Canvas Pages, Discussions, & Assignments Accessibility Best Practices
Creating accessible Canvas Pages, Discussions, and Assignments helps every student engage with your course content more easily—especially students who use screen readers, captions, keyboard navigation, or alternative formats. At St. Petersburg College, YuJa Panorama supports this work by scanning your course for common accessibility issues, offering alternative formats, and providing guided fixes you can apply directly in Canvas. Use the best practices and remediation steps below to build content that is clear, structured, and usable for all learners—one page, discussion, or assignment at a time.
Key Takeaways
- Build with structure: use proper headings, true lists, and properly formatted tables with headers and captions.
- Add alt text: ensure all meaningful images include clear alternative text for screen reader users.
- Make media accessible: provide closed captions for video and transcripts for audio content.
- Use descriptive links: avoid “click here” and clearly describe where links take students.
- Don’t rely on color alone: use bold or
<strong>formatting, headings, icons, or clear wording for emphasis. - Use Panorama strategically: check your accessibility score regularly and prioritize fixes that most impact student access.
Start with Intention
Creating Accessible Canvas Content
This video walks instructors step by step through creating accessible Canvas Pages, Discussions, and Assignments using the Canvas Rich Content Editor. It demonstrates how small design choices such as using headings, readable font sizes, descriptive links, and properly formatted lists can significantly improve accessibility for all students. The demo also highlights how images, tables, documents, and media should be added with accessibility in mind, and how YuJa Panorama provides visual indicators and scores to help instructors identify and address issues as they build content.
Key Points
- Use headings to create clear structure and hierarchy; the page title serves as Heading 1.
- Maintain readable text by using a minimum font size and avoiding color alone for emphasis.
- Add meaningful alt text to images and avoid phrases like “image of” or “picture of.”
- Use true bulleted or numbered lists instead of manually typing numbers or symbols.
- Write descriptive link text rather than using “click here” or pasted URLs.
- Ensure videos are captioned and indicate video length when possible.
- Format tables correctly by setting header rows and adding captions.
- Check linked documents for accessibility, since they affect overall accessibility scores.
- Use YuJa Panorama icons and scores to identify issues and guide remediation incrementally.
Canvas Content Remediation Decision Tree
This decision tree is designed to guide instructors step by step through the process of fixing accessibility issues identified in their course content. By asking a series of simple questions, it helps users determine the type of content they are working with (such as documents, images, videos, or web pages) and directs them to the most appropriate remediation strategy or support resource.
How to Remediate a Canvas Page, Discussion, and Assignment Using Yuja Panorama
This video demonstrates how to remediate accessibility issues in Canvas Pages, Discussions, and
Assignments using YuJa Panorama. It shows how to interpret Panorama icons and accessibility scores, review item-level reports, and apply guided fixes directly within Canvas. The demo walks through common issues such as missing alt text, low color contrast, small font sizes, non-descriptive links, improperly formatted lists, and inaccessible tables. It explains when to apply fixes, skip non-impactful warnings, or make additional manual improvements to enhance clarity and usability for students.
Key Points
- Use Panorama icons and accessibility scores in Modules to quickly identify items with issues.
- Open the item-level accessibility report and use the dial to review specific concerns.
- Apply guided fixes for common issues, including:
- Missing or incorrect alt text for images
- Low color contrast and small font sizes
- Manually typed lists instead of true ordered or unordered lists
- Non-descriptive links such as “click here” or pasted URLs
- Review recommendations critically and skip fixes that are not appropriate, such as
non-sequential learning objectives flagged as lists. - Ensure tables include header rows and captions to support screen reader navigation.
- Apply fixes and recheck the accessibility score to confirm improvements.
- Make additional manual edits—such as improving heading visibility, list formatting, and link
clarity—to further enhance readability. - Remember that linked documents also affect accessibility scores and may require remediation
outside of Canvas.
Accessibility Resources by Content Type
This section provides file-specific guidance to help you identify and fix accessibility issues across common content types used in Canvas. The IDEAS team offers open labs, training sessions, and individualized support throughout the semester to help faculty meet accessibility expectations with confidence.
Click on a content type below to access step-by-step resources, best practices, and remediation support.
Upcoming Events
| Date/Time | Event |
|---|---|
|
02/16/26 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm |
IDEAS Webinar: Making Microsoft Word Documents Accessible |
|
02/20/26 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
IDEAS Webinar: Making Microsoft Word Documents Accessible |
|
02/23/26 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm |
IDEAS Webinar: PowerPoint Presentations |
|
02/26/26 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm |
IDEAS Webinar: PowerPoint Presentations |
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