Pope Tech: Run an Accessibility Scan on a UMN Website
Pope Tech is a website accessibility scanning tool available for use on UMN websites. It will help to ensure your site is accessible.
This self-help guide takes you through the process of setting up Pope Tech to crawl and scan your site and report back on accessibility errors and issues.
Set Up and Use Pope Tech
Getting Started
Pope Tech is a website accessibility scanning tool that can crawl websites and report back on accessibility errors and issues.
Logging in to Pope Tech
If you need access to Pope Tech, contact the Group Manager(s) for your unit. If you do not know who your Group Manager is, please email [email protected].
- Go to the Pope Tech login page.
- Type your UMN email address.
- System Campus users must enter their email address as "@umn.edu" (e.g. [email protected] would be entered as [email protected] in Pope Tech).
- A radio button to log in with SSO will appear:
- Keep the SSO radio button selected and click the Login button. Pope Tech will authenticate with Shibboleth and you should be directed to your Dashboard view:
Understanding Your Role Permissions in Pope Tech
There are two roles in the UMN Pope Tech instance. Each role has access to do certain tasks:
- Content Contributors
- Add Your Website(s) to Pope Tech
- Run crawls and scans of websites
- View scan results
- Can dismiss individual results
- Create reports
- Schedule website scans
- Group Manager
- All of the above access and tasks Content Contributors can do
- Bulk dismiss a result everywhere it appears on a website
- Create and manage groups
- Manage Pope Tech access for your unit
For questions or issues with Pope Tech, please contact your Group Manager or [email protected].
Additional Resources
Learn more about digital accessibility for websites.
- Enroll in Digital Accessibility: Foundations to begin your learning. Once you have taken Digital Accessibility: Foundations, you will be eligible for any of the other courses in the program.
- If you have already taken the Digital Accessibility: Foundation course, you can enroll in Digital Accessibility: Web Content to learn specific aspects of digital accessibility to use when creating websites.
Group Managers have access in Pope Tech to create and organize content contributors into groups. Groups are used to organize your websites. Users can be assigned to groups, so they only have access to the websites in their group. Read Create and Manage Groups to learn how groups work, potential group strategies, and how to set up and manage your groups.
You can also watch Groups overview (video) or Create, manage, and use groups (video).
You will need to add your website to Pope Tech before the tool can crawl and scan your site. First time users are encouraged to add their websites individually to see the entire process more quickly. Websites can be added to Pope Tech through a mass import with a CSV file.
If your website content is behind authentication, refer to Pope Tech: Crawl a Website and Scan for Issues to determine if Pope Tech is the right solution for your site.
Website Regions separate a website into two region types: Template regions and Content regions.
- Template region - Elements that are repeated on multiple pages (such as headers, footers, etc) and often cannot be modified by contributors.
- Content region - Elements that are different on each page (often the body of the page).
Table of Contents:
- About Website Templates
- Creating Website Templates
- Adding or Removing Web Pages from Website Templates
- Additional Information
About Website Templates
What are the use cases for this feature?
This feature is helpful for two reasons:
- Users who can only change content on a website, but not headers/footers and other Template region content, can specifically view accessibility issues that are within their control.
- Site owners and developers can hone in on accessibility issues that are part of your website's Template region, which affect multiple pages. Addressing these issues can have a big impact on the overall accessibility of your site.
Who has permissions for this feature?
Both Content Contributors and Group Managers have access to setup and modify website templates within Pope Tech.
What does this feature do?
Creating a website template is how you tell Pope Tech what part of your website is the template region, or what's the same on multiple pages, and what part of your website is the content region, or what changes on every page. Setting up website templates in Pope Tech allows you to filter results of future scans based on whether errors are in the template region or content region.
You can set up multiple website templates for a single website within Pope Tech if the wrapper around the content region is not consistent on all of your pages.
For example, in the screenshot below, there are two website templates: a College template and a Calendar template. The wrapper, or template, around the content is different on college and calendar pages, so each has its own template for the Template region. The college template may be using the ID "content" for the content region whereas the calendar pages may be using the ID "calendar" for the content region.
