At the University of Washington, ensuring our digital content is accessible to all is a shared responsibility and a legal obligation under the recent ADA Title II rule requiring compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standards by April 2026.
To meet this challenge, UW has adopted DubBot, an automated web accessibility checker, which empowers units across all campuses to monitor and improve their website accessibility.
How DubBot Can Help
- Automated Accessibility Scanning: DubBot regularly scans UW websites and performs over 100 automated accessibility checks, such as low color contrast, missing alt text, and missing labels on form fields, and provides actionable recommendations tailored to WCAG 2.1 AA.
- Unit-Level Accountability: Websites in DubBot can be grouped into sets, so results can be viewed individually or collectively for colleges, schools, or administrative units, a useful feature for tracking progress over time and demonstrating compliance through measurable benchmarks.
- Shared Governance: DubBot supports the University’s web environment by enabling content owners in the UW community to identify and resolve issues before they impact users or trigger legal risk.
- Improved Digital Quality: Beyond accessibility, DubBot also flags broken links, spelling errors, and a variety of best practices to improve website quality and user experience across UW’s web landscape.
DubBot is helping the University of Washington shift from reactive remediation to proactive, scalable compliance. It’s a critical part of UW’s strategy to build an accessible, inclusive, legally compliant, and user-friendly digital environment, supporting our students, faculty, staff, and public audiences alike.
- If you are responsible for a UW website and would like to have it added to DubBot, please submit a DubBot Access Request form.
- For training on how to use DubBot, please see the archived video from our DubBot Web Accessibility Training hosted in Feburary.