Canvas Accessibility Guidance
Canvas course accessibility adheres to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Level AA, focusing on universal design principles like screen reader compatibility, keyboard navigation, and structural consistency. Key standards include using descriptive alt text, proper heading hierarchies, high color contrast, and captioned multimedia.
The Digital Accessiblity Checklist for Canvas web page provides a checklist for the accessiblity options within a Canvas Course.
Canvas pages have rich content editor (WYSIWYG) features including a built-in Accessibility Checker.
UDOIT (Universal Design Online content Inspection Tool) is another built-in accessibility checker. UDOIT scans Canvas course materials including Canvas pages, documents, images, videos, and links. It highlights common accessiblity issues, and the impact of these issues directly influences the accessibility score it reports. The Understanding UDOIT Accessibility Issues webpage provides information about common accessibiity issues found in Canvas content.
Where do I begin with Canvas accessibility?
- Perceivable - Can all students see or hear the content?
- Operable - Can all student navigate and interact with the course content?
- Understandable - Is the course content clear and consistent?
- Robust - Does the course content work well with assistive technologies?
- Comprehensive scanning of announcements, assignments, discussions, documents, images, videos, links, and HTML formatting in Canvas
- Detailed accessibility issue reports
- Step-by-step remediation for resolving accessibility issues
- Bulk fixing options
3. Refer to the UDOIT User Guide for help:
- Enabling UDOIT in a Canvas Course
- Fixing Accessibility Issues in a Canvas Course
- Reports and Resources
4. Use the following Canvas resources to build courses that are accessible.
What are the requirements for Canvas digital accessibility?
The requirements to ensure Canvas content meets digital accessiblity include:
- Structure & Navigation: Use H1, H2, H3, etc., in nested order; use built-in lists for organizing content rather than using spaces or tabs.
- Documents & Links: Ensure PDF/Word documents are accessible, and use descriptive hyperlinks (avoid "click here").
- Color & Contrast: Maintain high color contrast; do not use color alone to convey meaning.
- Images: All images must have alternative (alt) text.
- Video Recordings: For video accessiblity, videos must have captions and transcripts.
- Accessibilty Checker Tool: For Canvas content pages, utilize the built-in Accessibility Checker in the rich content editor.
How do I create captions for video recordings used in Canvas?
Panopto Recordings
-
Panopto is a versatile video platform at Auburn University. It can be used for video hosting, screencasting, and classroom recordings.
-
The Panopto: Overview article provides more information for integrating Panopto with Canvas.
-
All Panopto recordings created at Auburn University have machine-generated captions added by default. These captions are automatically created using speech recognition and may contain errors. Accurate captions are required to meet digital accessibility standards under federal law and Auburn University policy.
-
Panopto: Editing Captions provides directions to manually review and correct captions in Panopto.
-
Panopto recordings are not automatically deleted.
Zoom Recordings
-
Zoom is a video conferencing platform that integrates Canvas and Outlook, allowing users to host video meetings for up to 300 participants and schedule meetings right in the calendar.
-
The Zoom: Overview article provides information related to Zoom eligibility, requirements, and meeting security.
-
Captions for a Zoom cloud recording are auto-generated and sourced from the Zoom meeting transcript. This transcript can be accessed and edited to meet accessibility standards and shared to viewers.
-
Zoom video recordings must have been recorded to the cloud (not to a local computer) and be stored on Auburn's Zoom server before you can edit captions in Zoom.
-
The Zoom support website has information about Using Audio Transcription for Cloud Recordings. The section of How to View or Edit an Audio Transcript has specific information for editing transcripts from a Zoom cloud recording.
-
A Zoom recording will be automatically deleted from the Zoom server after 180 days and permanently deleted after 210 days.
-
It is recommended you upload your Zoom videos into Panopto and edit the auto-generated captions created in Panopto. The Automatic Zoom to Panopto in a Canvas Course article provides directions to enable Zoom into Panopto in your Canvas course(s).
YouTube Recordings
-
YouTube uses automatic speech recognition to create captions for most videos. Review the automatic captions for accuracy before sharing, and make quick corrections directly in YouTube. Follow the Edit Captions instructions on making minor revisions to captions found on YouTube's help page.
-
For videos that require substantial editing for accuracy, have a lengthy duration, or involve other relevant factors, it may be more practical in terms of cost or time to utilize a vendor who supplies caption files. The video owner can upload accurate captions by following the Add subtitles & captions steps on YouTube’s help page.
