Bye-Bye Clutter, Hello Smarter Checks  ## Metadata - Author: [[Equalize Digital]] - Full Title: Bye-Bye Clutter, Hello Smarter Checks - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #wordpress - #accessibility - #equalizedigital Author: Hosts: Equalize Digital team (William + co-host; names not fully stated on stream) Source: YouTube – Equalize Digital Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs date created: 2025-08-16 10:58 --- # Bye-Bye Clutter, Hello Smarter Checks – Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker Changelog (Ep. 3) ## Table of Contents: - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes (timestamped)](#️-notes-timestamped) - [⏱️ 00:07 — Stream status & weather](#t-0007) - [⏱️ 02:31 — What the plugin does (free vs pro)](#t-0231) - [⏱️ 07:24 — Site Health: critical when no post types](#t-0724) - [⏱️ 09:44 — Full-site scan: errors & warnings appear](#t-0944) - [⏱️ 14:51 — Cleanup process & “Clear Issues” rationale](#t-1451) - [⏱️ 17:13 — New front-end “Clear” + “Rescan” buttons](#t-1713) - [⏱️ 21:23 — Auto-rescan pattern helps builders](#t-2123) - [⏱️ 23:28 — Side-by-side icons (no stacking)](#t-2328) - [⏱️ 27:22 — Icon spacing in tight UIs](#t-2722) - [⏱️ 29:12 — Small targets & pagination edge cases](#t-2912) - [⏱️ 29:59 — Smarter transcript detection (multiple iframes)](#t-2959) - [⏱️ 33:40 — Customer feedback → test coverage](#t-3340) - [⏱️ 39:39 — Sneak peek: archive scanning (taxonomies/CPT archives)](#t-3939) - [⏱️ 41:47 — Example: empty headings on taxonomy pages](#t-4147) - [⏱️ 45:56 — Smart sampling vs scanning every term](#t-4556) - [⏱️ 47:54 — Why archives are harder than posts](#t-4754) - [⏱️ 52:08 — Cleanup routines for virtual pages](#t-5208) - [⏱️ 53:51 — Future: custom URLs, admin pages, patterns](#t-5351) - [⏱️ 58:10 — Issues REST API (CRUD + integrations)](#t-5810) - [⏱️ 60:12 — Call to update & join bi-weekly streams](#t-6012) - [📖 References (inline)](#-references-inline) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-diversity-equity-inclusion-and-belonging-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🔍 DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### References: - 🔗 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs - 🔗 Plugin page: https://equalizedigital.com/accessibility-checker/ - 🔗 WordPress.org listing: https://wordpress.org/plugins/accessibility-checker/ --- ## 📝 Summary - ✅ **Focus:** The team ships usability updates to the free **Accessibility Checker** plugin: Site Health warnings when scanning is misconfigured, a **front-end Clear/Rescan** workflow, and **side-by-side issue icons** to reduce clutter. - ✅ **Rules:** Improved detection of **video transcripts** when lazy-loaded embeds render **multiple iframes**. - ✅ **Roadmap:** **Archive scanning** (taxonomies/CPT archives) via **virtual pages**, automated cleanup of stale records, and an **Issues REST API** enabling external dashboards and tooling. - ✅ **Takeaway:** Less friction, clearer signals, and better foundations for large sites and integrators. --- ## 📖 Main Content ### 🗒️ Notes (timestamped) #### ⏱️ [00:07 — Stream status & weather](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs&t=7) <a id="t-0007"></a> - 🔹 **Context:** Light banter; verifying LinkedIn Live; acknowledging a ~20–30s delay. - 🔹 **Value:** Sets expectations for latency; foreshadows “live censoring” if needed. #### ⏱️ [02:31 — What the plugin does (free vs pro)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs&t=151) <a id="t-0231"></a> - 🔹 **Free core:** Full ruleset, no gating; scans content and highlights issues. - 🔹 **Pro:** Full-site scans, global issue management, audit history, multisite add-on, CSV export. - 🔹 **Message:** Free is capable; Pro adds scale and ops features. #### ⏱️ [07:24 — Site Health: critical when no post types](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs&t=444) <a id="t-0724"></a> - 🔹 **Problem:** If **no post types are selected**, the checker scans nothing. - 🔹 **UX:** **Critical** notice labeled “Accessibility” explains the fix; button jumps to settings. #### ⏱️ [09:44 — Full-site scan: errors & warnings appear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs&t=584) <a id="t-0944"></a> - 🔹 **Flow:** Configure post types → run scan → Site Health reflects **18 errors / 20 warnings** in demo. - 🔹 **Pro tip:** Link to **Open Issues** when Pro is active accelerates triage. #### ⏱️ [14:51 — Cleanup process & “Clear Issues” rationale](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs&t=891) <a id="t-1451"></a> - 🔹 **Why Clear exists:** Historical bug left **orphaned issues** after post-type changes; clear button let users reset. - 🔹 **Now:** **Automated cleanup** removes orphans; Clear remains as **debug tool**. - 🔹 **Risk:** Potential for misuse (clear → leave); autoscan on reopen mitigates. #### ⏱️ [17:13 — New front-end “Clear” + “Rescan” buttons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs&t=1033) <a id="t-1713"></a> - 🔹 **Where:** **Front-end Highlighter**. - 🔹 **Benefit:** Test a fix (e.g., via devtools or builder), **rescan instantly** without backend round-trip. #### ⏱️ [21:23 — Auto-rescan pattern helps builders](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs&t=1283) <a id="t-2123"></a> - 🔹 **Behavior:** After **Clear**, next panel open **auto-rescans**. - 🔹 **Audience:** Front-end page builders (e.g., Beaver Builder) get **fresh results** without editor visits. #### ⏱️ [23:28 — Side-by-side icons (no stacking)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs&t=1408) <a id="t-2328"></a> - 🔹 **Before:** Multiple issues **stacked** on the same element; required paging with Prev/Next. - 🔹 **Now:** Icons **sit side-by-side**; each is **clickable**; less z-index confusion; faster navigation. #### ⏱️ [27:22 — Icon spacing in tight UIs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs&t=1642) <a id="t-2722"></a> - 🔹 **Use cases:** **Tiny targets** (social icons, pagination). - 🔹 **Fix:** Spacing avoids **overlap**, makes clustered issues operable. #### ⏱️ [29:12 — Small targets & pagination edge cases](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs&t=1752) <a id="t-2912"></a> - 🔹 **Nested elements:** Parent/child overlays previously obscured access to specific markers. - 🔹 **Outcome:** Side-by-side layout + offset improves **hit testing**. #### ⏱️ [29:59 — Smarter transcript detection (multiple iframes)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs&t=1799) <a id="t-2959"></a> - 🔹 **Issue:** **Lazy-loaded videos** sometimes render two iframes; only one tied to transcript. - 🔹 **Update:** Rule recognizes **a single transcript** linked to **either iframe** instance. - 🔹 **Scope:** Especially helpful for **YouTube** embeds. #### ⏱️ [33:40 — Customer feedback → test coverage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs&t=2020) <a id="t-3340"></a> - 🔹 **Process:** Support case became a **failing test**, then a **passing test**; prevents regressions. - 🔹 **Coverage:** Rules approach **near-complete** automated testing. #### ⏱️ [39:39 — Sneak peek: archive scanning (taxonomies/CPT archives)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs&t=2379) <a id="t-3939"></a> - 🔹 **Capability:** Scan **taxonomy term archives** + **custom post type archives**. - 🔹 **Reports:** Issues appear in summaries and the **front-end highlighter** on