May 16, 2024, marks the 13th anniversary of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). The purpose of GAAD “is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion, and the more than One Billion people with disabilities/impairments.” (https://accessibility.day/). To help celebrate and raise awareness of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), we are asking you to fix at least one piece of digital content using Ally in Canvas.
What is Ally? Ally was added to Canvas as part of the UD Accessibility Initiative and can help you provide your students with more accessible content and the flexibility to choose a format that works best for them. The more accessible your content, the better Ally can generate alternative formats for students.
How do you use Ally? Instructors can use Ally to assist in identifying problems areas and reviewing the steps to make your content more accessible. Ally generates accessibility scores for your files (PDFs, images, Office documents, HTML) using the WCAG accessibility standards and provides guidance for needed changes based on the specific file. If you are not familiar with Ally, review this quick start guide.
When you see a red, green or yellow gauge icon next to an image or file while reviewing or editing your Canvas course, click it. It will provide you with information about the accessibility of that file and guidance about how to improve its score if needed. You can also use the Accessibility Report in your Canvas course to obtain a summary and overview at the course level similar to the example below.
FYI: Across all courses for the Spring 2024 term, Ally reported 2,850 courses with 456,319 files (documents, images) with an overall accessibility score of 65.6% (as of 5/6/2024).
If the Accessibility Report link is not on your course navigation, enable it in Settings -> Navigation. Once enabled, click on the link to see your course report. Refer to Ally’s Course Accessibility Report website for details about how to interpret and navigate the report.
If you are a department chair or college dean looking to help improve the accessibility of Canvas content, request an accessibility report for all courses in your unit. Send an e-mail to canvas-info@udel.edu with course and term information or request a department consultation for an accessibility overview.
Want to learn more about creating accessible content? Register for a summer accessibility challenge!
- The 10-day Accessibility Challenges are online asynchronous courses held each summer and winter session. It provides snack size bites of accessibility changes to apply to your courses over 10 days. Learn more about the challenges and register!
- The Advanced Accessibility Challenge
