The Pope Tech tool is available for free for all CCC institutions, thanks to the CCC Accessibility Center. We've also gotten good results when using the WAVE browser tool in conjunction with the Canvas Accessibility Checker (affectionately known as "the little person/man").
There is currently no single tool that can perfectly identify and remediate all accessibility issues. We recommend using some combination of the Canvas checker, PopeTech, WAVE, UDOIT, DesignPlus (cidilabs) and/or Ally depending on what is available at your college.
Like any tool, these:
work when used correctly,
can create problems if used incorrectly, and
don't cover everything you'll need to check for in your pages.
Canvas pages will still need human eyes to ensure you've located and fixed all accessibility issues (which is true of any accessibility tool). But these are a great start!
The WAVE browser tool can be a real time-saver in checking your pages for accessibility errors. You don't have to open the page editor in order to do your check. That means if you don't see any error alerts, you can just move on to the next page. Yay!
Be aware, it can't check color contrast or captions but it's great for heading styles, tables, alt text and lists.
NOTE: With tables, the WAVE tool will let you quickly see if table headers are present but it's easiest to use the Canvas Accessibility Checker to actually remediate the table. The "little man" will walk you through the steps without having to go into the HTML code at all.
The WAVE tool has some quirks so here's a quick video tutorial on how to best use it.
The WAVE interface has been updated in the Chrome browser so it will look different than what you see in the tutorial. But it still works the same way.
WAVE Tips
Take a screenshot of the errors before going into the editor so you can remember exactly what and where they were. Alternatively, have the page open in two browser windows, one with the WAVE errors and one in the page editor.
Before toggling into the HTML, add several line spaces above or below where you need to work in the code. That will help you locate the necessary section more easily once you're in the code area.
If you're a purist, copy and paste the code into a true code editor, make your changes and then paste the revised code back in Canvas.
Errors to (potentially) Ignore
Remember, when using the WAVE tool you can disregard any alerts showing outside the editable part of the page. The following are the typical "false positive" alerts that you might get:
"Low contrast"
NOTE: WAVE doesn't like the the default blue of Canvas link text but we've checked the contrast with two other tools and it was acceptable. If you get this error with any other text, run the Canvas accessibility checker to confirm.
"Redundant title text." (no need to worry about title attributes)
"Title attribute text is same as text/alt text" (same reason as above)
"Adjacent links go to same URL"
NOTE: Evaluate this one and ignore only when it's shown in conjunction with the auto-preview icon or with an embedded video. You may get this error when there are multiple links in different parts of the page all going to the same destination URL. That's an actual problem.
The Little Man
You'll find the Canvas Checker icon down below the page editing field.
Unlike the WAVE tool, you have to open the page editor in order to use the Canvas accessibility checker. Currently, the "little man" is best relied on for checking color contrast and table formatting.
Please review all three tabs before clicking Next
Requirements Changed
Understanding the Need for "Tags" D1 - Heading Styles