archive pages. #### ⏱️ [41:47 — Example: empty headings on taxonomy pages](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs&t=2507) <a id="t-4147"></a> - 🔹 **Demo:** Finds **empty `<h*>`** on a term archive; shows on-page highlight + detail panel. #### ⏱️ [45:56 — Smart sampling vs scanning every term](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs&t=2756) <a id="t-4556"></a> - 🔹 **Default:** **Smart sampling**: min posts / max posts / attempt a single-post term per taxonomy. - 🔹 **Toggle:** Option to **scan every term* - Summary: Join us for a behind-the-scenes look at Accessibility Checker’s latest updates! In this live stream, Steve Jones (CTO) and William Patton (Senior Developer) break down recent changes to the Accessibility Checker plugin, including new features, bug fixes, and improvements to reporting and performance. This week: Bye-Bye Clutter, Hello Smarter Checks. - Added: Ability to clear issues on a post or page from the frontend highlighter. - Added: More Accessibility Checker details in the site health check. - Fixed: Icons stack in frontend highlighter when there multiple issues on the same element. - Improved: Missing Transcript can better detect transcripts for videos in the content. Whether you’re a plugin user, WordPress developer, or just curious about how we approach accessibility and best practices in our own work, this conversation offers insights into our development processes and how we prioritize user feedback. 🛠️ In every episode, hear: - What's new - Decisions behind specific features - What’s coming next in Accessibility Checker Bring your questions and join the conversation! 🔔 Subscribe for more updates on accessibility and WordPress plugin development. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSC71xnJUs And we're live. Hey, William. How's it going? >> Yeah, it's going good. How you doing today? >> I'm I'm doing well. We had a lot of rainstorms last night and dog dogs barking. >> Yeah, we're looking at storms tomorrow maybe. But we're in the middle of a heat wave right now. It's super hot outside. >> Yeah. So, in Scotland, what's super hot? >> Um, well, it's 25 Celsius at my desk and I've got the AC on. It's probably like 28 29 out there. >> Okay. >> Which in Fahrenheit is >> He's got to switch the whole thing over. >> 75 at my desk right now. So, I guess like 85 90. >> So, 75 inside's pretty hot. Crank up that AC, right? >> Comfortable. >> Yeah. So, we're trying to stream to LinkedIn for the first time. And I'm refreshing the page to see if we are. And it looks like we are maybe. We'll have somebody on our team uh trying to confirm this as well. But uh looks like everything's live. Just give it a few minutes to for anybody that wants to join to join for everything to go out. Um I'm not sure about LinkedIn. Doesn't look like we're live. So maybe we won't be on LinkedIn today and all those business professionals will miss out on our live stream. >> Oh no. I just I literally just heard you say that on LinkedIn. >> Oh, you did? Okay. >> So, it is live. >> Okay. Very cool. >> Looks like it's like 20 30 seconds live. Just >> Yeah. Yeah. We have a uh a delay. Oh, it is live. There you go. All right. Um Yeah. So, there's a little bit of a delay, which you know is good, right? Maybe we can do the the live censoring if >> Yeah. If someone makes a mistake that they they don't want to see, we can just cancel it. >> Yeah. Yeah. Or we use some naughty words on the live stream. But >> yeah, we got confirmation from Paula that it it that it's working. So well, she says just checked and it doesn't look to be live, but I just checked and it does look to be live on LinkedIn. So, so interesting. I think it is delayed. Um, >> yeah. >> So, all good. So, uh, yeah. So, let's jump into it. So, today we're kind of uh we're doing uh accessibility checker change log episode three. We've made it three episodes, William. And, uh, that means we're in it for the long haul now. >> Yeah. It's every two weeks. >> Every two weeks. Yep. So, uh, this episode we're calling Bye-Bye Clutter and Hello Smart Checks. So, what we do in this live stream is we talk about the Equalized Digital Accessibility Checker, which is a a WordPress plug-in that uh is used to scan your websites uh for accessibility and to help your websites become more uh accessible and to stay accessible. Uh the plug, we have a suite of plugins at this point. We have a free plugin um which is very fullfeatured. None of our rules are gated um and you so you can download that today and uh get a lot of value out of it. We have a pro plugin with advanced features such as full-sight scanning and being able to manage issues at a global level. And we have a few add-ons. We have audit history to to track your uh accessibility um issues over time. And we have a multi-sight add-on to be able to uh manage the installation, the activation, and the license keys um from the uh multi-sight network level. And finally, we have an export add-on that allows you to export your issue data and your site scan data to CSV files. So, let's jump into it. Uh today uh we're calling it Bye-Bye Clutter, Hello Smart Checks, and that's because we've implemented some changes. We'll be exclusively talking about the free plugin today because uh those are the the the changes that went out last week and uh we made changes to how our issues show on the front end. uh especially in the case where multiple issues uh show up and so that they they don't overlap with each other. And we've made some improvements to uh accessibility rules and to um adding uh more site health uh notifications inside the WordPress admin uh to help you be sure that the accessibility checker is working correctly. So, first off, let's jump into um we added more accessibility checker details in the site health check. So, if you don't know inside the WordPress admin, they they have this feature nowadays uh called the site health. And basically what it does is it can scan your website for uh any number of issues, right? if it if it can't access the the REST API, maybe it'll give you a notification that hey, your web your website's blocking the REST API and things like that. And it gives it gives us the ability to hook in and add our own things. So, let me uh pull up my screen and then I will show you uh the site health. Uh we do have confirmation from Paulo that it's working fine. So, great. We are going out on LinkedIn and X and YouTube. Cool. So, when you log into your website, you're presented in the the opening dashboard page. Uh, and a you can move these widgets around, but it seems to always be in the top left for me. Uh, there's a site health widget, and you can see take take a look at six items on the site health screen. So, it's showing me that I have some things that should be improved, some things I should look at, right? So, I can click this site health link, which will jump me over to the site health page. You can also get to it from the um the menu in the left hand uh the left hand of the admin page uh by going to tools and then to site health. So, we've added three site health checks. Um, and one I have listed here as critical. So, now you're see and we're we're tagging these with accessibility uh to help you identify them and and to not add any confusion to other people that may be tagging accessibility things. So, you can kind of