Five tips on how to make your Canvas course room more accessible
In 2024, ICT educator Gina Söderlund Nåtfors and her colleagues conducted a manual review of randomly selected course rooms in Canvas, checking various aspects of digital accessibility. Read more about the results and what you can do to create more accessible course rooms in Canvas.
Gina Söderlund Nåtfors works in the teaching and learning unit as an ICT educator and is, among other things, an object specialist for Canvas. During the summer of 2024, she and her colleagues conducted a review of accessibility in Canvas course rooms. The aim was to investigate how well the course material meets the requirements of the Web Accessibility Directive Act, which came into force in 2019, and to follow SUHF's recommendations on digital accessibility.
The review covered images, films, links, tables, documents, module structure and text formatting, among other things. The results show that 85 per cent of the course rooms contained inaccessible documents and that recorded lectures often lacked subtitles. It was also found that material created and/or uploaded to the learning platform largely did not yet meet the legal requirements.
Only one course had fully accessible pages. The biggest challenges are therefore inaccessible documents and pages, while knowledge of link descriptions is considered relatively good. The review shows that accessibility can be improved with concrete measures to ensure that all students can participate in teaching on equal terms.
Five quick tips for better accessibility in Canvas
- Format headings and lists with the Canvas content editor
- Use the accessibility control for tables and colour contrast
- Create subtitles for videos with Canvas Studio
- Add alternative text for all images
- Describe links clearly and use Canvas link validation
Bonus: Use built-in accessibility check features when creating documents