Accessible Course Materials
You can ensure the accessibility of materials uploaded to your Canvas course site in several ways. Here are four areas you might want to start.
Make New Documents Accessible
New documents are an opportunity to prioritize accessibility along the way so you don't have to remediate later. Before uploading a syllabus, slide deck, or other document created with classic Microsoft tools, run the Microsoft Accessibility Checker.
Read the Microsoft Accessibility guides for Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.
Reformat PDFs or Reconsider File Type
PDF stands for “portable document format.” PDFs display their original layouts and styles regardless of the operating system or application. This means they are not dynamic—they don’t easily resize, reflow, or adapt—making them difficult to access for people with disabilities who use assistive technologies.
PDFs are notoriously tricky to make accessible. If you're starting in Word or PowerPoint, the most accessible path is to share the document in the application’s native format. Word documents can be set to read-only if security is a concern.
If you must create PDFs, use the Microsoft Accessibility Checker to verify you have an accessible document to before you start. Read the Save or convert to PDF Microsoft Support article for the most up to date step by step instructions.
Images Need Alt Text and Videos Need Captions
All images should have Alt Text, brief textual descriptions of image content. Clicking on an image in the Canvas Rich Content Editor brings up the Image Options where Alt Text can be entered and edited.
Ensure all course videos have accurate captions. By default Canvas Studio adds and publishes auto-generated captions to uploaded media. Auto-generated captions must then be edited manually for accuracy. If you have transcript files already, you can upload those captions to Canvas Studio.
UDOIT Guides You Through the Process
Scan your course with UDOIT (Universal Design Online Inspection Tool). UDOIT is available in all Canvas Course sites and will help you remediate accessibility problems in design, documents, and most elements of the site.
UDOIT also enables you to replace inaccessible files with Canvas Pages (HTML).
Need Help?
Teaching & Learning Technologies can help review and improve your course accessibility. Schedule a consultation with a TLT team member or email us at classes@emory.edu to get started.