Overview
Canvas Ally is an accessibility tool seamlessly integrated into your Canvas course that automatically checks your content against international accessibility standards (WCAG) and flags accessibility issues. This tool helps you proactively make your course materials more accessible to all students, particularly those who use assistive technologies like screen readers, while also offering students a range of alternative accessible formats for your files. This guide outlines Ally's key features and directs you to resources to get started with content remediation.
Key Features:
Ally provides several benefits that streamline the process of making your course accessible:
- In-Context Feedback: Ally displays a color-coded score indicator next to each content item (files, pages, etc.) showing its accessibility score. Clicking the indicator provides step-by-step guidance on how to fix specific issues, such as adding alternative text to images or improving color contrast.
- Course Accessibility Report: A dedicated report provides a snapshot of your course's overall accessibility score, distribution of content types, and a prioritized list of issues to address. This helps you efficiently identify and fix the most severe or common problems.
- Alternative Formats: Without any extra work from you, Ally automatically generates various alternative formats for many of your uploaded files (like PDFs, Word documents, and PowerPoint presentations). Students can easily download formats like Audio (MP3), ePub, electronic Braille, or a mobile-friendly HTML version, allowing them to choose the format that best suits their learning needs.
- Compliance and Accessibility: Using Ally is a proactive step toward meeting digital accessibility guidelines, ensuring that your course provides an equitable learning experience for all students.
Using Ally to Improve Course Accessibility
Use these resources to quickly learn how to use Ally's features and begin improving your course content:
- Start with your Canvas Ally Course Report
Watch the short Canvas Ally Course Reports Video to learn how to locate Ally in your Canvas course and view your current accessibility score. - Explore the Ally Indicators in your course
As you review your course materials, look for the Ally indicators next to each item. The Canvas Ally Indicators Video shows how to interpret and use these quick visual cues for accessibility feedback. - Use the Ally Remediation Cheatsheet for guidance
Pair the instructor feedback inside Ally with our Ally Remediation Cheatsheet for clear and quick explanations of what each issue means and how to fix it. - Create your improvement plan
Use the Accessibility Action Plan for Faculty to organize your remediation work, prioritize high impact content, and set realistic weekly goals. - Empower students with Alternative Formats
Encourage students to use Alternative Formats generated by Ally so they can access materials in the ways that work best for them.
Resources
For more, review these additional resources:
Support
For support, email [email protected], call 210-458-4520, or book a consultation with our TLDT experts.