Creating Website Templates
To create a website template, you need to know the following:
- The Content Area - The HTML class or ID of the container that wraps around the content region. If your website doesn't have a defined wrapper for your content, the Website Region feature will not work.
- For most Drupal sites, this is "content" (without the quotes). If your site is highly customized, you may need to consult your developer(s).
- The Page Matcher - Page Matcher(s) tell Pope Tech what pages or directories the website template is on. Is the template applied to all pages on your website or does it only apply to pages in a specific part of your website like the calendar template example above?
- For most Drupal sites, the template can typically be used for all pages. If your site is highly customized, you may need to consult your developer(s).
Once you have these, you're ready to create your website template:
- In the left main menu, select Websites.
- Select the Actions (>>) icon for the website you want to create a website template for.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page to see the Pages and Templates widget.
- Select the Templates tab and select New.
- Enter the required Name for your template.
- Under Content Areas, select the Type (class or id) and enter the identifier. You won't include "." or "#" before the identifier.
- On most Drupal sites, you can typically choose ID as the type and then type "content" (without the quotes) in the Identifier field. If your site is highly customized, you may need to consult your developer(s).
- Under Page Matchers, select the Type (pattern or exact) and enter in the path. For pattern type paths:
- "/" would apply this template to the entire website.
- For most Drupal sites, select Pattern and then enter "/" (without the quotes) in the path field. If your site is highly customized, you may need to consult your developer(s).
- "/calendar" would apply this template to all the pages that have the "/calendar" path.
- "/" would apply this template to the entire website.
- Select Add existing pages that match? to add pages that existed before the template was created.
You've created a website template that separates accessibility results by template region and content region.
- The scans you did before will not sort the results into these regions. You will need to rescan any previous data to see results separated out by template and content.
Adding or Removing Web Pages from Website Templates
To manually add already existing web pages to a website template:
- On the Edit Website page for that website, scroll down to the Pages and Templates widget. Make sure you're on the Pages tab.
- Using the Template Filter drop down, select Not in Template or the specific template.
- Select the Apply Filter button.
- Select the checkbox next to the web pages that need to be added or removed.
- Select either the Add to Template
or Remove from Template
buttons.
Additional Information
Crawling and Scanning
Once you have added your website to Pope Tech, you are ready to crawl and scan your site to find accessibility errors. Sites added to Pope Tech are automatically crawled on a monthly basis. You can also manually initiate a crawl for your site. The crawling step is how Pope Tech find the web pages on your site; the scanning step produces the report on accessibility errors and issues found on those pages.
You can also watch the Quick Start: Crawl and Scan video tutorial (2:51).
Content Behind Authentication
Pope Tech cannot crawl content behind authentication. With additional setup steps, you may be able to use Pope Tech to scan content behind authentication.
Note: Only data classified as public per the University data security classification policy may be scanned with Pope Tech.
- For Drupal sites, see Pope Tech: Scan Drupal Intranet Content
- You can also use the Editoria11y module to uncover content accessibility issues from within the Drupal interface.
- For Google Sites, see Pope Tech: Scan Google Sites Intranet Content
- For other types of websites or web applications behind UMN SSO:
- Scanning content behind authentication is not supported for other types of websites and web applications at this time. You are welcome to experiment with this feature after reviewing the vendor's Configure Website Authentication documentation and the Drupal and/or Google Sites documentation linked above as a starting point.
- As an alternative to Pope Tech, you can use a browser extension such as WAVE, axe DevTools, or others, to scan content one page at a time.
- If you have content behind authentication in production that is safe to have in front of authentication in a development or staging environment (i.e. the lower environment is blocking all other traffic via firewall), you can use Pope Tech to scan that content in that lower environment by allowlisting the Pope Tech scanner's user agent [PopeTech-ScanBot/1.0 (+https://pope.tech)]. If you need the Pope Tech scanner's IP address, please email [email protected].
Scheduling scans automatically keeps accessibility data up-to-date and automatically catches any issues. Recurring scans can also be automatically emailed to proactively get everyone on the same page and increase conversations about web accessibility.
You can also view this content by watching Schedule a Scan (video).
You can use Pope Tech to perform an automated accessibility check on Drupal pages that require UMN Shibboleth authentication in order to view them. For Google Sites, see Pope Tech: Scan Google Sites Intranet Content.
