Accessibility in Canvas
Canvas has several built in tools for identifying accessibility issues in your course materials. They can also be used as stand alone tools for material that you plan to distribute other ways. For example, the UDOIT tool can be used to verify accessibility of PDFs that you plan to put onto a webpage. Below is a summary of some resources that Canvas provides and tips for using them.
UDOIT
The university had purchased UDoIt, a plug-in for Canvas that scans Canvas course content and files, identifies accessibility issues, and provides guidance to fix problems. It can be used specifically for identifying and fixing problems in PDF files. The following steps are suggested by Yao-Yuan Mao's instructions for creating accessible PDFs with UDoIt.
- Upload the existing PDF file to a Canvas course. For content that is not associated with a course you are teaching, you can create a Canvas test course as a place to upload and convert files.
- In the course navigation menu follow the link to UDoIt. It will start scanning the content, which can take some time.
- Choose the Review Course Files tab. Find the PDF file you just uploaded and click the Review button.
- You can convert the PDF file into an accessible Canvas page, an accessible HTML page, or have it auto-tag the PDF to make it accessible while retaining the PDF format. You can review the generated document and replace the original file with the new accessible version. You can find the generated versions in a folder called Alternate Files in the Files section of the Canvas course.
- For more information on how to use UDoIt, see the ULEARN Accessibility Guide put out by its creator. The accessibility guide highlights each issue that UDoIt can detect and provides guidance on how to fix them.
Canvas Accessibility Checker
Canvas comes with a built in accessibility checker that can be used to verify the accessibility of any pages that you create in Canvas, and also of any files that you upload to your Canvas page. You can access it from the navigation menu of your Canvas course. Running it will give a report of any issues that it finds, along with suggestions for remediation. It will usually identify PDF files that are not tagged, for example.
See the Accessibility Essentials guide of the Center for Teaching Excellence for additional information.
Guides to the Accessibility Checker
- University of Utah guide to the Accessibility Checker
- Ohio State University guide on the Accessibility Checker
- UNC guide to the Accessibility Checker
- Colorado State guide to the Accessibility Checker
- Utah State guide to the Accessibility Checker
Uploading PDFs to Canvas
If you must upload a PDF file to Canvas the best practice is to
- make sure the PDF file is accessible - see Generating Accessible LaTeX PDFs and External PDF files for more information
- also include the LaTeX source file as part of your upload, whenever possible, in the same location and with the same filename
Math Equations in Canvas
Canvas comes with a textbox editor used in creating pages. That textbox editor also
has an equation editor, but instead of using it you can simply use `\(\)` for inline math and `\[\]` for displayed math. For example
This is an inline equation \( {\partial \over \partial x} f(x,y) \) and some more stuff in the line.
Next we see a displayed equation.
\[ \int_0^5 {x^2 \over 2} dx \]
will display formulas when published.
See the PennState page on the Canvas Math Editor and Accessibility for further information.