Pope Tech
Web accessibility scanning, reporting, and monitoring platform
What is Pope Tech?
Pope Tech is SDSU’s enterprise web accessibility scanning, reporting, and monitoring platform. It uses the WebAIM WAVE accessibility evaluation engine to analyze webpages and identify detectable barriers related to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
How does Pope Tech work?
Pope Tech performs two primary operations:
- Crawling discovers webpages and builds an inventory of URLs within a configured website or domain.
- Scanning evaluates the code and rendered content of each discovered page using automated accessibility rules.
Who Should Use Pope Tech?
Website administrators and content editors can request an account through ServiceNow. They can use Pope Tech dashboards to review findings by website, page, template, issue type, frequency, and error density. The platform also supports scheduled scans, guided manual testing, customizable reports, remediation task tracking, historical trend analysis, and progress benchmarking.
Automated testing cannot determine full WCAG conformance because some requirements depend on context and human judgment. Pope Tech should therefore be used as part of a broader SDSU accessibility process that includes automated scanning, manual review, assistive-technology testing, remediation, and ongoing monitoring.
The platform can identify issues such as missing alternative text, insufficient color contrast, unlabeled form controls, empty links and headings, incorrect heading structures, and certain Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) implementation errors.