Accessibility Checkers

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Canvas Accessibility

There are a couple of Canvas accessibility checkers that can be used. Below are some links to provide additional information.

For checking a single page at a time:

• Canvas Accessibility Checker  Links to an external site.
• WAVE Links to an external site. (Browser Extension Download) - can be used to evaluate websites outside of Canvas.

For checking an entire Canvas course:

Needs to be set up at an institutional-level. Please contact your Canvas Admin.

• UDOIT Links to an external site. (Free, but needs to be installed by your Canvas Admin.)
• ALLY Links to an external site. (Needs institution subscription.)

If you do not have UDOIT or ALLY, please use the tools below:

The accessibility checker is a robot:

• work when used correctly,
• can create problems if used incorrectly, and
• don't cover everything you'll need to check for in your pages.

Your 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!

WAVE Accessibility Browser Extension

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.

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 person" 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.

WAVE Tips

Take a screenshot of the errors before going into the editor so you can remember exactly what a 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.

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 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'll get:

"Redundant title text"
"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. It's also possible to get this error when you have multiple links in different parts of the page all going to the same destination URL. That's an actual problem.
"Title attribute text is same as text/alt text"

Canvas Accessibility Checker