group those together. But you can see I have a critical issue and it says no post types selected for accessibility checking. So if I toggle this this open, it says accessibility checker cannot scan any content because no post types have been selected without configured post types. No accessibility issues will be detected. So, of course, in your accessibility checker settings, if you haven't selected any custom post type or if you've deselected all your custom post types and then the accessibility checker is not going to be able to do its job. So, we create we provide a a button here to jump over and enable those. Um, but before I do that, let's see what else we have under accessibility. And so, on the site health check page, I have four recommended improvements. And in there, our accessibility one is content has not been checked. So if I toggle this one open, it says uh no post have been scanned. Run a full-sight scan to begin checking your content for accessibility issues. So we don't have this listed as a critical issue because uh you know, we don't think it's critical. And really at this point if I go to do a full-sight scan uh and I haven't addressed the critical issue it the full-sight scan is actually going to tell me to do the same thing enable a custom post type uh so that we can scan. So we can also look at the past test and um if I go down we have one here in the past test currently it's it's no accessibility issues detected and accessibility if I toggle that open it says accessibility checker has not found any issues in the scanned content. So you know on the surface the way things are set up now oh great I don't have any accessibility issues but this is only because we haven't scanned anything. So uh so let's go back and let's address these issues and see how the site health uh changes based on our our our reconfiguration. So, if I scroll back up to the uh the critical issues here and I click on uh configure post types, it'll jump me over to the settings page and I can see of course I don't have any custom post types checked. So, I'll check page. I want to scan pages and then I'll hit save changes. Okay. So now if I go back to tools and then I go to site health now that that site health critical issue is gone and uh it's no longer showing. You can if I toggle open pass tests um you can see now that post types are configured for accessibility checking that it is now passing but we we still need to run a fullsight scan. If I go to the recommended improvements um under accessibility content has not been checked. So now if I toggle that open and I go to start fullsight scan. Okay. Run accessibility check there. So, I'm going to run a scan. I have I chose pages on purpose because I know there's not that many and our fullsight scan won't take that long to complete. So, let's let that run and see how that changes our site health. All right. And our full sight scan has completed. So if I jump back over to site health. So now under recommended improvements I can see accessibility issues detected. This was showing as pass because we haven't scanned anything. The plugin that has no knowledge of accessibility issues. So, if I toggle that open, I can see that accessibility checker has detected 18 errors and 20 warnings. Uh, since I have the pro plugin installed, I can actually uh click a button to go view those issues. Uh, jumps me over to the open issues and then I can start addressing those here. So that's kind of a quick rundown, a simple rundown of the site health. Just trying to expose uh throughout the WordPress admin um when accessibility issues are there and and trying to help you take action on those and trying to give you more context to what the plug-in is doing and what state it's in. So those are our site health updates. got any thought wis thoughts or wisdom on to add to that William? >> Um, >> no. >> No, no. I was I was a bit distracted trying to figure out what I'm demoing next. >> That's right. You gota always Yeah, you got to keep up on the show notes and get ready for your turn. So, the next feature that we've added is the we've added the ability to clear issues on on a post on a po Oh, sorry. The ability to clear issues on a post or page from the front-end highlighter. So, if you've used the plugin before, I mean, it's probably been a year or so ago, we did add a feature into um the admin that the the postedit page to be able to clear issues and William, can you speak to a little bit why we initially added that in the admin and and because on its face, it seems like not a great idea to add a clear issues button, but can Can you speak to that a little bit? >> Yes. So, we initially added this button because some users had ended up getting some stuck issues in the in the reports on the individual page by changing their post type of the the individual post that was being viewed. So, at the time, our plug-in didn't differentiate or didn't filter out based on the actual post type. So if someone changed their post type, they would have all issues displayed on the single page, but when they updated, they wouldn't actually be cleared out as no longer existing because the post type mismatch. So that was the original intention of the clear issues button. Um, it also is a very useful debugging tool to make sure that when an issue is cleared or discovered that it doesn't either reoccur or, you know, accidentally get missed on a rescan. >> Yeah. >> So, yeah, for me it's a a nice debugging tool, but it did solve a a bug that no longer is an issue, but was for a while. >> Right. So we in episode two of the accessibility checker change log uh we we released a feature and we talked about a feature and it was called a cleanup process. So we now have a cleanup process inside the plug-in that uh runs through and and will automatically uh check for uh issues that are no longer connected to a post type that have become orphaned in some way. and the clear button before if your issues had become orphaned uh you could actually hit that clear button and it would unorphan those issues and allow you to rescan the the the post. Uh so so that feature the automatic cleanup does address that and help fix that issue. But the like William said the clear issues button I think internally we use it a lot for debug and we find it a valuable tool. Now it there is the potential for abuse, right? Like you could you could clear your issues. So if you ran a post and you got all these issues, you could just hit clear and then leave the page and then the issues are gone. The next time somebody opens that page to edit it, the the checker will automatically scan and find those issues again. But there is a small potential for abuse. And I think that um that you just have to be mindful of that. If you clear those issues, be sure to either refresh the p the edit page or to hit the save button so it rescans. So I'll I'll pull that up and show you. So this was the the admin button. So if I click this, it'll kind of it'll pop up an alert and you know ask me, do I really want to clear these issues? and I hit okay. And then you can see all the the stats kind of go green because there are no issues. Issues still exist. So let's go ahead and resave the page. And this just gives us some assurance that what we currently have is 100% correct. Now, of course, saving the the page actually does the same