DubBot is Tulane University's automated website quality assurance and digital accessibility platform, provided by the Office of University Communications and Marketing (UCM).
DubBot continuously scans Tulane Drupal websites to identify issues that may impact usability, accessibility, search engine optimization (SEO) and overall website quality. Rather than manually reviewing every page, website managers can use DubBot's reports to quickly identify issues, prioritize improvements and monitor their site's progress over time.
DubBot is designed to help website managers create more accessible, accurate and user-friendly websites while supporting Tulane's commitment to providing high-quality digital experiences for all users.
What DubBot checks
DubBot scans websites approximately every seven days and generates reports in several categories.
Accessibility
Accessibility reports identify potential barriers that may prevent people with disabilities from successfully using your website. DubBot evaluates pages against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 and 2.2 and identifies issues at Levels A, AA and AAA.
While all issues can help improve accessibility, Tulane generally recommends prioritizing Level A and Level AA issues, which represent the most significant accessibility barriers.
Broken Links
Broken Links reports identify links that return errors or redirect unexpectedly, helping ensure visitors can successfully navigate your website.
Web Governance
Web Governance reports help monitor compliance with Tulane website standards and organizational policies, including custom rules developed specifically for Tulane websites.
Best Practices
Best Practices reports identify technical issues and content patterns that may negatively affect usability, maintainability or the overall user experience.
Spell Check
Spell Check reports identify potential spelling errors and uncommon words for review before they affect your visitors.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO reports identify technical SEO issues that may impact how search engines understand and index your website.
Additional information
DubBot also provides additional tools, including:
- PDF inventory and basic PDF accessibility checks
- Limited Google Analytics integration
- Website quality trends over time
- Crawl history and reporting
How DubBot works
DubBot automatically crawls each participating Drupal website approximately once every seven days.
During each crawl, DubBot analyzes your published webpages and generates reports based on the current content of your site. Because scans are performed automatically, you can regularly review new issues, verify that previous issues have been resolved and monitor improvements over time.
Not every issue reported by DubBot requires action. Automated tools are excellent at identifying potential problems, but some findings require human review to determine whether changes are necessary.
Similarly, automated testing cannot identify every accessibility issue. Manual testing and thoughtful content creation remain essential parts of building accessible websites.
Accessing DubBot
DubBot is available to approved Tulane website managers. Please note that you must be added as a user in DubBot before you will be able to access the platform. If you need access to DubBot, submit a request through the UCM Support Request form.
To access DubBot:
Visit https://tulane.dubbot.com
Sign in using your Tulane username and password through Single Sign-On (SSO).
Learning to use DubBot
This guide provides an overview of DubBot's major reporting sections.
- Accessibility Reports
- Broken Links Reports
- Web Governance Reports
- Best Practices Reports
- Spell Check Reports
- SEO Reports
Helpful resources from DubBot
- DubBot Help Center and documentation
- Self-paced course: Introduction to DubBot
- Site or Page Set Dashboard
- View Issues on Your Webpage
Support
The Office of University Communications and Marketing is your first point of contact for:
- questions about using DubBot at Tulane
- interpreting DubBot reports
- resolving issues in Drupal
- requesting access
- Tulane-specific guidelines and recommendations
Submit questions through the UCM Support Request form.
For questions about DubBot itself or platform functionality, you may also contact the DubBot Support team through the Help features in the DubBot interface.
Video Overview
Review the DubBot Overview video in Zoom.
This transcript has been lightly edited for readability. It contains the spoken content from the DubBot Overview video and is provided as an alternative format for users who prefer reading the material instead of watching the video.
DubBot Overview video transcript
Welcome to this overview of DubBot at Tulane.
DubBot is an automated website quality assurance and digital accessibility platform provided by University Communications and Marketing, or UCM. It regularly scans participating Tulane Drupal websites and helps website managers identify potential problems, prioritize improvements, and monitor progress over time.
Accessibility is the primary focus of this overview, but DubBot also checks several other areas that affect website quality and the visitor experience.
DubBot scans published web pages about every seven days. Its accessibility reports test many requirements from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG, versions 2.1 and 2.2. Test results are organized as Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. At Tulane, website managers should prioritize Level A and Level AA issues first.
Common issues include images without alternative text, text and background colors that do not have enough contrast, and link text that may not clearly describe a link’s destination.
DubBot can show issues across an entire site or on an individual page and highlight the element that triggered a report. The report details will also provide an explanation, pinpoint the related WCAG criterion, and provide links to supporting resources.
Although DubBot reports can be very helpful in identifying potential accessibility issues, it is important to remember that these reports are a starting point, not a substitute for human review and testing. Some issues require manual review, and automated testing cannot identify every accessibility barrier.
The Site Dashboard also provides reports for other areas of website quality. Broken Links reports identify links that return errors or redirect unexpectedly. Web Governance reports check for Tulane-specific standards and policies, such as outdated or inconsistent content. Best Practices reports flag technical or content patterns that may affect usability and maintainability. Spell Check reports identify possible misspellings and uncommon words for review. SEO reports identify issues that may affect how search engines understand and index your pages.
DubBot also inventories PDFs linked from your website and performs basic PDF accessibility checks. You can also see crawl history, website quality trends, and limited Google Analytics information. All of these reports help website managers find issues that can be difficult to catch through manual review alone.
The goal is not to reach a perfect score immediately. We can use the reports to focus on meaningful improvements and to show progress over time.
DubBot is available to approved managers of sites in Tulane’s UCM-managed Drupal environment. To request access or get help interpreting a report or resolving an issue in Drupal, submit a UCM Support Request.
Additional documentation and tutorials are available on Drupal Guide at communications.tulane.edu.