Note: Only data classified as public per the University data security classification policy may be scanned with Pope Tech.
Add a non-Duo testing account to your website
Pope Tech is unable to authenticate using an account that uses Duo.
- If you already have access to a departmental account, you can use that account and can skip to step 3.
- If you do not have access to a UMN account that doesn't use Duo, request a functional account to use for Pope Tech testing with your website(s).
- On the request form, select the following:
- Which OIM environment should the account be created in?
- PRODUCTION (Account will be created in OIM PROD environment)
- What access should be provisioned for this Functional Account?
- Ldap (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol)
- Which OIM environment should the account be created in?
- On the request form, select the following:
- Create an account on your website for the non-Duo account you will use with Pope Tech.
- Select the role(s) needed to access your intranet content.
- This is likely the authenticated user role which will be selected by default when you create a new account, but you may need to select a custom role you have created on your website depending on your intranet implementation.
- Select the role(s) needed to access your intranet content.
Setup authentication for your site within Pope Tech
Note: Add your website to Pope Tech first if you have not done so, and then return to complete the steps below.
- In the Website Settings, expand the Authentication Options accordion.
- Check the checkbox for Use Website Authentication?
- Leave the Authentication Type dropdown set to Cookie
- In the Login URL field, enter the full URL for the login path on your website, i.e. https://mysite.umn.edu/saml/login
- Check the checkbox for Use Advanced Authentication?
- New fields to set up step 1 under a new Advanced Steps heading will appear.
- Leave the dropdown field for Step Action set to Type into input
- In the Element Selector (example: #myId) field, enter #username
- Do not check the checkbox for Is field a password?
- In the Input text field, enter the internet ID of the non-Duo account that you will be using for testing your website with Pope Tech. Do not include @umn.edu.
- Click the Add Step button. New fields for step 2 will appear.
- Leave the dropdown field for Step Action set to Type into input
- In the Element Selector (example: #myId) field, enter #password
- Check the checkbox for Is field a password?
- In the password field, enter the UMN account password for the non-Duo account corresponding to the username entered above. The password will appear as dots representing each character and there is no confirmation field, so ensure that you enter the password correctly.
- Click the Add Step button. New fields for step 3 will appear.
- Select Click in the Step Action dropdown
- Enter .idp3_form-submit in the Element Selector (example: #myId) field
- In the Success Identifier Selector (example: #myId) field, enter #content
- You will need to check the checkbox acknowledging that you "understand that scanning behind a login isn't intended to be used to scan any sensitive, private, or confidential data that shouldn't be stored on Pope Tech servers" and that you "understand, have read, and agree to the Pope Tech terms of use" before you can proceed.
- Click the ✔Save button
- Click the button to Test Authentication to ensure that you have entered everything correctly.
Add your intranet pages
Pope Tech can scan pages behind authentication, but it cannot find those pages by crawling your site, and those pages will not be included in your sitemap. You will either need to manually add the paths that require authentication through the Pope Tech user interface, or you can upload a CSV file containing those paths. See the vendor's Add Pages article for instructions.
If you have a large intranet site and would prefer not to manually add individual pages, you can use the OIT-created PopeTech Path List Export module to automatically generate a CSV with all of your content pages.
- If you have a Drupal Enterprise site, an administrator will first need to install the PopeTech Path List Export module under the Extend menu. For Drupal Lite Sites, the module is already enabled by default.
- After logging into your website, go to the /popetech-csv-export path on your site by copying the path above and pasting it after your domain name in your browser
- i.e., mysite.umn.edu/popetech-csv-export
- This will download a CSV file to your computer titled popetech-csv-export.csv. This file is already formatted in the manner that Pope Tech expects, so you do not need to open or modify the file. Locate the file; typically this will be in your Downloads folder.
- Follow the directions under the Upload CSV subheading in the vendor's Add Pages article to load the file generated above into Pope Tech. Skip the steps under the Prepare your CSV subheading since you already have the file you need.
- Once you have added your pages to Pope Tech, you can proceed to initiate a scan in the upper right corner of the page.