exact thing. It actually clears the issues and rescans. Um, but uh let's jump over to the front end and take a look at how this looks like in the front-end highlighter. So, if I open if I open the details tab and then I toggle open an issue and I hit view on page, you can see the the front-end highlighter pops up. And now at the bottom you can see a as of uh the last the previous release we added a a rescan button and we thought since we've added a rescan button here we should add a clear issues button. So you can do both uh right from the front end. So I have a clear issues button. If I go ahead and click the clear issues button, I get the same alert that pops up and ask asks me if I really want to do this in case somebody accidentally hits this button, they have a way out. So, so now the issues have been cleared. It gives me feedback and so now I can hit the rescan this page button and it'll say scanning and then I can see my issues again. So, I think I showed in the last episode too what a way that I've kind of used this a little bit is I actually will inspect an element in the in the inspector and actually modify the element on the page to test if a change will actually work before actually implementing it on the code side. And uh these rescan buttons and these clear issue buttons uh help uh me to actually rescan that modified uh element on the page that actually really isn't modified, but it's just kind of a debugging uh thing for me uh for a developer to be able to do. So >> yeah, so something I have tried is um on front-end page builders as well, it's super useful that you edit the content in line >> like you know let's let's say BeaverBuilder for example which is an entirely front end builder or you know can be >> um if you actually edit your content rather than saving the content you can click that rescan button right there and then whereas previously with the builder like Beaver Builder you would need to save the content and then visit the editor page in the back end to get an updated list of issues. That no longer will be the case. This rescan this page button rescans the currently rendered version. prior to saving and currently it does also save those issues when you click that button which is something that I have an issue in back of my mind of you know making it an optional save whether you want to rescan and save or whether you just want to rescan the current content which I think will be useful for other page builders that you know as you're building your page you might want to check it and ra not actually save those issues, you just want to see them. So, >> right. Yeah, we've had some talk about that in regards to the front-end highlighter and in regards to full sight scanner. Um, we're looking at adding features into the fullsight scanner that actually allows you to uh make uh to pass arguments through. And when I say arguments, I mean like you can choose uh which custom post types, which post status, maybe a date range get actually gets scanned from the fullsight scanner. And and the reason why, you know, we haven't implemented that yet is because we need to be mindful about how we do that because um you know, our plug-in is trying to get a holistic view of the accessibility throughout the website. And if you run a full-sight scan and you modify the query and the arguments that get passed into what post and pages get scanned, it could it could skew the overall accessibility u reports of the page. So, we've had some talk maybe in regards to that and regards to the fullsight scan of some sort of snapshot and and uh it's not a a hard issue but it's a snapshot issue that you've taken um to be able to do some kind of debugging or you know some edge case out out there. So that is the the clear >> actually before we move on there is another feature that exists or doesn't exist because of clear issues one but can be demoed if you want to pull that back up again and just clear the issues from the page. >> Yeah. So this page now effectively has no issues if you reload it. You see how the the scanner has automatically opened and then there we go. >> It just rescaned right away. So if you clear the issues next time someone opens that panel on a page it will automatically rescan which means that you know people who use exclusively front end page builders will be able to like get their results you know not maybe not instantly but they will be able to get them for every single page regardless of whether they visit the editor in the back end or not which is becoming more and more common. people never visit the admin for for their page edits. >> Yeah. And and that pattern or that process that William just described is actually mirrors how the backend works, right? You can clear you can clear the issues, but when if you refresh the page, it will rescan. And so it works the same in the back end. And yeah, if you are using a page builder that's kind of, you know, dynamically updating things in real time, um, you can hit the rescan at any time to see your current results and, uh, get feedback real quick. So, that is the the rescan button. Um, William, the next one I wanted you to demo, I have it up on my screen right now, which I just noticed. Do you want me? >> Yeah, you could have done that. I did actually. That's what I was fuffing around with. I had to find a post that exhibited this, but I do have it up. >> Okay. Okay. >> So, the next uh feature that we released is is what we what we're kind of talking about with this episode about clutter. We're trying to um simplify the layout of things on the front end and actually make it easier for you to identify issues. So we we fix the icon stacking in the front-end highlighter when there are multiple issues on the same element. So you want you want to describe how that previously worked. >> So in the past um so yeah let me open this here. So in the past if this I if this had two distinct issues I would click this link but I wouldn't be able to click on the second one. and the second one would be behind it and I would have to use the previous and next buttons to get to it. They would be stacked on top of each other if this save element had multiple issues. Whereas if we look at the the item below so the first one ambiguous anchor text it's just called link that is you know correct um and it's an improper use of link. So if we inspect this we will see you know it fails because it has that as the anchor and no wrong. So this link here has two individual issues and now they're nicely stacked side by side. So you can individually click on those issues whereas previously they would be on top of each other. You wouldn't be able to get to them. You would need to click the next button. And it just so happens because I've cleared the issues, this is they've been discovered back to back. But sometimes that isn't the case. Um, sometimes issues are discovered out of order. So, you know, number eight and number seven are right next to each other, but in some pages, number seven and number 16 might be these issues. So, as you click through them, it would be jarring pulling you up and down and back and forth. So now you can just see them side by side, no longer stacked, >> right? And the reason why Williams are on the left side of the page is probably because those are probably HTML blocks, aren't aren't they? >> They are HTML blocks. