Designing and creating an accessible Canvas course is important to ensure the best opportunity for success for all your students. If you have questions or need assistance or consultation regarding how to create accessible content in Canvas, please contact one of our Learning Designers.

Provide Information to Students

  • Walk through your Canvas course with your students. Consider doing this both synchronously on the first day of class and asynchronously via a screen recording that students can watch on their own. Identify important areas of the course and where they can find all essential information and content.
  • Make sure to include the required Accommodation for Disabilities information in your syllabus or use one of the Canvas course templates that include this information:
    • Include the required syllabus statements. See: Policy Manual pp 4-61
    • Use the accessible syllabus template. This is available in Word or Google Docs. Ask our Learning Design team for more information.
    • Consider providing a link to the Help Desk for students in your course. If using a course template, this information is already provided.
  • Let students know upfront and in writing:
    • Which third-party tools or software they will need to use during the semester.
    • Whether they will need to participate in any activities or meetings outside of class time or at a different location.
    • How you plan to communicate with students and how you’d like them to communicate with you, particularly related to office hours and emails. 
    • If you will be using Announcements to communicate, notify student so they can enable notifications appropriately.
  • Share your course content as far in advance as possible and as much content as possible. Provide students with your slide decks in advance of class so they can review them. Most students also prefer to have the entire course opened so they can plan their assignment and reading schedules accordingly.

Organize Your Content

  • Use our research-informed templates to create your course for a consistent and clear visual design. In a recent survey, 93% of ESU students (n=500) requested a more consistent, logical course organization.
  • Use consistent naming conventions for Assignments, Pages, Modules, Quizzes, and Discussions.
  • Remove unnecessary items from your navigation menu. The base Canvas navigation sidebar has 64 items! You need about 5-7 of those. Hide those features you don't use and reduce the clutter. Slimming the sidebar has the added benefit of making the Canvas mobile experience easier and more consistent with the desktop experience.
  • Remove unnecessary content from your Canvas Files if  you copied your course from a previous semester and will not be reusing all of the content. ALLY will scan and score all these unused files and may lower your overall accessibility score.
  • If you organize Modules by week, include dates in your Module names. For example, use “Week One - Aug 22-26” rather than just “Week One”.
  • Use your course Calendar tool and due dates to help students keep track of deadlines. You can add events to your course calendar, including office hours, and you can use Assignments (non-graded or graded) to track all due dates for students.

Make Your HTML Content Accessible

  • If you create content in the Canvas Rich Content Editor (RCE), such as text that you enter in Pages, Assignments, Announcements, Discussions, or Quizzes, make sure to:
    •  Avoid using color alone to convey meaning.
    • Avoid bold and italics as these are not detected in most screen readers. Instead, convey importance and attention using the word "Important:" or "Note:".
    • Review the Canvas accessibility checker (but know it won’t catch everything).
    • Review guidance on creating accessible content in the RCE. This guide from CU Boulder is particularly helpful.
  • Create accessible quizzes in Canvas.
  • Refer to this site for help with creating accessible tables links, tables, headings, and images.
  • Make URLs and links meaningful. That means you should avoid copying and pasting  the 'raw' URL. Instead, create a link using words that indicate what the link points to, such as Emporia State University.
  • When adding alternative text to simple images, pictures, and photos, a good heuristic is about 5-10 words to describe the image. Complex images may require more description. Alt Text is important for students who rely on screen readers.

Make Your Documents Accessible

  • See any orange or red 'dials' in your Canvas courses? Those are inaccessible file indicators provided by ALLY. Clicking the dial will provide more information regarding how to correct it. Green dials indicate a more accessible file.
  • Review guidance on accessible Word documents, accessible PowerPoints, and accessible PDFs.
  • Review what you can do ahead of time to prepare for an alternate format accommodation request. Certain books, for example, are available in a digital format using a subscription service called AccessText. Contact Student Accessibility and Support Services for more information about this service.

Make Your Video Content Accessible

  • Select videos that have been captioned already. You can filter YouTube search results by captioned videos.
  • Use Kaltura, Panopto, and Zoom auto-captions. You can review and fix the captions for accuracy. You can also download caption files from these services to upload to another video hosting service. Be aware that auto-captions are generally only about 80% accurate and have difficulty with jargon.
  • If you narrate over PowerPoint, Closed Captions will need to be added manually. This can take considerably longer to produce. It also requires a third-party plugin called Stamp. If possible, avoid narrating directly over slides in PowerPoint. Use Panopto instead.

Provide Flexibility Where Possible

  • Learn about Universal Design for Learning to understand more about why this practice is beneficial for students. Consult the Canvas guide to UDL course design.
  • Provide flexibility in participation methods. For example, allow students to earn their participation by contributing to discussion boards, participate in synchronous discussions in class, communicating in a group setting or 1:1 setting with peers, or any other way you see fit for your course objectives.
  • Offering virtual office hours is a good way to allow more students to attend. Depending on a student’s disability or disabling condition, visiting office hours in person can be especially difficult.
 ~ Several suggestions courtesy of CU Boulder Office of Digital Accessibility