanning Platform Update – July 2024

  United States Zone YuJa EqualGround Accessibility Governance Platform

  The release provides a comprehensive Dashboard to view the overall accessibility of an institution, SEO auditing, an Accessibility Report for web pages, credit summary tracking, a new accessibility check for color contrast issues, and the option to subscribe to email notifications.

   

  1. Comprehensive Dashboard Summary to View the Accessibility of an Institution
     EqualGround will collect the accessibility scores across an institution to provide a comprehensive summary of the institution’s accessibility. In-depth reporting can be viewed for each category by clicking View Full Report.
     
  2. Detailed Reports for SEO Auditing
     We’ve built our own engine to crawl websites and analyze SEO-related issues such as:
     • Missing canonical tags to prevent duplicate content.
     • Links and documents are not crawlable.
     • Missing language tags for pages.
     • Links do not contain descriptive text.
     • Missing metadata from documents.
     • Invalid robots.txt file

     

  3. Accessibility Report – Compare WCAG Criteria by their Score or the Number of Issues
     The Accessibility Report offers a comparative analysis of a selected web page’s WCAG criteria— A, AA, AAA, and ARIA. A graph visualizes these analytics, displaying them based on their accessibility score or the number of issues each criterion has. The report also displays the most common issues on the web page, organized by the WCAG success criteria.
     
  4. Credit Summary to Track the Use of Scanned Pages and Documents
     EqualGround offers institutions credits for scanning web pages and documents. The Credits Usage Report tracks monthly credit usage and provides a usage history, allowing for trends to be analyzed.
     
  5. In-Depth Accessibility Scanning for Documents
     Documents will be scanned to ensure they comply with WCAG accessibility guidelines. Administrators can then access details for their documents to view a list of identified accessibility issues.
     
  6. New Accessibility Check for Color Contrast Issues
     To ensure sufficient color contrast between the text and the background, EqualGround will calculate the contrast ratio to identify occurrences of the issue. Website owners can then update their pages based on the report provided.
     
  7. Subscribe to EqualGround Email Notifications
     Users can subscribe to receive email notifications alerting them to specific actions on the platform, such as completed scans or when the usage limit is about to be reached.
     
• June 19, 2024

  EqualGround Website Accessibility Scanning Platform Update – June 2024

  United States Zone YuJa EqualGround Accessibility Governance Platform

  EqualGround is a brand-new product for real-time website accessibility auditing designed to enhance web accessibility. Backed by the latest WCAG 2.2 compliance guidelines, EqualGround scans entire websites and provides comprehensive evaluation reports for accessibility checks to help improve readability and navigation. 

  The release provides options to initiate scans for WCAG 2.2 accessibility issues, customized website scans, initiate scans for multiple subdomains, exclude web pages from scans, view real-time progress of scans, view in-depth accessibility reports, track accessibility improvements over time, custom role management, SSO integration, and more.

   

  1. Initiate Scans for WCAG 2.2- Aligned Accessibility Issues
     To provide an accessible website viewing experience, EqualGround will examine websites using industry-standard WCAG 2.2 levels of conformance (A, AA, and AAA), scanning pages and documents to generate accessibility scores for individual web pages.
     
  2. Full Customization for Website Scans
     EqualGround offers comprehensive website scanning. For each website, admins can specify the depth, frequency, and schedule of scans.
     
  3. Initiate Scans from Multiple Subdomains
     Administrators can designate several subdomains as entry points, which serve as the starting locations for EqualGround to crawl through web pages to identify accessibility issues.
     
  4. Exclude Accessibility Scans for Specified Web Pages
     Administrators can specify web pages they would like to exclude from the accessibility scans to ensure that only desired pages are analyzed.
     
  5. View the Progress of Current Scans
     After adding a website, users can initiate scans and monitor their progress in real time by viewing the scan status of each page as EqualGround crawls through the website.
     
  6. View In-Depth WCAG 2.2 Accessibility Reports
     Admins will be able to review a comprehensive report on their scans in a visual web format or HTML text. They can quickly access information about the issues, including their level (A, AAA, or AAA), and identify where the issue occurs.
     
  7. View an Accessibility Summary of Websites and Individual Web Pages
     Websites and individual web pages will have their own dashboard, which features a quick summary of the overall accessibility performance. The performance will be measured based on aria labels and WCAG A, AA, and AAA level issues detected.
     
  8. Track the Improvements of Websites and Web Pages Over Time
     As websites and web pages enhance their accessibility, users can track the changes over time by reviewing the scan history to assess how scores have improved.
     
  9. SAML-SSO Authentication Support
     In addition to manual login credentials, administrators can access EqualGround by signing in directly with their SAML-SSO integration.
     
  10. Assign Custom Roles to Users
      Administrators can create custom roles on the EqualGround platform to provide users with different levels of access to view reports, initiate scans, and manage website settings.
      
  11. Manage Users Within the Roster Management Dashboard
      Administrators can manage users on the EqualGround platform by adding users, assigning them new roles, and removing them from the platform.
      
  12. Allocate Users to Manage Websites
      In addition to offering users different access levels, admins can allocate them to only manage and view specific websites.
      
  13. Manually Trigger Scans to Immediately View Scores
      Administrators can trigger a manual scan instead of waiting for the scheduled scan to occur to instantly see a website’s latest scores.
      
  14. Customize EqualGround’s Login Page
      Administrators can now customize the branding of their EqualGround login page by adjusting the colors of buttons and adding imagery.
      
  15. Custom EqualGround Platform URLs
      Institutions can contact their Client Success Managers to create their own custom EqualGround Platform URLs.