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> So yeah, we can see it here as well. So text is too small and it's underline text. >> Yeah. So, a pretty simple feature, but actually it goes a long way to kind of organize the front-end highlighter icons and, you know, not make it so cluttered or confusion. I mean, I even know that like sometimes I would look at those and I'd be like, "Oh, there's only one issue here." And then I'd start tabing through and like, "Wait, there's like there's two or three issues on and they're just overlaid on top of each other." And whoever, you know, from a indexing zindexing, whoever gets there first gets to Yeah. Whoever gets there last actually is the one on top. So, um, you trying to pull up another one. >> Yeah. So this one here specifically but it isn't this one but there is sometimes you have an issue or a set of issues that are yeah this one doesn't have to but you you know sometimes you might have a list of items and you might have you know these are test posts so these are supposed to pass and supposed to fail. um that's not correct here because I've edited this in my local but sometimes you know why why these two are failing why is this one here not failing and previously that could be a stacking issue because the the wrapper but >> I guess I'm not explaining that very well but it's very useful that it is side by side now >> well a common is yeah a common issue is when you know you have multiple issues regarding one HTML element but like a lot of times where we we'd see this and that like like right there that's a perfect example. So like so this is like an icon. It's like this is in the page pageionation. It's like a previous icon and there's two issues and the icon is really small. So and this actually moves them separates them a little bit so that you can actually initiate both of them. Social icons is normally where you see this a lot where you have like five social icons that are just, you know, real close together and then it's just it it looks kind of like a mess and the icons are all kind of o overlapping each other. So you trying to a third one here? Yeah. See, see that's an interesting one too cuz there >> So here is like the exact problem that I was just describing whereby this is an outer element and actually does technically overlay this inner element's first issue. >> Mhm. And are those in order? I >> I mean they are in order because I've just resinned this page to show it. >> Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. then they would have been discovered out of order because the theme has changed, >> right? >> Yeah. So, this is actually the outer element that wraps all of these you all of the pageionation and this one. So, this is what it was previously like every time. >> Mhm. >> But now, you know, they are stacked side by side. I I know I'm not show I'm not shown a very good use case of this because it is still sort of broken in some situations, but I have an idea how to fix that as well. >> Yeah, because it's evaluating the position based on the element itself and not on its children or its parent issue. Yeah. Yeah. I mean there's >> but yeah, previously I wouldn't be able to access this. This is the second issue for this these two warnings. So I can access this separately now because this one sticks out. But previously they wouldn't. >> Yeah. And so on the page I had up you can see it as well. Like these are nicely stacked right next to each other. U they're not overlapping. So I can actually see that there are two issues here where before it would it would sort of look like there was only one until you started paging through these. And same with this learn more link. And you know there's another learn more link down here because it's ambiguous and it's an improper use of a link. So so that is a another small feature that we think goes a long way to helping uh uh expose all the issues on the page and to make things uh more readable and declut cluttering the front-end highlighter. Cool. So the next feature that we have here is um we improved the missing transcripts uh the that they can better detect transcripts for videos in the content. So that's kind of a vague change log entry. William, can you >> Yeah. So, um, we had a customer reach out to us where their markup looked correct to me from the front end from or not the markup, but the rendered markup looked correct to me in terms of how the transcript in the video was lined up back to back. However, when the page was being scanned, we weren't detecting the transcript existed. And the reason why is because some systems rely on a lazy load that employ actually employs two script tags for the the video. So what was actually happening is one of them was discovering the transcript but the second one was not discovering the transcript. So this role has now been updated so that it can handle when there are two I frames with videos side by side but only one transcript that's related to both of them. So I actually do have some you know some markup which can show it. Let me load this into into a page or I guess I can pull it up here first. So yeah, the issue that we were seeing is so there's a figure tag which is where the video is contained. Here is the video and there's a transcript right here. So this should be getting connected. The problem is that that transcript was actually connected to this I frame as opposed to this iframe. So there was still technically one iframe that was missing the transcript. So the rule has been updated to understand that these are technically the same thing. I mean it isn't the same thing here in this cuz this is just some random genetic test markup. But yeah this transcript belongs to whichever of these iframes is displayed. So we can actually if I edit this page. I can paste that. Save it. And the these numbers should not significantly change. Like it should not detect. Well, maybe it will, but yeah. So a video is present, but it is not detecting that there is a missing transcript because it has a transcript. Transcript >> Mhm. >> is right here. this H3 is the transcript. But previously, before we made the rule change, it would detect one missing transcript because there was one transcript with two videos. So that's a long-winded way of saying it now better handles lazy load of YouTube videos and other providers, but specifically this was a YouTube issue it was discovered with. >> Mhm. So, so this is this primarily resol uh revolves around lazy loading, right? >> Yes, lazy loading. However, >> you know, I'm not talking about just lazy loaded plugins. Sometimes the browser will lazy load these. >> Yeah. >> Like by default. So, it will employ a very similar pattern. Perhaps not this no script duplicated pattern, but like a lot of videos will automatically hide themselves for bandwidth reasons. If you might be on a slow connection and the video might not want to be instantly loaded or you might be scrolling through like Facebook and Facebook doesn't want to show you every single video you scroll past until you interact with it, right? Like these are techniques that are common now and previously you know the rule was not catching this but it does it does now it detects the video because there is video but it knows the transcript is attached to both of them >> as opposed to one. >> So was this issue brought up