Accessibility in Canvas

Canvas, its tools, and integrations are built to comply with accessibility standards. However, as much of the content is created by our staff, it is important to keep accessibility in mind when creating content.

The University of Newcastle Course Site Quality Principles include accessibility. Please ensure that any content changes do not negatively impact accessibility. For further assistance, staff can reach out to the LDTI Learning Technology team (or call +61 2 4055 8999).

The following page outlines some of the various features within Canvas and its integrations for assisting staff and students in accessing and interacting with content.

Canvas

Creating Accessible Course Content

When creating content within Canvas, staff are encouraged to conform to W3C accessibility standards and guidelines.

You can also use the built-in Accessibility Checker to perform a quick check against common accessibility guidelines. Be aware that the Accessibility Checker does have some limitations.

The University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) have provided further guides around each of these limitations and good accessible practice:

• Clear content structure
• Heading styles
• Accessible language
• Concise or meaningful use of alternative text
• Captions or transcripts
• Use of descriptive link text
• If colour alone is used to convey meaning
• If a table has been used for formatting

Immersive Reader

Staff and students can access the Microsoft immersive reader on pages, assignments, and course home pages within a course. The immersive reader provides a distraction-free, full screen view of content with additional tools such as a screen reader; different font spacing, style, and text sizes; line spacing; and themes.

User Preferences

Canvas also includes additional accessibility features which can be enabled for your user account.

• High Contrast UI - will increase the contrast of Canvas interface elements.
• Underline links - will highlight links with an underline to improve awareness, particularly useful when using a keyboard to navigate.

To enable these options, please refer to the Canvas Community guide on How do I manage new features in my user account?

Mobile Apps

While the Canvas Teacher and Student apps don’t include any accessibility features themselves, they are designed to work with the accessibility features of the mobile platform on which they run.

Such features include high contrasts, large text, and screen readers.

Accessible Feedback

Feedback can be provided to students in Canvas via text, video, audio, or a combination depending on student needs.  Please refer to the Canvas Community guide on How do I leave feedback comments for student submissions in SpeedGrader?

The below video will guide you through the process of how to provide and structure video and audio feedback within Canvas.