Canvas @ Yale

Tools for Creating and Assessing Accessible Files, Pages, and Other Content

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Creating content in an accessible way is an important part of making sure your course is inclusive. Both native and integrated tools within Canvas help instructors in creating accessible files, pages, and other content. Below are some tools you can use to create more accessible course content.

Table of Contents

Panorama

Panorama provides a visual indicator to instructors that indicates the "accessibility score" of a file, Canvas course page, or image, as well as provides helpful guides in how to improve the quality.

To learn more about this, check out our Panorama: Overview article, as well as our Panorama: Viewing and Understanding a File's Accessibility Score article.

Downloading Alternative Formats of Files

Panorama allows students and instructors alike to benefit from the ability to download alternative formats of uploaded files to a Canvas course. These alternative formats can be more accessible and compatible with screen reader or other assistive technologies.

To learn more, check out Panorama's Accessing Alternative File Formats in Panorama article.

Canvas Accessibility Checker

The Canvas Accessibility Checker is a tool within the rich content editor (RCE) of Canvas that checks for common accessibility errors within the editor, and provides recommendations for fixing accessibility issues.

To learn more, check out Canvas's support article: How do I use the Accessibility Checker in the Rich Content Editor as an instructor? (Vendor Guide)

Media Library (Panopto) Captions

The Media Library (Panopto) has the ability to manually upload captions or add captions through automatic speech recognition (ASR). Though captions created through ASR are not 100% accurate, they may be a great start in creating and providing more accessible video / audio course content. Captions added to media this way should be reviewed and edited before being used in your course

To learn more, check out our Adding / Editing Captions on Media Library Content article.

Canvas Accessibility Resources

For more information about Yale's accessibility guidelines, please contact [email protected]. For general help, please contact [email protected].

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