internally or by a customer? >> So a customer brought this issue up. Um, we had spoken to this customer and they explained how they were adding their transcripts. It seemed correct to me that the mark, as I said, visually on the page. It looks correct, but the scanner saw things slightly differently because the scanner looks at just the markup and it was being thrown off by the fact that there was two video frames but only one transcript. >> Yeah. Yeah. And that is, you know, technically an issue if every video you have should have a transcript, but if the videos are the same, then >> right, >> one transcript is acceptable for both. >> Yep. >> So, yeah, I mean, we're always trying to refine these rules. We're always trying to make them smarter. You know, we can't always uh come up with every scenario ourselves. create a create a uh a unit or a chest test uh to evaluate. A lot of times we these fixes come from our own internal use on the auditing side of our company. They utilize the plugin in the audit. So, you know, we actually, you know, walk the walk and we dog food our own plugin and that helps it make make it a lot better. And um our customers when they reach out. So, if you're using the plugin and you're trying to discern, hey, I added a transcript to this video, but the plugin still says it's missing, like what's what's going on, uh, you know, contact our support and, uh, we're always very quick to fix these issues or to and to help improve the plug-in. And what it does is it it not only fixes the problem for you, it the the all the 7,000 people that have the plug-in installed all get a net benefit from from you know you raising that issue to us and us taking action on fixing it. So, >> yep. And whenever we have these, we do add these. This is a test suite and we do add this test that this exact markup here should pass. And now every time we make a change to our rules, this will be validated. Does this pass for the rule or does it change? And yeah, every time we have an issue to fix the rules, we add a case for it in these tests so that we can make sure that we don't have any regressions and we make sure that the things we expect to pass and the things we expect to fail. >> Yeah. >> Do Yeah. So, you know, a a more simple way of saying what William said was we we add a more lame inter way to say it is we we we add these scenarios and we validate the rules against them every with every single change of the plug-in. So, if any code like if we say somebody says, you know, hey, the transcript's not doing XYZ, right? and we go, "Okay, well, we can fix XYZ." And we go and change another thing about the the missing transcript rule. And and if that inadvertently breaks the the missing transcript rule that we fixed previous, the one we're talking about here, >> it'll flag as an error and actually won't even allow our developers to to get approve to get merged. >> Yep. So, it's just all in a way to make sure that we're collecting these scenarios over time. They actually get added to our test suite and they're actually validated with every change to the plug-in. Just ensures that our rules continue to improve and they don't degradate with future changes. >> Yeah. And that is you know previously was a problem because we had no automated testing for you know all of these rules back in the days when all these rules were powered by PHP. So you could make changes to one of those rules and not understand that it affects a different role in you know sometimes a positive way sometimes a negative way but without the the automated testing we didn't know. And I actually, you know, at this point, I think we have 95% of all of our rules tested to almost 100% coverage. >> Yeah. >> And and soon it will be all of our rules will have 100% test coverage. >> Yep. Cool. It's just the way that we ensure that, you know, we're we're creating the most uh the best quality rules and the and the most accurate rules we can. So, so that's kind of our rundown on new features inside the accessibility checker free plugin. Uh, you know, you can find it at equalized digital.com or you can find it on wordpress.org. Uh, you can find it in your WordPress dashboard on search for accessibility checker. Install it. Give these new features a try and uh do that all completely free. So, upcoming features. So, we've been teasing a few things in the last couple episodes and uh we've been teasing um adding the ability to scan archive pages and we've been teasing a little bit about an issues API that we've had in the works. And I think since we have a little bit of time here, I think what might be good is to uh do our first ever equalized digital accessibility checker sneak peek. We need like a We need an animation screen. Yeah. >> Get some some confetti. >> Some confetti. There you go. So on the archive page scanning, how's that coming along, William? >> Yeah. So it's it's pretty far along. There's a couple of edge cases, a couple of quirks still to work through, but by and large it is working. it, you know, can scan all your taxonomies, all of your custom post type archives and, you know, it shows you the results in the various reports. So, the summary will, you know, reflect how many issues those pages have. Um, you will also be able to use the front-end highlighter to preview those issues directly on the page. Um and you know you can globally ignore issues, you can individually ignore issues. You can do almost everything you can do with normal page issues with archive issues with exception of being able to you know edit the content. You can't edit the contents of an archive page in the same way. So there are some you know UI adjustments there to be made. If I mean if you want to pull up my screen I can actually quickly demo this. So on this you know this is my test site. I have 66 posts on this page but if you look in the sidebar there is a whole load of custom texonomies added. Um there's also this oh it's this one here this custom post type which has an archive page. So, previously none of this content would be able to be scanned. But if we now go to the full set scanner and I click this button, so you will see 66 posts and 10 pages. If I click this one, it's actually going to scan 87 items because, you know, 10 of those things are post terms from these taxonomies. Um and you know while this is doing it scan I can actually show you a little bit what what this looks like you know kind of in the back end. So these are the terms. So there's this 10 technology term as a topic which you know is part of this taxonomy. So if I click edit on this, it has eight issues, six warnings and yeah, these are the headers that are present on this page. So an empty heading tag. I can click this button here. I can actually view this. There we go. That's the empty heading tag on a taxonomy page. Normally you would not be able to scan this page. you wouldn't get issues for it, but here are all the issues. This is, you know, an actual taxonomy template. >> Very cool. So, for those that don't know, I think the accessibility checker is getting ready to turn 5 years old, I think. Yeah. Right. And >> which is kind of amazing. And I I will say this that uh when we released uh the accessibility checker in uh two uh 2020 that uh the the archives the archive scanning was probably issue number one. It was probably the first thing that was