You can use Pope Tech to perform an automated accessibility check on published Google Sites pages that require UMN Shibboleth authentication in order to view them. For Drupal sites, see Pope Tech: Scan Drupal Intranet Content.
Note: Only data classified as public per the University data security classification policy may be scanned with Pope Tech.
In this article:
- Adding a Non-Duo Testing Account to Your Website
- Setting Up Authentication for Your Site Within Pope Tech
- Adding Your Intranet Pages
Adding a Non-Duo Testing Account to Your Website
Pope Tech is unable to authenticate using an account that uses Duo.
- If you already have access to a departmental account that has a Google account, you can use that account and can skip to step 3.
- If you do not have access to a UMN account that has a Google account and does not use Duo, request a functional account to use for Pope Tech testing with your website(s).
- On the request form, select the following:
- Which OIM environment should the account be created in?
- PRODUCTION (Account will be created in OIM PROD environment)
- What access should be provisioned for this Functional Account?
- Ldap (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol)
- Which OIM environment should the account be created in?
- Once your account is created, use an incognito/private browsing window to sign in to a Google product (i.e. gmail.com) with this account.
- When prompted, accept the Terms and Conditions to activate the Google account
- On the request form, select the following:
- Confirm that the non-Duo account can view your website
- If your published website is restricted to specific people, share your website with the non-Duo account you will use for testing.
- If your published website is viewable to anyone in your UMN Campus Google domain, you do not need to explicitly share your site with the account you will use for testing (as long as your testing account belongs to the same campus).
Setting Up Authentication for Your Site Within Pope Tech
Before completing the following steps, Add your website to Pope Tech.
Initial Set Up
- In the Website Settings, make sure the Base URL field is set to the URL that will prefix each path on your website. For example, https://sites.google.com/umn.edu/mysite or https://mysite.umn.edu for a website with a vanity URL. Pope Tech may have automatically updated this field after you saved it to something beginning with https://accounts.google.com/ - this will not work.
- Check the Ignore redirect? check box underneath the Base URL to prevent Pope Tech from updating the URL.
- Expand the Authentication Options accordion.
- Check the box for Use Website Authentication?
- Leave the Authentication Type drop-down set to Cookie.
- In the Login URL field, enter the same URL listed in the Base URL field.
- Check the box for Use Advanced Authentication? New fields to set up step 1 under a new Advanced Steps heading will appear.
Configure Advanced Authentication Step 1
- Leave the drop-down field for Step Action set to Type into input
- Enter #identifierId in the Element Selector (example: #myId) field
- In the Input text field, enter the full email address for the non-DUO account you will use for your testing; for example, [email protected]
- Do not check the box for Is field a password?
Add and Configure Step 2
- Select the Add Step button. New fields for step 2 will appear.
- Select Click in the Step Action drop-down
- Enter #identifierNext in the Element Selector (example: #myId) field
Add and Configure Step 3
- Select the Add Step button. New fields for step 3 will appear.
- Leave the drop-down field for Step Action set to Type into input
- In the Element Selector (example: #myId) field, enter #username
- Do not check the box for Is field a password?
- In the Input text field, enter the internet ID of the non-DUO account that you will be using for testing your website with Pope Tech. Do not include @umn.edu.
Add and Configure Step 4
- Select the Add Step button. New fields for step 4 will appear.
- Leave the drop-down field for Step Action set to Type into input
- In the Element Selector (example: #myId) field, enter #password
- Check the box for Is field a password?
- In the password field, enter the UMN account password for the non-DUO account corresponding to the username entered above. The password will appear as dots representing each character and there is no confirmation field, so ensure that you enter the password correctly.
Add and Configure Step 5
- Select the Add Step button. New fields for step 5 will appear.
- Select Click in the Step Action drop-down
- Enter .idp3_form-submit in the Element Selector (example: #myId) field
Add and Configure Step 6
- Select the Add Step button. New fields for step 6 will appear.
- Select Wait for time in the Step Action drop-down
- Enter 3 in the Wait time field
Complete Set Up
- In the Success Identifier Selector (example: #myId) field, enter #yDmH0d
- You will need to check the box acknowledging that you understand that scanning behind a login isn't intended to be used to scan any sensitive, private, or confidential data that shouldn't be stored on Pope Tech servers and that you understand, have read, and agree to the Pope Tech terms of use before you can proceed.
