Accessibility Day

The Instructional Technology & Design Services team (ITDS) will host another Accessibility Day event on September 19th in UN5009. This event will introduce participants to the University’s Digital Accessibility Initiative and the importance of their role in it. The sessions will focus on how to create accessible instructional material using MS Word, PowerPoint, Adobe PDF, etc., as well as how to design an accessible Canvas course by incorporating tools such as Ally and the Canvas Accessibility Checker. Please go to the ITDS training registration site to register for one of these events.

Accessibility Tools in Canvas

Ally is a tool to assist faculty in making sure course documents are accessible in Canvas. It is now implemented and embedded in all FA18 courses in Canvas. Ally checks for accessibility in the existing and newly uploaded course files. To measure accessibility, Ally assigns each course file an accessibility score, represented by a number and a colored gauge which can be found next to your files. In addition, Ally generates alternative accessible formats including audio files. This tool provides a description of any accessibility issues and step-by-step help on how to improve them. Our Ally documentation can be helpful to learn about this tool.