opened was we need to add the ability to scan custom post type. And it's actually quite difficult with the way that the plug-in is set up to do its associations or or not just the way the plug-in set up, but the way WordPress is rigged up to where post ID equals the object and archives or collections of post IDs or lists of post IDs, but they're not pages of themselves. They're not posts in terms of how WordPress considers a chunk of content. It's a dynamic page. it doesn't exist then and of itself in the same way that other pages are supposed to. >> So it's actually quite difficult to keep track of it. Um >> yeah it it proved quite difficult. >> The well the the well let me ask you this. Was the uh was was coming to a solution the difficult part or the implementation the difficult part? coming to the solution was quite difficult actually coming up with the right idea to be able to track these and you know I don't know how much we want to >> talk about the actual solution >> no we can talk about >> until we release it but yeah the you know the the long and short is that a custom post type is created which currently is called virtual pages >> and we store these items here and you know I was have this up here so it's actually using smart sampling so right now what it does is it takes the font finds, you know, looks at all your terms and it finds in a given taxonomy the one that has the most posts, the one that has the least posts and it will actually do the least post check twice because it's trying to find one that has zero and one that has only one single post. So we'll try and find it will always find at least the minimum and maximum on a page but it is trying to find three terms from every taxonomy so that it covers the most use cases of each of those templates. Um >> right but we have the ability to so we've added a setting where you can toggle on and >> toggle this on right here and every taxonomy term >> every post type will be checked. Yeah. So, if you want to ensure that that you're you're if you're trying to be, you know, 100% compliant that you're catching all of your your term pages. And the reason why we would do sampling in this this regards is to, you know, not typically your your your taxonomy me template page is going to be the same for every tag, right? Or whatever the taxonomy is, right? And on a lot of sites, you might have more tags or categories than you have actual posts. So you might have 500 categories but only 150 posts. >> So we don't want to scan, you know, all of those additional pages when the results are going to be the same. >> Yeah. Um and it'll just, you know, it'll fill up the database and and you know, it'll it'll create a lot of noise uh for you. But we wanted to be able to give you the ability to to to thoroughly scan everything if you so choose. But we're just not doing it by default out of the box. >> Yeah. So I actually think I can probably demo that. So both of these are tag type. If I look at this seven and seven, seven and seven, right? So the page has the issues. It doesn't matter which tag it is. They're the same. they're the same set of issues across both of those terms. So if you were scanning every one of your tags and you had thousand tags, this isn't useful to know that a thousand pages have these exact issues. Just maybe it is, but I don't think it really is want to fix them. Um but you can come in here you can check this box save it and if we visit the the full set scanner you will see that this number is actually higher now it's going to scan 100 pages which it will scan every single term I have in all of those taxonomies. So if we take a look at this page now 24 rather than the 11 I think that was previously here. >> Yeah. So if uh if if I could jump back a little bit when we talked about kind of coming up with a solution for this. So the reason why this this feature hasn't been implemented for a long time is because it was highly complex because the pattern in which uh archive pages are generated is much different than the pattern in which a post or a page is generated in WordPress. So a post or a page really isn't generated. it's it actually exists and it's something in a database that we can grab and and you know we can uh we can loop over and archive page is not something that necessarily exists. It's more something that is generated on the fly and and then this is really the difficult part in application development or product development, plug-in development, whatever you want to call it. the is when when you've you've baked in kind of a pattern of how your plug-in works and then you have something that doesn't fit into that pattern. How how do you you have to then start thinking how do I achieve this without you know without breaking all the backwards compatibility? So backwards compatibility of the plugin or actually having what we were facing was probably a massive refactor of of the way that we scan the whole the whole uh the whole website um to be able to >> so so for me primarily my concern was data storage how we were going to store a new shape or a new pattern of data. So what I'm pulling up right now this is how our data is or this is our you know general custom table and an issue ID is always attached to a post ID it always has a type >> and a site ID right so these three pieces of information exist for all of our issues but none of this information but aside from the site ID but neither of these two exist for a taxonomy they don't have an ID nor do they have a pulse Okay. >> Yeah. So, I was uh you know, several weeks ago or a couple months ago, I was sitting at a kids swim meet, you know, on my phone and I don't know if anybody has kids in swim, you you know that there's a lot of downtime between the times when your kid swims. So, uh I was running through lots of scenarios on how we could achieve this. And and I really went through very difficult paths to get there. right? You know, even going as far as, you know, putting together some sort of elastic search where there are scans that run in the background that generate these pages and or these records. And then, uh, you know, through that research and William and I's back and forth, uh, we came to the determination that, hey, you know, WordPress provides the shape we need. Why don't we just detect these pages and put them into a custom post type and then we we then have access to post ids. We have access to post meta. We we have a place to show the results on the individual archive level rather than making you use the the open issues uh table to to remediate these. Um it actually made things quite simple and solved a lot of things. Now, if you're using a a virtual custom post type, uh you have to be mindful too that you know any archive page is going to create a record inside of the post table. And since we've now released you our cleanup process, we can now hook into that and and we're doing some work to kind of generalize that cleanup process. But we can actually hook in and ensure that we these virtual posts don't become stale uh if things change on the website like if a somebody deletes a taxonomy term, right? We can >> Yeah, we can hook in and we can clean that up, right Willie? We can and that will you know would be very complicated without the cleanup action but now we have this cleanup action this can be set scheduled if someone