- Select the ✔Save button
- Select the button to Test Authentication to ensure that you have entered everything correctly.
Adding Your Intranet Pages
Pope Tech can scan pages behind authentication, but it cannot find those pages by crawling your site. You will either need to manually add the paths that require authentication through the Pope Tech user interface, or you can upload a CSV file containing those paths. See the vendor's Add Pages article for instructions.
Accessing the Results of the Website Scan
After you have crawled and scanned your website, you are ready to view your dashboard with the results of the scan. In the linked article you will learn how to:
- View the result types of a scan
- Drill into the data by result type
- Drill into the data by page
Watch Drilling into results by result type (3:56) for a video presentation of this information.
Reports are a great way to share accessibility data with your organization without using the dashboard reports. See Create and Email Reports to learn how to create and email reports for past scans.
You can also view Create and email reports (video) to see this content in a video format.
After you have setup regions and templates and re-scanned your website, you can filter accessibility results by content and template regions. This allows users with different roles on your website to focus on the results for the elements of the website that they can control:
- Contributors and content editors can focus on results for the Content Region
- Developers and site owners can focus on results for the Template Region
Template Regions contain elements that are repeated on multiple pages (such as headers, footers, etc) and often cannot be modified by contributors. Content Regions contain the elements that are different on each page (often the body of the page).
If you are not seeing what you expect when you filter your results, proceed to troubleshoot scan results for regions on your site.
Perform Manual Accessibility Testing
Pope Tech can crawl and scan your site for accessibility errors, but automated testing does not find all accessibility issues on a site. Conducting regular manual accessibility tests for your website is a best practice. Manual testing helps you find and fix issues that automatic scans can miss.
The Pope Tech Blog has a beginner's guide to manual accessibility testing. The University has an Accessibility Testing Canvas course that guides you through manual accessibility testing protocols.
After you have conducted a manual accessibility test on your website, you can track those manual tests to help keep a record of manual tests for your site. You can also schedule manual tests for your website on various intervals so that you can see when it is time to conduct another test.
Fixing Accessibility Errors
Once your site has been crawled and scanned by Pope Tech, locate specific common errors to address. Fixing these accessibility issues will make your site less confusing and more friendly to navigate for your visitors.
Displaying the Locations of the Accessibility Errors
- Log in to Pope Tech.
- If you have not used Pope Tech on your UMN site before, refer to Pope Tech: Log in and Get Started.
- From your Dashboard, use the Website dropdown filter to select the desired website if you have access to multiple sites.
- Select Errors to view the types of errors found on your site.
- Review your Results list to check if your site has the common error you want to resolve.
- Note: If your site does not have any errors, you may stop here. If it does, proceed to step 5.
- Select the arrows button on the right under the Details column, then select the arrow button under Details again on the next screen.
- Select the button in the WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation tool) column on the right for the page you want to inspect.
- Note: For Google Sites, WAVE button does not work. Use the Inspect button instead. The buttons give the same information.
- Select the Details tab in the left-hand sidebar and scroll to find the error you are working on.
- Select the error icon for the error of your choice and the location(s) of the error will be revealed on the page to the right.
- If nothing happens when you select the error icon under Details, the issue is located inside of an accordion or tab. You will need to expand your accordions or click through your tabs until you find the location of the error. Once you have expanded all accordions, selecting the icon again will reveal the location.
Additional Information
- You can dismiss an error so it won't flag that error on that site in the future.
- Pope Tech keeps track of dismissed errors. So you can bring them back if you want that error flagged on the site again.
- Group Managers of a site can "bulk dismiss" errors.
Use Pope Tech on your OIT-hosted Drupal website to find empty spaces labeled with heading tags. Some users, especially keyboard and screen reader users, often navigate by heading elements. An empty heading will present no information and may cause confusion. You can read more about the importance of the proper use of headings for digital accessibility on the AccessibleU website.
- Display the locations of the accessibility errors on your site.
- In a separate browser tab, log into your website and navigate to the page that has the error you want to correct.
- Depending on the type of field where the empty heading is located, you will either need to select Edit or Layout in order to fix the issue.
