Get started with the Canvas Accessibility Guide

Create accessible courses

It’s clear what needs to be fixed and how to fix it while also giving you a heads up about potential issues.

Learn while fixing issues

Documentation, examples, and tips tell you what action to take while teaching you how to avoid the issue in the future.

Fix issues
quickly

Quickly check the Canvas page and easily fix the accessibility issues. Simply, go through the list.

The accessibility results are organized into five content categories. They are:

1. Images and links
2. Text and contrast
3. Headings
4. Tables and lists
5. Documents and videos

You’ll open each content category drop down to review and fix the errors or alerts right in the Guide.

As you go through each content category, you’ll see four result-type icons. They are:

1. Errors – Accessibility issues that should be fixed.
2. Alerts – Potential accessibility issues that should be reviewed and fixed if an issue.
3. Features – Parts of the course that should be helping accessibility. These should still be reviewed to make sure they were done correctly.
4. Headings – The Headings content category drop down shows the heading outline to make sure it has an organized hierarchy.

Alternative text describes images when they don’t load or when a screen reader reads the image.

To fix missing alternative text, just add the alternative text and select Apply. The Guide will add the alt text to the image.

If you aren’t sure if it needs alternative text or have questions, check out the Examples or select the question mark icon.

Link text should describe where the link is going. This benefits all users but especially users with assistive technology. For example, screen readers that read the link or speech recognition that selects the link based on what the user says.

To fix suspicious link text, change the text and select Apply. The Guide will automatically change the text on the page.

If you have questions, select the question mark icon.

Contrast errors are when the background color and foreground color are not different enough, or the contrast is not high enough. Low contrast can make it hard for any user, but especially users with low visibility to distinguish between the elements on the page. 

To fix a contrast error, use the sliders to adjust the color until the contrast ratio passes.

If you have questions, select the question mark icon.

Headings make web content easier to read and assistive technology uses them to navigate the page. To avoid confusion, it’s important to use headings in the right order.

For example, there should be only one heading 1 on the page, which is the title. Next, heading 2s would be used, and heading 3s would be under heading 2s.

To fix a skipped level heading error, choose the correct heading from the drop down and select Apply.

If you have questions, select the question mark icon.

To fix a layout table alert, first, decide if it’s a layout table or a data table.

Layout tables are only used to position content visually.

Data tables are used to organize relevant information together. For example, the data table below organizes the temperature in Hawaii.

This table has column headers and a table caption, which can help make it more accessible.

If your table is a data table, simply choose to make the first row, first column, or both a header and add a table caption.

If it doesn’t have a header yet, add one in the Canvas editor and then select the options in the Accessibility Guide. Now, select Apply. The Guide will adjust the table from there.

Select the question mark icon if you have any questions.