Accessibility

Making your Canvas courses accessible to users with disabilities is a legal requirement and a good design practice. Below you will find design guidelines and links to additional resources.

Accessible Design Guidelines

Designing Accessible Canvas Courses is Emory’s resource for instructors looking to make learning in Canvas barrier-free for their students. This site introduces the principles of Universal Design for Learning and gets you started with the basics.

In General Accessibility Design Guidelines from the Canvas Community, you will find detailed information about how to format your course content accessibly.

Accessibility Checkers

The Rich Content Editor includes an accessibility tool that checks common accessibility errors within the editor. This tool can help you design course content while considering accessibility attributes and is located in the Rich Content Editor menu bar. This tool only verifies content created within the Rich Content Editor.

See How do I use the Accessibility Checker in the Rich Content Editor? for more information.

UDOIT (Universal Design Online Inspection Tool) is installed in Emory Canvas courses and allows instructors to view and fix accessibility issues throughout an entire course in a streamlined way. It checks the entire course, not just content made using the Rich Content Editor.

Instructions for running the UDOIT tool can be found in the UDOIT User Guide.

Additional Resources

• Accessibility within Canvas - On this page, you will find information about the technologies and standards that Instructure uses and observes to ensure that Canvas is accessible.
• Information and Technical Assistance on the Americans with Disabilities Act - This is the ADA.gov website which provides information on the ADA laws and regulations, design standards, technical assistance materials, and enforcement.

Reach out to us

If you would like assistance ensuring your course site is accessible, please contact Teaching and Learning Technologies. We are happy to help. Schedule a consultation with a TLT team member or email us at classes@emory.edu.