Ally is a revolutionary tool designed to take accessibility to new heights in your Canvas courses. Ally goes beyond the ordinary by providing guidance on how you can fix the accessibility issues in your digital course content. Take a look at our Ally resources for further help and support. You can access Ally:
- In the 'Ally Course Accessibility Report' in your Canvas course menu
- Via the indicator in your Canvas 'files' space
- On any course 'page' when creating or editing content. See the percentage indicator in the top right-hand corner.
You’ll find an accessibility checker in Word which allows you to double-check your content is following best practice and accessibility guidelines. Ensure you use it before converting documents to PDFs or uploading it to Canvas.
Both Office 365 (which works in the browser) and the desktop version of Word have an Accessibility Checker, but more information about why errors are reported and steps to help fix the error are available in the version on your desktop. The following images are from the desktop version of Word, and we would recommend you use this version to check your documents for accessibility issues.
- Select the Review tab in Word
Review tab in Microsoft Word contains the ‘check accessibility’ option.
- Select Check Accessibility – the Accessibility panel should appear. View each item listed in the ‘Inspection Results Panel’. Clicking on each item which will reveal instructions at the bottom of the screen as to ‘why fix’ and ‘steps to fix’ the issue. The below image shows that an image in Word has been identified as an error. To resolve the issue, Alternative text needs to be added to the image to ensure the image can be read out loud by screen readers. Instructions are provided at the bottom of the panel.
Accessibility checker panel displays issues in the document and describes how they can be fixed.
- Continue through the issues, fixing them as you go, until all issues are resolved.
Guide to using the Microsoft accessibility checker
Ally, (see section above) is a more comprehensive tool for identifying and addressing accessibility issues in your course. The Canvas accessibility checker will review basic accessibility issues. Canvas’s accessibility checker will not check any files you upload for accessibility issues, you will need to use the accessibility checker in the program where you created file e.g. Microsoft Word.
When editing a Canvas page, you can access the checker by clicking on accessibility icon at the bottom of the Rich Content Editor.
How do I access the accessibility checker in the rich content editor?