deletes you know if you just easily delete the United States then all of this information you know should be cleared almost immediately well you know once a day but we we could feasibly clean up individual tags as they get deleted but if you batch delete something or maybe you unregistered this topics texonomy. >> You know, we don't we can't individually delete them. We don't know you've unregistered them, but the cleanup routine can run and we'll get rid of those two, >> right? So, we're doing everything we, you know, we're doing our best to make sure that, you know, since we're going to utilize the post table uh of sorts to kind of help us generate these pages. By default, we're not going to do everything. Although you can choose to do you can choose to scan every single archive and we're going to run cleanup routines to make sure we're being mindful of what's being added into the database. So the way the where you saw that William we have that virtual uh so this is still a beta. It's still in works that's going to be that's going to be folded under the accessibility checker. >> Yes. >> Uh page and you'll be able to access it uh under that same dropdown. >> Yeah. And you know, teasing not the next feature, but a potential feature afterwards is that maybe you can just add custom pages, custom AMS that you might want to scan, >> not just archives. >> Well, so that's a that's a real sneak peek and so so >> this might not be next week. This probably won't be next week, but there might be some. >> Yeah. Well, what we needed is we needed a a mechanism in which to do kind of, you know, not your typical post or page, right? And so now we have a mechanism to do archive pages. Well, I think in that process, we've kind of learned that, hey, we could probably open this up to be able to scan other things as well. Like, >> and this was kind of >> some like false post types or some sites have dynamic content, right? like um knowledge bases for example might not actually have an individual post for every item >> in that knowledge base. They might be programmatically generating. >> Yeah. And well even archive >> other things. >> Yeah. Even admin pages. So >> yes. So you can maybe add new and you could put in a URL to an admin page and then and possibly be able to get scan results on a WordPress admin page which actually has been a request internal request because uh you know we audit uh WordPress plugins and and a lot of WordPress plugins uh have dashboard pages that we need to audit as well and it would be nice to be able to you know alleviate some of that manual auditing uh with some automated auditing from the accessibility checker. >> I mean, for us as dog food, it would be nice to automatically scan all of our own pages >> toy that our posts are the same. >> Exactly. Yeah. And >> I think it opens up the door a little bit to being able to scan uh uh full-sight editing template or what do they call parts or and uh maybe even patterns. maybe a way to to run an accessibility check just on a pattern alone, a pattern of blocks or an individual block at the block level we could run scans. So, this kind of opens the door to a lot of possibilities and uh we're excited to get that out. We I think we are slated to release that possibly next week. >> I think next week is is the end. So, be on the look for that feature and uh a full uh in-depth demo of that on our next uh live stream. So, we do have a couple other things coming that we've mentioned such as email reports and an issues API. I think we're at about time. We're going to hold on demoing the Oh, well, >> we do have to hold on it because I don't have the authorization. So, but here here we have a fully documented issues API. We get issues, you can create new issues, get single issue, update an issue, delete an issue. You can check whether you have access or I can demo this one >> because you don't have access. >> I don't have access. There we go. 401 unauthorized. Um, you know, one second. Maybe I can be authorized if I can I can maybe fake it. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, we're working on an issues API and this has actually been in the works all year and um uh we were working on a separate product that we kind of developed this for and we thought that this would be very useful inside the the plugin. So, we thought this would be interesting to release. So, you're getting an extra special sneak peek into the upcoming issues API. >> Yeah. So if I click this button here, here's the issues. I could update these. I could change them, you know, pageionate them however you want. So let's see 6 9416 is that issue ID. If I come down here to this delete one, try it out. Put that ID in 204, which means it has successfully deleted. If I click this button again, the 404 because the issue is not found. And if I rerun this up here, this should go away. So 69416. Yep, it's gone. 69415 is the next issue. So can ask for separate pages and given this you should be recognizable for anyone who's developed APIs before, right? gives you the corl example, the request URL and you know these are live responses from this actual test site. So these are the issues 10 of them at a time >> or you know as many as you want. >> So >> 500. >> So what's a use case for having an API in the plug-in? Why why are we working on this? >> Yeah, I mean for us this is you know potentially useful for us to be able to build more modular interfaces. For example, the full site scanner already takes advantage of the rest API. Um, however, it does not delete issues if it doesn't discover them. Maybe it could or maybe it can create it issues now with this post request, right? So, this is going to potentially be useful for us. However, this also means that anyone can build themselves an application. So you might use um some site management software that runs off site like MainWP. You will be able to use an integration or build your own integration now where you can get these issues right in MainWP. Like you might only care about the count. Well, this is an endpoint. You can run this. You can see how many issues are on this site and on my test site 1,630 issues exist. Right? You might want to display that or you might want to display how many of specific types there are. You can figure that out from you know these basic checks and you know if you you know fix an issue you can just delete it right in the offsite system. If it's like inside an iframe or something then you might want to do that or you might want to you know sneak peek to a potential another future feature. you might want to manually create issues. >> There you go. >> Yep. So, that is the sneak sneak peek of the issues >> of all the things for the rest of the year. >> That's right. So, all right. Well, I think we're at time. Um, it's been fun running through this with you, William. Um, like I said, grab the accessibility checker plugin at equalizeddigital.com or on the WordPress plug-in repository. Um, if you already have the plugin, please update to the latest version to get the uh the the latest features. So, well, we have these live streams every two weeks. Uh, and we would love for you to join in and ask questions next time. So, uh, please join us and, uh, we'll talk to you then. See you all later. >> Bye., Bye-Bye Clutter, Hello Smarter Checks, Equalize Digital, 01k2sp8y9ge6f3ja2zvt675khp.