Improving accessibility in your Canvas courses

According to the IU Accessibility website^[1], for something to be considered accessible, it must be:

1. Equally integrated (provided at the same time and not separate)
2. Equally effective (provides equal opportunity or outcome)
3. Substantially equivalent in ease of use (should not be more difficult)

This definition applies to both assignments and activities that you ask students to do and instructional materials you ask students to use. Here we are specifically talking about instructional materials that you share with your students in Canvas.

Seven simple steps

You can think of course accessibility in seven steps.

1. Structure documents and Canvas pages using built-in headings based on the organizational hierarchy of the document.
2. Describe the purpose or content conveyed by an image using alternative text, imagining what text you’d have written if not using the image.
3. Use link text that describes the link’s destination or function, not the URL or “click here” or “read more.” Use descriptive text like “read more about Psychology 101.”
4. Use text colors that strongly contrast with the background. Don’t use color as the only way to identify something.
5. Format numbered or bulleted lists using built-in list tools.
6. Use the built-in table tool only for formatting tabular data (not for page layout), and include meaningful column and/or row headers to describe the data.
7. Ensure all videos are accurately captioned, and provide transcripts for audio-only files.

The following chapters provide more information, instructions, and resources for each of these seven items. The chapters are separated by the type of content.

• Content added directly to Canvas pages, assignments, discussions, and quizzes
• Files added to Canvas
• Video or audio in Canvas

There is also a chapter on IU supported tools to find and fix content in Canvas

Resources

7 Simple Steps for Creating More Inclusive Digital Content short course

ADA Basics for Faculty short course