- Content fields must be edited via the Edit button.
- Custom blocks that were added via Layout Builder must be edited from the Layout tab.
- Mouse over the appropriate block.
- Select the pencil button that appears in the upper-right corner of the block.
- Select Configure to edit the block.
- If you are not sure how this content was added, check Edit first to see if you can find the content there.
- Find the precise location of the empty header and remove it via one of two methods:
- Option A - using no source code.
- Move your cursor in the text field while looking for the empty space where the paragraph dropdown in the WYSIWYG toolbar switches to a heading format when occupied by your cursor.
- Use the dropdown to change the paragraph format to Normal or delete the space entirely if it's unneeded.
- Move your cursor in the text field while looking for the empty space where the paragraph dropdown in the WYSIWYG toolbar switches to a heading format when occupied by your cursor.
- Option B - using source code.
- Select the Source button to switch to source code mode.
- Find the header tags around
- Change the header tags to paragraph tags or delete that line entirely if the space is not needed.
- Option A - using no source code.
- Save your changes. The next time your site is crawled and subsequently scanned by Pope Tech, this empty heading error will no longer appear in your scan results.
Use Pope Tech on your OIT-hosted Drupal website to find links that don't have any text. If a link contains no text, the function or purpose of the link will not be presented to the user. This can introduce confusion for keyboard and screen reader users. For more information on creating accessible links, refer to the guide on the AccessibleU website.
- Display the locations of the accessibility errors on your site.
- In a separate browser tab, log into your website and navigate to the page that has the error you want to correct.
- Depending on the location of the link and how that content was added to the page, you will either need to select Edit or Layout in order to fix the issue.
- Content fields must be edited via the Edit button.
- Custom blocks that were added via Layout Builder must be edited from the Layout tab.
- Mouse over the appropriate block.
- Select the pencil button that appears in the upper-right corner of the block.
- Select Configure to edit the block.
- If you are not sure how this content was added, check Edit first to see if you can find the content there.
- Empty links often take the form of an extra link tag in front of a link. In that case you will need to edit the source code to delete the extra link tag. Select the Source button in the WYSIWYG toolbar to view the source code.
- Locate and remove the extra link tag.
- Before example:
- <p><a href="https://arb.umn.edu" rel="nofollow"> </a><a href="https://arb.umn.edu">UMN Landscape Arboretum</a></p>
- After example:
- <p><a href="https://arb.umn.edu">UMN Landscape Arboretum</a></p>
- Before example:
- Save your changes. The next time your site is crawled and subsequently scanned by Pope Tech, this particular Empty link error will no longer appear in your scan results.
Use Pope Tech on your OIT-hosted Drupal website to find images that are missing alternative text. If you don't include alternative text with an image, a visually impaired person who disables image loading or encounters a broken image won't know what the image is meant to convey. Alternative text should accurately and succinctly describe the content and function of the image. For more information on writing alternative text, refer to the guide on the AccessibleU website.
- Display the locations of the accessibility errors on your site.
- In a separate browser tab, log into your website and navigate to the page that has the error you want to correct.
- Depending on how the image was added to the page, you will either need to select Edit or Layout in order to fix the issue.
- Content fields must be edited via the Edit button.
- Custom blocks that were added via Layout Builder must be edited from the Layout tab.
- Mouse over the appropriate block.
- Select the pencil button that appears in the upper-right corner of the block.
- Select Configure to edit the block.
- If you are not sure how this content was added, check Edit first to see if you can find the content there.
- Note: If your image was added using the Add Media button in the WYSIWYG toolbar, an Edit Media button will appear above the image when editing the text field. Select this button to reveal the alternative text field.
- Once you find the image, enter appropriate alternative text and save your changes. The next time your site is crawled and subsequently scanned by Pope Tech, this particular Missing alternative text error will no longer appear in your scan results.
After running a scan and filtering the results by Template Region or Content Region, if the results of the scan are not adding up as expected then you can troubleshoot the regions on your website.
In the linked article you will learn how to:
- Navigate to versions and pages not included in the results of the scan
- Use versions in Pope Tech for troubleshooting
- View pages in each version
- Use pages not included to troubleshoot