Editoria11y Accessibility Checker

Overview

Learn more about the Editoria11y (pronounced editorially) accessibility checker for Drupal websites. 

What is Editoria11y?

Editoria11y is a free, automated tool that helps find web accessibility issues on your website. The tool can be installed and used on all University of Oregon Drupal websites.

  • The Editoria11y plug-in helps you improve the accessibility of your website by automatically checking a web page’s content and displaying some types of web accessibility issues.
  • Editoria11y will identify some common web accessibility problems and offer tips on how to resolve them.
  • In order to understand issues that Editoria11y flags, users should first take the UO Web Accessibility Training for a basic understanding of web accessibility guidelines.

What does Editoria11y scan?

Editoria11y will scan published content as well as content that has not been published as long as it is viewed in the editor’s Preview mode.

Using Editoria11y

When logged into a Drupal website with the Editoria11y plug-in installed, you will find a round icon in the lower right corner of the page of every existing page. This is the alert icon and will look different based on how many errors are identified on a page.

Editoria11y alert icons that show errors. A blue circle with a white checkmark, a red circle with a red number, and a yellow circle with a black number.

  • White checkmark: no issues found on the page
  • Red number on white, encircled by one thick and one thin ring: number of issues found on the page
  • Black number on yellow, encircled by one thin, dark ring: number of potential issues that require review

For details about each issue,select the alert icon. This will open up a control panel with options to go through potential issues, display the page outline, and review image alt text.

Screenshot showing Editoria11y tooltip that says “one issue detected”

To view any potential issues, click the First >> option to the right of the issues detected.

Screenshot showing Editoria11y tooltip window with a manual check alert

The tooltip window will then appear next to where the issue on the page is located. This explains the issue and offers suggestions on how to fix it.

It is important to note that many potential issues will require a manual check. For example, the Editoria11y alert for the video below has no sound, but Editoria11y has flagged it to make sure the video has captions. After performing a manual check and ensuring the video does not require captions, the user can click Hide Alert for Me to minimize the tooltip window. If the video did have speech or any meaningful sound, captions would be required.

 A screenshot of an Editoria11y tooltip window with a manual check alert over an embedded video

Using Editoria11y on Unpublished Content

Editoria11y can scan published and unpublished content. In order to scan unpublished content, you must use the editor’s preview mode. When in the page editor, the preview button can be found at the very bottom of the page, next to the Save button.

Screenshot of a web editor window showing the publish checkbox, save button, preview button, and delete button.

Clicking the Preview button will open the unpublished content and display how the page will display with the changes.

A screenshot showing the preview mode of a page in Drupal that is being edited.

You will find a Back to content editing link as well as a View mode menu when you are in preview mode. You will also find that the Editoria11y icon still displays in the bottom-right corner.

To return back to the editor and fix any issues, click the Back to content editing link at the top of the page.

Limitations of Editoria11y

  • As an automated accessibility scanner, Editoria11y is limited in what issues it can identify. As a rough guide, assume that it will only be able to find about 10% of the accessibility violations on a page or site, and the remaining 90% will require manual review.
    • For simple site edits (e.g., adding basic text and images), the tool will catch a significantly higher percentage of errors, but some manual checks will still be needed.
    • Common issues that automated tools can detect include whether an image is missing alternative text (but not whether the text is appropriate), whether headings are nested correctly (but not whether they are correctly tagged as headings, what the correct structure is, or whether the text is appropriate), and whether text contrast is insufficient (for certain types of text).
    • Most other accessibility issues cannot be detected by automated scanners. UO recommends for Accessibility Insights, a manual review tool.
  • Editoria11y cannot be relied on to determine whether a page is compliant with accessibility standards, though it can be helpful in locating problem pages and content and identifying certain types of violations.
  • Editoria11y does not provide any site-level reporting.
  • Editoria11y does not conduct any other types of scans.

Getting Access to Editoria11y

  • Drupal admins must add the Editoria11y module and ensure that user roles have access.
    • After enabling the module, admins will need to enable the following permissions for the editor user accounts:
      • Mark as hidden in Editoria11y
      • View Editoria11y checker
  • Once installed, log in to edit a site in Drupal, navigate to the desired page, and open the tool via the check button at the bottom-right corner of the page.

Need help?

For more information on Editoria11y and other web accessibility tools recommended for use at UO, visit the Digital Accessibility @ UO website.

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Related Services / Offerings (1)

Digital Accessibility Support
A service for University employees who have questions about making digital content (web pages, software, PDFs, Word documents, videos, etc.) accessible to people with disabilities.