Designing an Accessible Canvas Home Page | Staff guide

Making digital content accessible

At Liverpool John Moores University, we’re committed to making digital content accessible to as many people as possible. To help meet this objective, this article aims to help you create an accessible Canvas course home page for your students. 

What makes a good home page? 

The good home page should provide an overview of the course materials and structure with relevant links. It should help students access learning materials and sections they need as easily as possible. The more complex the content and design of this page the easier it is for students to become confused and miss important links, and can, in some cases make it harder for students with disabilities. 

The key principles of an accessible homepage:

Is there a template available for me to use? 

The Teaching and Learning Academy have developed an accessible template for you to use in your course. You can import it from ‘Canvas Commons’. It’s titled ‘Accessible Homepage Template‘. The template is designed to work alongside the ‘Modules’ section of your course. Add and organise your learning materials into the ‘Modules’ section and use this template as a home page. This allows for easier access to Learning Materials on various devices. 

To add the Accessible template to your course, use the ‘Import Existing Content’ button from your course homepage. The item should be listed at the top of the page, but if you can’t find it, search for ‘Accessibility Homepage Template’ in Canvas Commons. 

Add your own image, but don’t forget to mark the image as ‘decorative’. Further information about making images accessible: Using Alt text to make images accessible

Change the text and remove any references that aren’t relevant to your course. 

Accessibility Homepage Template