Course material accessibility

Remove any content no longer needed in your Canvas course.

Content that you don’t need might include old syllabus files, assignments, or readings. Removing old content will make it faster and easier to review and update what remains. 

• Delete individual items from your course manually or use TidyUp if you have many unused items. TidyUp scans and identifies which course items are not in use.
• TidyUp doesn’t see files or images that are used in Question Banks for Classic Quizzes and other LTIs (example: New Quizzes). To avoid accidentally deleting these items, move them into a Canvas folder and exempt them from being scanned.

Knowing the fundamental concepts of digital accessibility makes later steps easier to understand. This might take about ~20 minutes for a quick skim, or an hour or more for a deep dive.

You can always go back to these fundamentals as specific questions come up.

Option 1: To scan your entire course at once, use Canvas’s built-in accessibility checker, UDOIT, which identifies accessibility issues and guides you through prioritizing and fixing them.

• Keep in mind that the first time you use it, UDOIT may identify dozens or hundreds of issues – this is normal and not a crisis.
• Get started with “Easiest to Fix” to build momentum, then focus on “High Impact” issues that significantly affect the user experience.
• Set a realistic goal: fix 10-15 issues per session rather than attempting to fix everything.
• You may wish to address video, audio, and files (PDFs, MS Word, MS Excel, Google Docs, etc.) separately. Those are covered below. 
• Track your progress over multiple semesters with UDOIT’s accessibility score. 

Option 2: To fix issues as you create content or before releasing it to students, use the Canvas Accessibility Checker that is build into the Rich Content Editor. This allows you to address issues on each page or assignment as you go.

• Keep in mind that UDOIT is a more robust tool and may catch additional issues. See Comparison of Canvas Accessibility Tools: Accessibility Checker vs. UDOIT for details. 

Reminder: If either of these tools seems too advanced for your comfort level, learn more about the fundamentals of digital accessibility. You can review one topic at a time and then come back to fix that issue in your course. 

Please note: Campus is upgrading Kaltura services to provide human-generated video captions and and AI-generated audio descriptions for new published videos. This service will be rolled out in time for fall semester 2026.

Every video in your course must have captions and audio descriptions, and all audio-only content (e.g., audio recording or podcast) must have a transcript. UDOIT can check for some video and audio issues, but it can’t find or guide you through fixing all of them. Instead, you should review the video and audio included in your course.

If your course features videos from YouTube and other streaming platforms, review available transcripts and captions to ensure they comply with the ADA. Consider alternative media if the captions have unacceptable inaccuracies. If no alternative media is available, include a supplemental edited transcript.

Audio descriptions are used when there is no dialogue or narration in the video and the visual action is important to understanding what is happening. Creating audio descriptions would be important if, for example, a process (such as food preparation) or wildlife behaviors were being visually represented without any spoken language in the original video.

PDFs can be hard to remediate and should be avoided. Share files as accessible Word or Google documents. If a PDF must be used, find a link to the article on a webpage whenever possible instead of using a scanned copy. (UW Libraries has access to a catalog of many online articles, databases, and journals.)

• For Microsoft files, review and fix issues using Microsoft’s built-in accessibility checker; then re-upload accessible versions.
• For Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets: Review and fix issues using Grackle, a Chrome extension similar to Microsoft’s built-in accessibility checker.

Revisit these steps to continuously improve the accessibility of your digital content to enhance inclusion for everyone. Accessibility work is a continuous, ongoing process baked into one’s workflow. As you add new content to your course, ensure it is digitally accessible from the start by incorporating digital accessibility fundamentals.